New Community in Jesus: Self-support, Self-Propagation and Self-governance
The
concept of the indigenous church emerged in the 19th century during a period of
western missionary expansion often referred to as the Great Century of
missions.
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Peter Bayerhaus in his works, “The Three Selves Formula in
Indigenous Church” clearly formulated the principles underlying for the
consolidation of the indigenous Church.
Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson
proposed three aspects of self-worth: (1) a church led by persons drawn from
its own membership, (2) a church which bears the burden of supporting itself
financially, and (3) a church ready to evangelize and extend itself. These
finally led to the Three-Self formulation. Tied with this he saw two conditions
as being necessary for a successful church development, namely a self-reliant
church and a responsive mission structure.
Self-Propagating
“Self-propagating” principle is that the local mission
should take up the responsibility of witnessing the kingdom of God. He calls it
as “self-responsibility” which means the local mission is responsible for
witnessing the kingdom values in the society. Self-propagation encourages
nationals to become proficient in evangelizing within their own culture. A
biblical church recognizes that the local church, and only the local church has the biblical burden, obligation, and mandate to teach
the Word of God. The seriousness with which the
church believes, practices, and develops its ministry to this end is what makes
it biblical. Every local church should be a training center for its people.
Features of
Self-propagation are:
· (a) Self-extension
in the church owns surrounding.
·
(b) Sponsoring both
home and foreign missions.
·
(c) Being in sole charge
of the evangelization of the country to which the church
belongs.[1]
Self-Supporting
This challenges national leaders to strive for financial
independence in order to ensure long-term financial stability. But Beyerhaus
argues that the “three-self” formula brings a kind of pride in indigenous
missions and they would get isolated from the established mission society. His
view is that “self” is always dangerous and self-reliance cannot be trusted
because it is marred by the sin. His argument is that the indigenous missions
should not develop a kind of idealistic theory that affirms self with an intension
to take hold of the authority. God’s people
should support the church where they are at, and the church should function
fully without the financial underpinning of other churches.
Features
of Self-supporting are:
(a) That the church
pays full time salaries to the workers.
(b) That it also
maintains financially all institutions and evangelistic enterprises.
(c) That by using
voluntary service and abstaining from costly enterprises, the church so limits
its financial responsibilities that no outside help is needed.[2]
Self-Governing
“self-governing” principle is that the outsiders
should not involve in the administration of the local mission; instead, the
leadership should be drawn from the local mission society. Self-governance is a
call to empowerment, encouraging national leaders to become significant players
in their ministry‟s decision making processes. Henry Venn intended
meaning on “self-governing” principle is that the outsiders need to be replaced
by the local leaders and there should be “self-reliance rather than dependence”
so that they themselves may manage the administration of the mission The people of that church should make their own
decisions. They should not be a member of a denomination, fellowship, or any
other kind of religious group wherein the local church can “disengage” any
individual decision making process and just accept the party line. All
decisions should be explored, investigated, meditated, and decided in the light
of what those local people consider to be the will of God. They should use the
Word of God in that decision making process.
Features of Self-governance are:
2.
Freedom to make certain responsibilities within
a wider ecclesiastical framework, with certain doctrinal standards, liturgical
patterns and universal church authority.
3.
That all office bearers in the church must be
indigenous.
4.
Right to call persons into or exclude them form
the ministry, without regard to nationality, according to the wishes of the
church.[3]
· (
In
the formation of Indigenous Church, the philosophy of ministry should be
“self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating.” In other words, we should
led our church to make decisions as a congregation, to act as a self-governing
body, accountable to the Lord in all things. In this contemporary trends in
Christian missions and evangelism we must diligently worked at building a
self-supporting congregation, emphasizing the need to take responsibility for
all the ministries of the local church. We should also intend for our church to
be self-propagating. That means our people to be evangelists, reproducing their
spiritual life in the lives of others. Beyond that, the hope of our church will
become a catalyst for starting other churches in the area one day.
Why there is a need for Indigenization in
mission?
Indigenization is important because without
indigenization the probability of developing a lasting, responsible ministry is
very low. Both Jesus Christ and Paul provided an excellent model to follow and it
is the responsibility of the church to imitate their missiological example.
Statistically, there will never be enough foreign workers to occupy every
village, town and city throughout the world. Even if there were enough
missionaries the amount of resources needed to sustain them would be
astronomical. Even with enough missionaries and enough funds, indigenous
leadership remains the most effective tool for reaching indigenous people. For
these reasons indigenization is not just a missiological option but it is a
missiological necessity.
