City Church Hosts Special Community Fundraiser Event This Saturday, May 20

To many expats in Beijing, the City Church is a home away from home and a family away from their families in their home countries. Founded in 1980 with less than ten members; today, City Church boasts over 3,000 members. It has 13 congregations in seven languages that meet at three locations across the city and occasionally organizes both religious and non-religious events.

On May 20, the church is planning a non-religious event called “For the City” that includes a vendors’ bazaar, children’s activities, and musical performances as well as a fundraiser. It will be the first event of its kind. City Church member Nastia, a Russian expat who has been in Beijing for 18 years, shares more with us about the upcoming event.

Hi Nastia! How did you get involved in City Church and what activities does the church offer?
I became a part of the City Church in 2007 when one of my Kenyan classmates invited me to church. I first attended Russian services there, but I started attending English services after learning to speak English. As a Christian Non-Denominational church, City Church provides Christian religious services for expats who are living in Beijing. It includes weekly worship services on Sundays and a children's program with lessons from the Bible. We also provide baptisms, Christian counseling, and marriage and parenting courses. All of our programs are Christian-based and aim to improve the quality of expats lives who live far away from home. 

Could you tell us a little more about your event?
For the City is a community event designed to bring Beijing expats together to have some fun and spend quality time exploring different charities, NGOs, and small businesses represented in Beijing. During the last few years due to COVID, we only had a few opportunities to gather together and celebrate all the good things different groups are doing in Beijing. This is the time to do it. Food will be provided by various small business expat vendors, as well as music performances from the best of the best of Beijing bands. We hope that families can attend as we have prepared fun children's activities and even have a bouncy castle!

Is the first event of its kind that you are hosting?
Yes, this is our first time organizing an event like this. The main purpose is to celebrate all the good done in the city by the expat community. Beijing has a colorful and diverse expat population consisting of people from all over the world. Each and every expat brings different ideas on how to serve the city well. We want to celebrate that diversity.

Who does your fundraiser benefit? How will the “Dad Jokes for Funds” work?
We have been working for a long time with a foster home. This foster home has a long history of helping kids find families, but they also have bills to pay every month. We want to run a small fundraising event to bless them and help out in any way possible.

We came up with the idea of having the dads of the families attending our event participate in the stand-up comedy competition to raise funds for the foster home. Each dad can come up with a list of jokes, and people can vote by donating funds for the best comedian. All the funds will go to support the foster home and the children there. We also hope to raise awareness of organizations like this that exist and operate in Beijing.

The event will also feature the City Church musicians. Could you tell us a little bit more about them?
We are arranging musical performances from the best of the best City Church musicians. There will be a City Church music band and other Christian artists who are members of our church performing on stage. They all have different styles and genres that they use. We promise seeing them perform will be very exciting!

What kind of experience do you want participants to have?
We hope that participants will have a lovely time spent together as a family or as a group of friends. This event is kid-friendly, so we hope many kids and families will attend as well as people who do not have families with them here in Beijing but long to be a part of a wider “family” or community.

City Church's For the City community event will be taking place on Saturday, May 20 from 11am-6pm at Cloud House (白云馆). Tickets are RMB 50/person presale and RMB 55/person at door, RMB 200/families, and RMB 25/children aged 4-12. Tickets can be purchased by scanning the QR code in the poster.

Please note: This event is for foreign passport holders only.

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Images courtesy of City Church