Dalit Perspective on Mission and Ministry- Dalit Theology
Mission
and Ministry
Mission
is propagation of faith in responding to the great commission. Performing
philanthropic or social service for the downtrodden people. We are all called
to be part of this mission. Christian mission is to achieve salvation for
holistic or wholeness. It also reduces from the Nazareth Manifesto.
Mission
and ministry are very closely related. They both have the same aim. Both
empower people and changes lives. One has to complements and facilitates the
other.
What
prioritize? Quantity or quality.
Dalit
location on mission and ministry.
1.
Change in perspective
It
is the collective effort of all the Christian communities. Samuel Amartham
says, Jesus proclamation of God news is evangelization.
Victims of oppression, healing the wounds. Authentic missional.
2.
Pain and pathos of dalit suffering and other marginalized communities as the
sources of doing mission and ministry.
Christian
mission engage on understanding the pain and the period of the marginalised
group.
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the pain and pathos also engaging in this missional paradigm.
Divine
missional interventional in the pain and the pathos.
3.
Mission and ministry as dialogue with the issues of dalit
James
Massey says, mission is the dialogue with the life realities of their
suffering. It finds its foundation in God who is dialogical in nature. Who
participated in human history as dialogue. This dialogue happens in two
level- incarnation and life realities of
Jesus.
God
dialogue in human history is centre upon the marginalized.
4.
Christian mission and ministry among these Dalit.
Through
incarnation act, it demands the church to initiate dialogue with the issues and
life realities of the dalits. Rediscovering the mission in the life realities
of the Dalit not just participation. The ministry of empowerment should be
complement with the ethos of mission and ministry. Jesus embraced the marginalized
the church much do so. The church in its mission should consider Dalit as their
dialogue partner and dalit issues must come a point of dialogue and first from
this point.
The
issues of the Dalit just come the issues of the dalits. If the church is not
sensitive to the realities of the Dalit, then the church is deviated from its
mission. The church should not committed to their congregation within their own
periphery but sensitive towards the marginalised as a whole.
Dhyanchand
Carr argues that, the heart of any worship is that God
quest for justice. This should reflect in liturgy. The Christian worship
should be a means of empowerment. How it happen, when changes happen in the
mindset of the oppressed, in the form of repentance by the dominion.
By
the emergence of new social order, is the sign of empowerment. The new social
order is the place where God's place for justice is accomplished.