This is the class blog of Wesleyan Divinity School - Misyonaryong Epektibo Class. On this blog, we will share our close reading and reflections on topics about Missions, Evangelism, Discipleship and Church Growth. Join us in your journey as we live up to our name to become effective missionaries.
HAVE A PASSION AND A DREAM. That is a powerful combination
when you decide to serve God as the King’s representative and see his kingdom
everywhere.
Community needs are being met. People/Christian are being
developed and empowered to express passion, action and possession. And it all
started with the idea from spiritual leader who had a burden in his/her heart
to lighten suffering and has a free will to help and discover the benefits of
serving. Let the impact of our service may experience across the street or
around the world.
You are God’s planned to create new worlds of human
possibility and potentiality in kingdom reality. A missional leader can lead a
missional church that produces a missional community. God will be pleased.
People will be better off. Those are the two rewards you seek.
Welcome to the missional church! You have been sent by God.
The world is blessed you came.
Rev. Adam Hamilton is an American minister. He is the senior pastor of the 20,000 member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas. It is the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States, measured by both weekend attendance and membership. [source: Wikipedia]
Adam Hamilton delivers one of the most inspiring lectures I have ever heard during the clergy session in the Wallace Chappell lectures. In his talk, Rev. Hamilton went back to where we the Methodist people are rooted from. We are rooted in spirituality.
Rev. Hamilton pointed out some of his experiences with other denominations like the catholic and Pentecostal churches. It is quite amazing how he communicated with them and how he showed respect to those people. On the other hand, his members on the Methodist church were more concerned about losing their members because their pastor is sharing his thoughts about these denominations. This is quite a problem in our churches nowadays. Some of our churches have closed their doors for other people. We seem to lost our desire to be one and have fellowship with other people or with other denominations. Religion have become a barrier that sets us apart from one another. Where is the spirit of ecumenism and compassion for the people outside our churches’ doors?
Rev. Hamilton then addressed the spirituality of the pastors. He asked them, “How is your spiritual life?”, “What is the level of your spirituality?” It seems like Rev. Hamilton wanted to point out how the spiritual level of the pastor and of the church would show the manifestation of how hungry are they for the people outside the church. He then asked, “What is the spiritual temperature of your life and of your church?” The pastors set the spiritual temperature of the church and Rev. Hamilton is afraid that the pastors are dying spiritually and needs a jump start, a revival. We are indeed in need of regular spiritual revival. Prayer life and scripture reading should be a regular basis and not just been done when needed.
It’s very hard to direct the church into a spiritual atmosphere when a pastor haven’t been there him/herself. Yes one can pretend to be spiritual but the manifestation of the truth cannot be hidden. If a pastor doesn’t have a high level of spirituality, he/she cannot ask the congregation to have a high level of spirituality as well. You can’t give what you do not have, and you cannot ask someone to do something you do not do yourself. Pastors sometimes tend to be very busy about the kingdom of God and have forgotten about the King. They became too busy spending most of their time with the church people, programs, activities, etc. and spending a quality time with God has been compromised. Even Jesus knows how important it is to have a quality time with God, he said, "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" (Lk. 2:49)
Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind by J. Heinrich Arnold.
.........
Discipleship is the very essence of Christianity. It is in community that we are tested and purified. In our own community we learn what forgiveness and healing is all about.
In his book, Heinrich himself felt the call to follow Christ. He is a spiritual guide who cared deeply for the inner and outer well being of the communities that entrusted to him. True discipleship requires commitment. Discipleship addresses every aspect of our spiritual life, personal and communal. Discipleship do not only start by meeting Christ personally instead confronted by the image of Jesus Christ by His message of repentance and love. Only then it is possible to live a Christian faith. Discipleship is about listening to a friend, stranger, to critics, and most od all listening to the voice of God.
The Disciple Inner life should be seen on how Christ taught us. There must be a complete change in us and this change should begin in our inner being. If our Christianity is only a religion for Sunday worship, it will remain shallow and empty. Discipleship demand that we drop everything including everything we count as positive in ourselves. Like Paul he is willing to lay aside the Jewish law, if we consider ourselves as disciples we must likewise give up our good self-image, our righteousness and our kindness and count it all as nothing for the sake of Jesus Christ.
In discipleship, the radicalism of Jesus Christ must challenge everyone of us. Jesus does not want to win members of people but a dedicated hearts. Jesus seeks people who want to give themselves unreservedly to God and to other brothers, without seeking anything for themselves. In discipleship each soul must be personally confronted by Jesus himself. True conversion is the willingness to suffer with Christ, the suffering one. True conversion is not possible without this.
Maddox outlines
in Modern American Methodism that have led to the fracturing of how the
denomination understand discipleship.
Maddox cites is
the way in which Methodist have increasingly viewed ministry to and with the
poor as a specialized tasks for a seeker group of properly gifted and trained
persons, rather than a mission for all Christians. This article seeks to
explore this development in greater detail and to argue alongside Maddox that
the appointment of specialized groups to ministries to and with the poor fails
to embody the scriptural imperative for all Christians to care for those on the
margins.
