New Faces of
Christianity
1. Church of the poor and powerless
The phrase, Church of the Poor, was first used
by Pope John XXIII in his inaugural address to the Fathers of the Vatican Council
in 1962. It was later picked up by Asian Bishops at their historic first meeting
in Manila in 1970.” The Church in now called with a new name: the Church of the
Poor. Her name is changed from the Christendom Church to the Church of the Poor.
This change serves as a reminder of her divine election for a specific task and
mission. A specific task and mission that implies, even demands from the Christendom
model of Church, a conversion to the Jesus of the Gospel.
To be “the Church of the Poor” a church
1) is called to a deeper practice of Christian
living. The Church of the poor is called to witness to Jesus of Nazareth (2 Corinthians 8: 9-10);
2) is invited to read the signs of the times;
3) the Church is assigned a duty to carry out the
mission given by Christ (Matthew 28:16-20);
4) it is a call to responsibility.
“…before being something that concerns the Church,
the option for the poor is something that concerns God. God is the first who opt
for the poor and it is only a consequence of this that the Church too has to
opt for the poor.” As followers of Christ, we are challenged to make a fundamental
‘option for the poor’—to speak for the voiceless, to defend the defenseless, to
assess lifestyles, policies, and social institutions in terms of their impact on
the poor. This ‘option for the poor’ does not mean pitting one group against another,
but rather, strengthening the whole community by assisting those who are the most
vulnerable. As Christians, we are called to respond to the needs of all our brothers
and sisters, but those with the greatest needs require the greatest response. The
overriding reason for the option for the poor is because God is with them and his
Christ has already opted.
2.
Churchless Christianity, House Churches, Mega churches, Tele-evangelism
2.1. Churchless Christianity
There are thousands of
people believes exclusively in Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior but who
have no plans to take baptism or join the Church. Herbert Hoefer wrote the
book “Churchless Christianity” Herbert Hoefer’s research shows that in rural
Tamil Nadu and urban Chennai, there are devoted followers of Christ, but who do
not joined a visible Christian church and, indeed, remains within the Hindu
community. His statistical survey reveals that there are about 200,000 members
of this “Churchless Christianity” in the Chennai city alone. Some Hindus does not
call them Christians, but Jesu Bhaktas .i.e. devotee of Jesus. This Jesu-bhakta
follows an ‘ishtadevata’ theology and thereby maintain their cultural and
social particularities as Hindus. They will not identify themselves with the
term ‘Christian and many do not attend any church.
In this book Herbert
Hoefer’s raises some important questions such as,
·
What conversion
and Baptism have to do with membership in a church?
·
Can one be
converted to Christ and never join a congregation?
·
Once one is
baptized, must one join a congregation?
· Does
conversion/Baptism put one into the “invisible Church” so that one’s membership
in an organizational church really doesn’t matter?
· Can Holy
Communion be offered to an unbaptized convert? How about the other services of
the church like marriage or burial?
According to him, the
objections to conversion in India are mainly due to the cultural and political
issues of church membership. If a convert remains within the same family and
cultural frame work without joining any visible church, Conversion and baptism
will not be an issue. He is not against church membership of new converts. But
he argues that in a persecution context why should we force the new converts to
cut off from their cultural and family bonds which injure their social harmony.
To him “It (church membership) is good but not essential. It is necessary but
not absolutely necessary.” Every pastor knows from personal experience that
church membership is no guarantee of conversion. How many times have we
conducted a Christian rite (a Baptism, a wedding, a Confirmation, a Lord’s
Supper, a funeral) having plenty of doubt in our minds about the Christian
convictions of the participants. We seem to have a similar situation with the
matter of church membership. We can readily think of many Biblical exceptions
to the rule: Naaman, Cornelius, the jailer at Philippi, Bartimaeus, the
Ethiopian eunuch, the Samaritan woman at the well, the Samaritan leper, the
centurion at the cross, the Gadarene demoniac, and on and on. These all seem to
have been converts. Some were baptized. We don’t know that any joined a
congregation, and we know assuredly that many did not. They all gave a public
testimony to Christ. They all seemed to accept Him as their Lord and Savior.
None was required to join a congregation. In fact, a few were specifically
instructed not to leave their community.
His understanding of
the church is not limited to the organized form of the church. But for him, where
the gospel is believed and lived, forgiveness of sins offered by Christ, there
is the church. This is called invisible church. He is very sure that even
though the non-baptized believers are outside of the church they are not
outside of the fellowship. He calls this faith community who are outside of the
church as “Churchless Christians”. We also must distinguish between church
communities and faith communities. The church is a faith community, but not all
faith communities are churches. One can be part of the Church and never part of
the visible church.
