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Leaders
Leadership at all levels is essential, leaders who equip all Christians to take up their call to serve. Professionals should not use their expertise in ways that treat those they serve as passive recipients or clients.
Churches should initiate and strengthen education for diaconia. As a ministry, it should be fully integrated into the church's ordained, consecrated and commissioned ministries, as a reflection of the fundamental significance of diakonia for the being of the Church.
In most local congregational settings, it is women far more than men who have responded to the call to engage in carrying out diaconal work. Attention should be given to how diakonia has become engendered, and how more men and women might be encouraged to become fuller participants in diakonia.
Alliances
Although diakonia has explicitly Christian grounds, we also recognize that God is active throughout creation and not only through the church. Building strategic alliances is crucial. We must work with other partners ecumenically, with those of other faiths, with governments and intergovernmental organizations (e.g., the United Nations), and with others in civil society, especially for the purpose of supporting, encouraging, and advocating for those who are vulnerable.
Important civil society partners include community-based organizations, faith-based organizations and other peoples' movements. Churches should acknowledge these potential partners and, whenever appropriate and feasible, work with them for more effective results.
Churches' complex relationships with governments, especially with regard to diaconal work, require careful examination. In some countries, much of the church's diaconal work is financed through government funds.
In other countries, governments are either unable or unwilling to provide for the basic needs and rights of their people, and expect churches and other organizations to fill the gap. Furthermore, in some multi-faith or secular contexts, government may discriminate against churches and even openly oppose churches' diaconal work.
Attention needs to be given to the decreasing power and resources or governments, especially under the influence of neo-liberal economic globalization.
With regard to governments, churches need to serve as a conscience, challenging patterns of corruption and insisting that governments carry out their appropriate, God-given responsibility to provide for the basic needs and the political, economic, social and cultural rights of their people.
Churches should become more proactively involved in challenging, changing and shaping public policies toward these ends. At the same time, churches should keep a critical distance from government so as not to be co-opted.
In partnership with their national and international diaconal organizations, churches need to become better advocates for those living in poverty, misery and oppression. The future lies in networking with and among those affected by poverty, violence and HIV/AIDS, and in organizing advocacy at national and international levels, including through our connections as a communion of churches.
Churches should more boldly raise their public voice to advocate for global mechanisms to protect the social, economic, cultural and political rights of the vulnerable in all societies. At the same time, churches need to continue supporting poor communities and marginalized people with all available resources and appropriate professional expertise.
We invite you to join us in these commitments and efforts!
