The follower of Christ is summoned to a free and loving adherence to the missional way of Christ. He is called to walk voluntarily in the path that leads to his participation in God's mission in the world. There is no promise that this obedience will lead to a life free from suffering; on the contrary, it requires one's willingness to embrace suffering. The only legitimate motivation for such obedience is the glorification of God in one's life, failing which one can only render reluctant compliance and not the loving obedience that God so desires.

In accordance with the vow of missional obedience, the individual's lifestyle, vision, mission, direction, and vocation must be determined by the missional purpose of God. This by no means indicates that everyone is called to a vocation of service within a church institution or Christian organisation. It simply indicates that every follower of Christ must allow the missional purpose of God to shape the choices that he/she makes for his/her own life, for both the present and the future. This requires an unreserved embrace and love for God and his purpose.

In an organic community that walks in the vow of missional obedience, there must be a fundamental understanding of the community's role in helping one another to live in obedience to the missional purpose of God. This communal role takes place within the framework of authentic and spiritually intimate relationships that are characterised by deep trust; such is the Trinitarian nature of God that is to be reflected in the community. The intentions of this community can be trusted because it works not for a manipulative institutional goal, but rather, for the missional purpose of God. The individual must embrace the willingness to remain vulnerable to the voice of this community in order that the community may constitute a guiding voice and ever-present help in helping the individual to bend himself/herself towards the missional purpose of God. Where there is an absence of such a willingness for vulnerability, the individual disqualifies himself/herself automatically by way of individualistic inclinations.

The individual who desires to embrace the vow of missional obedience would do well to engage in a covenant relationship with a spiritual guide, who would be responsible for journeying with him/her in spiritual friendship. But to do so would also mean that the individual expressedly indicates a willingness to trust the intentions of and obey the directions provided by the spiritual guide, and to walk together in oneness of heart and soul. The spiritual guide cannot impose the rule of obedience should the individual refuse to embrace it. Hence, the vow of missional obedience in this instance is workable only if the individual recognises the the role of the spiritual guide as a sacramental presence of God in his/her life.

The act of voluntary poverty is not an unrealistic embrace of a self-punishing virtue. In fact, it releases one from the clutches of undesirable attachments. Of course, one needs a certain measure of material possessions to survive and flourish, which are not evil in themselves. But the use of such material resources is also to be accompanied by a consciousness of stewardship, that all these resources do not belong to the human race; they belong wholely to God, who is our Provider.

At the heart of the vow of missional poverty is the self-emptying (kenosis) and self-giving virtue of Christ. He was the rich God who made himself poor, that we might be made rich through his poverty. And yet the richness that he accords to us is one that causes us to desire to embrace the very poverty that he embraced, in order that others may likewise find wealth in our poverty. For this reason, Jesus presents the following demand: "If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you possess and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me."

There are those who have found within themselves the capacity for total material detachment. Like Christ, they are able to refrain from a concern for a regular source of income throughout their lives in order to be wholly devoted to the mission of the Kingdom. They surrender all that they have for the sake of the Kingdom, and live in dependence on the generosity of the more wealthy. This is so much like the life of Christ himself. For those who have chosen this path in life, truly, Christ says: "...there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age."

There are others who find their place in society such that they hold vocations which yield reasonably sizeable incomes. For these, the vow of missional poverty would mean an open-hearted generosity to share their wealth freely with their fellow human beings for the betterment of life. One's extent of generosity, in accordance with the vow of missional poverity, should reach beyond a mere giving to appease his/her own conscience. The extent of generosity should be such that one keeps for one's self only the necessary basics, and extends the rest of the wealth (which does not belong to him/her anyway) for the missional purpose of the Kingdom. Such a person does not hoard or rejoice in accesses.

From this brief study, we may derive the principle that God instituted marriage for the enhancement of man's mission. This logically implies that a man/woman should first come to understand the principles of the missional life and be committed to the embodiment of the missional way of Christ in his/her own life before being open to the possibility of a marital relationship. This also means that the prospective spouse should be someone who can partake in this missional life by way of a similiar commitment. In that way, the marriage fulfills the principle of missional chastity in that it is an offering of the man and wife of themselves as a single unit to God and to the world.