Therefore,
in the context of Indian missions, indigenization in mission should mean to
develop indigenous theology that helps the Christians in India to practice the
Christian mission with indigenous resources in an Indian way of worship and
witness so that the people of India would understand Christian message.
Contemporary
Issues of the Church
The Churches have faced
with different issues and challenges in this contemporary context which is
urgent need to be responded by the Churches to that particular issues.
There are some issues
are:
· Spiritual
Formation- we are noticing Churches are having difficulty
created a solid and simple discipleship strategy to help regular attenders, as
well as newcomers, take next steps in their walk with Christ this issues were
identifying by more churches than any other issue.
· Communications-as
we work with the churches, we’ve notice it is rare to see professional,
relevant communications strategy. This bring charity internally as to what
people should do and what a church is all about. To a new person, clear
communications defined a church'’ mission and vision. Excellent internal
communications are also lacking: we’ve seen Churches with vision, passion and
solid leaders crippled by poor communication.
· Mission
or vision- churches are really struggling to reach a decision
on the roadmap for where they are going and how they will accomplish their
vision. A lot are simply leaning on the vision of larger, “successful” church
they follow.
· Small
group- our metrics indicate that churches are having
difficult time engaging people beyond weekend services. Finding qualified small
group leaders can be challenging; seeing people get connected seems to be even
greater hurdle.
· Leaderships
development- in many churches, they have never been
a priority place on leadership development. For the church to continue growing,
this area cannot be overlooked. Senior leadership teams rarely have a person
with the specific role of championing leadership development. Breakdowns happen
when this is treated like a program instead of a foundational aspect to the
growth and health of a church.
· Racism-
Racism is on the agenda of the church much more now than 20 years ago when
ministries today began. Apostolic voices such as Fred Price and Bill McCartney
have called to look at its own racism.
· Right
Doctrine- Meanwhile, loose lifestyles and arrogance among
leaders often lead to a new definition of sin. If no one is going to hell, it
doesn’t matter how you live here. It’s not just the “liberal” churches
preaching a false doctrine any more.
· Prophetic
leadership- we thank God for the resurgence of the office of
the prophet. Some so-called prophets are said to sell prophecies for
various-size domination.
· Abusive
Pastors- we need pastor who will really pastor and not
abuse their sheep.
· Cultural
influence- it seem the media and academic communities have
marginalized the church so as consider it irrelevant. Meanwhile, the government
has the church “on a short leash” so it doesn’t get out of line and influence
the political system. But the church should speak out against illegal laws of
the political system. It’s been reported that Canada now has laws that make it
illegal to speak out against homosexuality even in the pulpit
· Social
justice- Too many conservative Christians, the very
expression “social justice” suggests some sort of liberal theology. Yet the
Bible says much about helping the poor. Ministries such as World Relief are
“churches helping Churches.” In addition, many Christians are suffering
persecution in many parts of the world. They need our help. And there is need
for social justice for many denied opportunities in this land of plenty. The
Bible bids us to their plight.
·
Female
leaders- what role must women play in the church? J. Lee Grady’s
ground-breaking book 10 lies the Church Tells Women discusses the need for
women to step into leadership positions.[4]
Contemporary
issues of the Church mission:
·
Unreached
people groups
Putting aside the
concern about the term itself, the issue here is with those at the margins of
our societies today, there are countless people who does not have scripture.
They don’t even hear the name of Jesus Christ. It is a responsibility of the
church to reach out to unreached people around the World.
·
University
students.
Now a day, young people
are study in the university to get educations of whole round development. So,
that churches should have also give important to the university ministry in
order to reach out the gospel into the universities students.
·
Reaching people
from other World religions
Especially the
challenge to reach the world Islam, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism.
·
Reaching
Displaced people, and take care of poor, orphans, widows, widowers.
This has become more
urgent in recent days.
·
Megacities
There are increasingly
number of urban centers of at least 1 million people.
·
Ethnicity
and Identity
Ethnic tensions have
hindered the richness of the global church. We need to see our Identity lies
primarily as being in Christ, rather than being in our own that what we are
belonging into. At the same time, the
New Testament church is revealed as being multi-ethnic rather than mono-ethnic.
Mono-ethnicity is actually hide some of the wonder of the impact of the gospel.
[2] Charles H.
Kraft, Tom N. Wisley, Readings in Dynamic
Indigeneity, 25.
[3] Charles H.
Kraft, Tom N. Wisley, Readings in Dynamic
Indigeneity..,25.
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