It will begin
with an overview of groups that Methodists commissioned to serve as ambassadors
to the poor in the early and Mid-Twentieth century. Wesley’s thoughts
concerning the call for all Methodist to engage in the ministry and practices
that these groups embraced, including a commitment to live communally, visit
the poor, advocate on their behalf, and engage in evangelical economic
practices.
An
examination of Wesley’s life and work reveals a deep rooted commitment not only
to ministry to and with the poor, but to the wide range of commitments that
accompany it, including communal living, regular visitation, advocacy, and a
willingness to engage in evangelical economic practices.
Christians
are therefore called to steward those gifts by earning all they can just means,
serving all they can by living simply, and giving all they can to those who are
in need.
The Rev. Prof. D. T. Adamo and Dr. J. Enuwosa, both are missionaries. They are fighting the integrity of mission in Africa. They sacrifice their life to overcome the division which accompanied African Christianity. They want to create balance, harmony, justice, righteousness, reciprocity, order. They believe that their mission in Africa will attain organic unity in the sense of absolute unity because Christian union is ultimately eschatological in nature. Dr. J. Enuwosa said, “Form of world-view which inspire a programmed of action” . Christianity was, therefore, seen by Africans as a type of an institution meant to sustain Western socio-economic and political policies. This was the mission of Rev. Prof. D. T. Adamo and Dr. J. Enuwosa. They are willing to sacrifice for the mission to enlighten the life of Christianity in Africa. My Church is located in a remote community where people's source of living is farming. They are forced to work daily including Sundays for them to sustain their daily consumption. Their obligation in worshipping God is not active. Therefore, they forget their spiritual needs. This is the problem of my Church today. The Church cannot sustain the needs of the members that is why attendance in Sunday worships and Church activities are in decline. The Church members today show in their behavior that they are robbed their rights to accept the mission of God on earth. They choose to acknowledge the earthly living than to live in the Kingdom of God. For this reason, the work of the mission in my Church is not the most essential for them. The purpose of the Church is to enforce the mission to help others recognize, develop, and use their God-given intuitive abilities to ease suffering and grow in goodness, love, compassion, and wisdom. By showing how they can tap in to our wisest selves and make our lives much happier and easier. To help each of them connect to the love that is eternal, that is the reason for our existence.
Three aspects - kerygma, koinonia, and diakonia, should be integrated in our work of evangelism. Only so, are our methods of evangelism justified. The kerygma is the proclamation that the shalom has come. Christ is there. We have not to look for another. We have entered upon the last days of total renewal. But, with the kerygma alone, in isolation, the evangelist soon becomes a more or less interesting orator. He needs the manifestation of the koinonia of which he is a part, and he has to justify himself as a witness of the Messiah-Servant in his diakonia. The koinonia manifests the shalom, as it is present among men. But we need the continuous reminder of the kerygma, the interpretation of this shalom as the salvation of the Messiah, and the diakonia should prevent this shalom from being used in a self-sufficient way. The diakonia translates the shalom into the language of humble service. But if we isolate this diakonia or give it an undue emphasis, then the evangelist soon becomes a sentimental philanthropist. He must never forget that he cannot render real service if he deprives man of the kerygma and leaves him outside the koinonia.
My insight on the reading reinforces my belief that it is easier and more rapid to do evangelism if every believer helps each other whatever denomination they belong. If we notice the prayer of Jesus in John 17:20-21, “20 My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me”. Jesus wants us to experience unity so that the world will believe that Jesus is from God. If Christians cannot be unified, then we are not approaching one another in love. And we cannot be a good witness for Christ if we are bickering with one another. One of the things that most impresses the world is the way Christians love each other and live together in harmony, So then evangelism is easy to do and the church will grow not only in quantity but also in quality.
Mission is first and foremost an activity of God in the world. The God who is love is a missionary God who seeks to save the world. God’s loving reign as sovereign over the creation aims at love, peace and justice. In the sinfulness of mankind calls for the saving grace of God which requires judgement and reconciliation, both between God and humanity and within the human community.
Missio dei or God’s mission is God’s act of redemption of the world sin and accomplishing God’s purposes. God’s mission to be accomplished, God uses all resources at God’s disposal and He called the church to participate in God’s mission.
The church where the Lord has send me to serve Him is a mission and worshiping congregation, that is an off spring of my home church. The congregation has membership of 12 families. I observed that members attend and participate in the Sunday worship activities alternately or by schedule attendance and at their preferred time schedules. Despite this, the members are thankful and sincerely appreciate whenever they are visited at their own homes. For other implemented church programs, only few would participate due to some reasons or another.
The church really needs deepening of faith, revival and nurture geared towards maturity, growth in spiritual and Christian life activities to address the church needs. But who shall take the tasks? The challenge of the task is still the concern laid upon the Pastor and church leaders/officials send forth to mission fields like these which is in statement of the United Methodist Church.
