Pray with Hong Kong, June 29, 2025
Pray with Hong Kong
Lectionary Selection: Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20
Prayers for Hong Kong
Compassionate God,
We pray for the people of Asia and around the world who are suffering from wars and hunger, those who are affected by illnesses and calamities, and those who are affected by human trafficking, domestic violence, statelessness, hate, discrimination, and indifference.
Touch our hearts so that we may be moved by your example of compassion for the othered, outcast, and marginalized. May we embrace with courage the call you have given us to minister to those treated unjustly by oppressive systems and powers.
May your Spirit continue to guide and inspire us as we journey together, united in purpose and committed to your call. Grant us grace to be living signs of your Kindom, reflecting your love in every place we go. May it be so!
Excerpted from the Prayer of Intercession, in the Order of Worship
prepared by the Christian Conference of Asia for Asia Sunday 2025.
Mission Moment from Hong Kong
In 2024, the Hong Kong Christian Council (HKCC) celebrated its 70th anniversary. Founded in 1954, the HKCC is the cooperative council of 20 church bodies and Christian organizations in Hong Kong. As an ecumenical council, HKCC promotes Christian life and symbolizes unity in spirit and work among Hong Kong churches and with churches and related organizations worldwide. Beyond ecumenical formation and faith witness, HKCC also brings member churches together by supporting social service projects in Hong Kong, the rest of China, and abroad.
HKCC assists children living in extreme poverty in rural China, Myanmar, and Cambodia through its Sponsorship Program for Needy Children. Its Senior High School Sponsorship Project helps children in Chinese villages who cannot afford the fees required for school after grade 9, and the “Project Torch” program provides support for lodging and living expenses to university students from poverty-stricken areas of China. The HKCC also operates a Free Meals Ministry in Myanmar and Cambodia, which helps ensure that children from poor villages can eat enough daily to grow up healthy.
Other service projects and events are organized by the Eco-Justice Ministry, the Gender Justice Ministry, and special ministries serving Youth and Refugees. In November last year, HKCC began a new ministry that supports people with special educational needs (SEN) within churches. With a growing understanding of the number of families of people with SEN in churches, HKCC held a workshop to train church workers to both shift their understanding of the gifts that people with SEN offer to the church and to more creatively equip communities of worship to welcome and nurture the gifts of people with SEN.
In a sermon at its 70th Anniversary Celebration in October 2024, Bishop Reuel Norman O. Marigza, Moderator of the Christian Conference of Asia, urged the HCCK to continue its witness of unity through service by meeting the challenges confronting Asia in the coming decades. “[T]he Church and the ecumenical movement must seriously address and confront” such issues “of Migration and Human Trafficking, of Peacebuilding and Moving Beyond Conflicts, of human rights violations and injustice, of the growing religious intolerance, fundamentalism and extremism, environmental crisis… and the condition of extreme poverty in a region of plenty, to name a few.”
HKCC will continue to minister to the social challenges facing Hong Kong and throughout Asia, demonstrating its commitment to ecumenical engagement through service.
Partners in Hong Kong
- Asia and Pacific Alliance of YMCAs (APAY)
- Hong Kong Council of the Church of Christ in China
- Hong Kong Christian Service
- Hong Kong Christian Council
- Divinity School of Chung Chi College
- Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture
- Asian Human Rights Commission
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