Churchless
Christianity is a “newly emerging community” of “Non-Baptised Believers in
Christ”(NBCC) especially in one of the southern states of India,
viz.,TamilNadu.”
They
strongly believe in Christ but do not come forward openly for baptism. They are
very strong and positive in affirming Jesus as the “one and only incarnation of God ”and“ the only way to
worship God is to worship Jesus.”
Issues–1)
Christizing the Hindu and Muslim culture rather than changing and rejecting it.
“The spiritual life and practice of Indian Christianity should be different
from that of the west and this is to be realized in day today Indian Christian
life.”.
2)
Acceptance of “the challenge of the meaning of baptism in the religious and
cultural context of India which may prove embarrassing to the traditional
understanding of missiology and church growth.”
2.2. House Churches
Richard
Krautheimer in his book ‘Early Christian and
Byzantine Architecture’ offers four stage chronology of Christian
meeting places.
(a) From AD 50 to 150: Christian
gathered in domestic residence called house churches. The worship took place in
private dwellings, in the homes of Christians who had room to assemble a house
community.
(b) Around AD 150 to 250: Believers
began to modify house churches to provide larger meeting spaces, Krautheimer
uses the phrase ‘domus ecclesiae’ which was coined by Harnack to refer these
modified structures. Ehich means ‘community center’ or ‘meeting house’
literally which means ‘house of the church’.
(c) From AD 250 to 313: Christian
began to used larger rectangular halls for their meeting place and used the
term ‘aula ecclesiae’ which means ‘hall of the church’.
(d) After AD 313: Constantine began
building large monumental structures that follow the structures of basilica
which was large, public structure in Roman cities.
2.3. New Testament Evidence for House Church
From
the beginning of the church, believers gathered in homes. After Jesus ascended
to heaven, the disciples returned to the ‘upper room (upstairs) where they were
staying’ 9Acts 1:13). After Pentecost, believers met in large groups in the
temple and gathered in smaller groups in home to share a meal (Acts 2:43; 5:42).
Acts 12: 12 records Peter going to “the house of Mary,” Christian has gathered
there for prayer when Peter was in prison.
The churches Paul planted around Aegean Sea met in the homes of
individuals who served as hosts and patrons (I Cor. 16:19; Col.4:15). Corinth
has six churches that met in the homes: Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:2-4);
Titius Justus (Acts 18:7); Crispus (Acts 18:8); Chloe (I Cor.1:11); Stephanas
(I Cor.1:16) and Gaius (Rom.16:23). The church in neighbouring Cenchreae met in
the home of its patroness Phoebe (Rom 16:1-2). In each house churches there is
an evidence of meals- love feast (agape) and breaking of bread. Ignatius of
Antioch (AD 35-107) used ‘Agape’ for Christian common meals.
House
church involved social interaction and personal participation. The informal was
likely informal and celebratory. Sharing meal signifies a mutual acceptance and
social and spiritual bonding. Since finances were not involving for
constructions and maintenance of buildings, they could used to provide for
material needs of poorer believers.
Over
the next few centuries and even today we began to build structures dedicated
solely to the purpose of Christian meetings and the house church setting fell
into disfavor. The informal fellowship meal was replaced by a token,
ritualistic observant that occurred during a formal, liturgical service. The
change pf physical setting for Christian meetings affected the characteristics
and components of formal, liturgical structures among Christians.
2.3.
Mega Churches
The
term megachurch is the name given to a group of very large, Protestant
congregations that share several distinctive characteristics
These
churches generally have: 2000 or more persons in attendance at weekly worship,
counting adults and children at all worship locations.
a) A
charismatic, authoritative senior minister
b) A very active 7 day a week congregational community
c) A multitude of diverse social and outreach ministries
d) An intentional small group system or other structures of
intimacy and accountability
e) Innovative and often contemporary worship format
f) and a complex differentiated organizational structure
According
to Robert J. Priest, Megachurches are at the forefront of shifts in the
social organization of missions, with the locus of agency and decision making
shifting back toward the sending congregation and its leadership. A number of
issues can naturally be raised:
(a) Responsiveness to new social
realities. American congregations are responding to new social realities to
which older mission agencies sometimes fail to appropriately adjust, and much
of this ministry is responsive to brothers and sisters in Christ serving under
circumstances of greater material and social constraint.
(b) Issues of stewardship.
While missions giving was historically the portion of giving that was
altruistic, that had no direct benefit to the givers or giving church, missions
giving now is increasingly directed toward the dual goals of (1) meeting the
needs of the givers and the sending church and also (2) serving others abroad.
(c) Issues of paternalism and power.
