Page 156 - THE ARMENIAN CHURCH_Neat

SOCIAL ACTION

Besides sharing the values of God's King-
dom with His disciples, Christ went to the
people and served them, identifying Him-
self with the poor, the marginalized, and
the oppressed. The church truly fulfills its
vocation by reaching out and becoming
a servant church. Indeed, serving the other
is an essential dimension of the church's
being and its missionary vocation.
For the Armenian Church, social action
or social service, otherwise known in ecume-
nical circles by its Greek term, diakonia, has
never been a merely humanitarian service,
namely distribution of clothing, medicine, or
foodstuffs to the needy. It has been essen-
tially a sharing of the suffering of the other,
and by sharing the other's suffering, it tan-
gibly expresses Christ's power of love. Social
ministry, which is the Church's transfor-
mative action in Christ, seeks to achieve
social justice and to engage the people
in a process of self-development and self-
reliance. Since its beginnings, the Armenian
Church has made diaconal ministry a vital
area of its mission. At certain periods of
history, social ministry was given compre-
hensive expression, an organized form, and