American congregations channel enormous amounts of material resources into
global mission, sometimes in ways that make the control of money, rather than
wisdom and contextual understanding, the primary determinant of decision making
and power.
(d) Issues of wisdom. When the
locus of decision making and power moves away from the field to the North
American congregation and its leadership, there are deep questions of whether
contextual wisdom will underpin the patterns being forged for stewardship and
global ministry.
(e) New patterns of partnership.
Mission in the contemporary world is most effectively carried out through
partnerships. Partnerships of the right sort between mission agencies, mission
training institutions, mission pastors, indigenous ministries, and U.S.
megachurches can fruitfully bring wisdom and resources and energy together in a
way that furthers God’s missionary purposes in the world today.
(f) The need for missiology to
connect with and inform this new leadership. Most mission pastors are
currently not well-trained missiologically. At the same time missiologists have
not done their research and writing with mission pastors or youth pastors in
mind, and missiology programs have not been organized to be responsive to and
helpful for the person with a mission pastor or youth pastor job description.
Changes in missiological focus and in manner of communication are urgently
needed so that mission pastors will find missiology to be helpful and responsive
to the realities they live with and the job description they fulfill.
(g) The role of the mission pastor.
In the world of global missions, the mission pastor is a new and absolutely
strategic person to missions. Each megachurch mission pastor plays a central
role in influencing how much it can contribute in abroad on global mission.
Mission pastors serve as gatekeepers to those who seek support. They educate
their churches and cast the vision for mission, providing leadership of an
enterprise increasingly being directed from the North American congregational
base.
2.4. Tele-evangelism
Televangelism,
as a word, is a Television evangelism, is among the most important evangelism
words because it’s the most well-known evangelism technique in the world. Like
it or hate it, televised evangelism reaches all corners of the earth and
touches more people per week than any other method of evangelism. In other
words, it is a means of spreading the Gospel involving the use of television. The word televangelism was coined in 1958 as
the title of a TV miniseries produced by the Southern Baptist Convention to be
aired in January 1959.
Fellowshipping
with other believers, one can be held accountable to one’s faith. It is the
focus of Tele-evangelism with the ethos of “And they devoted themselves to the
apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the
prayers.”
Tele-evangelism
and the Evangelists:
(a) Billy Graham, One of the most influential televangelists rose
to prominence in 1949. Pastor to twelve U.S. Presidents. Was on the cover of
TIME in 1954.
(b) Oral Roberts- Full of controversy began Radio broadcast in
1947; Television in 1954. Faith Healing, Unorthodox fund-raising techniques.
(c) Joel Osteen Pastor at Lakewood Church “Inherited” Lakewood
Church. Doesn’t talk about God in his sermons. Criticized for his
“Christianity-lite” approach mainly for prosperity gospels.
In this day and age of
television as a powerful means of communication, it is only natural that people
should make use of the increasing number of channels that cater to the
spiritual and devotional quest of millions of devotees of different religions.
Televangelism is the use of television to communicate any religion through
broadcasting in various TV Channels. To be more specific, Christian ministers
who devote a large portion of their ministry to television broadcasting are
also called Televangelists. Approximately 90 percent of all Christian
television Channels are based on or contain strong elements of Charismatic
Christian persuasion. Messages on financial prosperity, wealth transfer,
healing, success and miracles are some predominant themes dealt on
tele-evangelism. D.G.S. Dinakaran, K. P. Yohanan and Sam Chelladurai...etc are
some of the well-known Indian Charismatic televangelists of this century.
Relevance of Tele-
evangelism
In a world of fast
growing technologies which enable us to access any information we want,
Tele-evangelism plays a major role in broadcasting Christian messages and
information. Some of the advantages are:
*
Access to Convention meetings and
Sunday services of different churches.
*
Can watch Messages preached by
different preachers round the globe by just sitting at home.
*
For people with disabilities and
who are sick can listen and watch Sermons.
*
Can watch sermons whenever and
wherever we want.
*
It can draw global audience.
Drawbacks of
Tele-evangelism
No doubt
Tele-evangelism has been used in order to preach the Gospel to different parts
of the world. However, it cannot be denied that it has also been misused by
people for their own personal gains. Some of these drawbacks of Tele-evangelism
are mentioned briefly below:
*
It takes advantage of desperate
people in earning funds and sympathy.
*
They use the Word of God for
money's sake and commercialization.
*
They claim that they possess
great spiritual power.
*
For some they have neither
Christian denominations nor accountability.
*
They profess prosperity gospel
promising material, financial, physical, and spiritual success.
*
They accumulate huge personal
wealth, contradictory to traditional Christian thinking.
*
Televangelism is limited by
digital divide (only accessible to some)
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