The historical religious orders of the Christian Church, which have been largely obliterated by the Protestant tradition, are organic communities of people seeking to live in the missional way of Christ through organised spiritual disciplines. The purpose of these organic communities is the facilitation of one's renunciation of worldly pursuits in service of a higher spiritual purpose; to be set apart and yet not isolated from the world (although there were certain communities that practised total isolation). They are interconnected with the institutional dimension of churchlife in that their members may be found serving in diverse contexts in the church institution. However, whilst they seek to express their visible service through institutional churchlife, their distinctive spiritual virtues and values are starkly preserved through their spirituality and life patterns. The underlying principle for the existence of such religious orders is that the things of God are to be sought above all other things in this life.

Within an organic community such as the monastic order, the individual finds an oasis of spiritual wealth for the cultivation of his spirituality and formation of life. The sole focus within that community is the partaking of the individual in the life of Christ and to live like Christ did in the world. Through rigorous spiritual disciplines of prayer, work and study, he learns to express the ideals of the missional life of Christ through his own life. In this environment, theology is not pursued so much as an academic study, but rather, an integral part of spirituality. The environment provides a safe space for the individual's search for existential meaning in his being, for he is not manipulated to serve a higher institutional purpose from which he is disconnected. This organic community is also the mechanism that enables the individual to sustain himself in service within the institutional church without suffering burnout or dehumanisation, for he exists within an an organic infrastructure of growth and continuous spiritual formation. It is also within this organic community that the relational dimension of faith may be preserved.

For centuries, it can be observed, the other streams of the Christian Church provided for the establishment of such organic communities within their institutional structures in order to sustain the spiritual vitality of the people. Whilst recognising that institutionalisation is an inherent human tendency which cannot be defied, they also provided for an equally enriching organic communal life. The Protestant Church, instead of establishing such organic communities within itself, gives rise to splits and separations in the hope of establishing entirely new organic communities beyond its institutions. Over time, these organic communities functioning beyond the institutions themselves tend to institutionalise, for they require an institutional mould with which to contain the organic dimension of their lives.

I wish to emphatically affirm that the human tendency to institutionalise is innate and cannot be defied. Institutionalisation is an inherent expression of our desire for order within the social dimension of human life. The reason I am accentuating this point is that whilst some sects of the Protestant Church community have correctly identified the problem, they have also pandered to very misperceived reactive measures in their attempt to defy the institution.

One of the responses that have been executed in Protestant history (in reponse to this problem) is the establishment of what is called "parachurch organisations". Clusters of people moved beyond their local church institutions and came together to form parachurch organisations in order to journey together in a shared purpose and vision for the enrichment of the Kingdom. The initial purpose was that of being driven by this Kingdom-purpose without being ensnared by the structural evil present within the Church institution. But over several decades, institutionalisation gripped the parachurch organisations unaware! They too became consumed by their own institutional interests and preoccupation with self-preservation and expansion. Thus, what we have today are "two kingdoms within one Kingdom", both vying for significance and struggling for sustenance. The two kingdoms do not get along.

Also, some other clusters of Protestant Christians left their institutional churches in order to form new local independent churches that they thought would be free from the structural evil inherent in large denominations. These churches were formed in the hope of reviving the organic and communal dimension of churchlife. Then a problem emerged: they grew. And as they grew, they institutionalised. If one observed the lives of some large independent Protestant Churches today, one would witness the apparent intensity of structural evil contained within these structures. Back to square one. Furthermore, these independent churches, after having cut themselves away from denominations that have several hundred years of rich tradition behind them, bear almost no resemblance to the historical Church. For many, even their doctrines have mutated so subtly but thoroughly that they appear to be in defiance of some major fundamental Christian beliefs. These independent churches seem to have dislocated themselves from the legacy of the Christian Church as a historical entity.

Hence, I am herein affirming that trying to escape the cycle of institutionalisation is also to defy the dynamics of human social existence. It is not the solution.

I am sure there are more than several ways of diagnosing this fundamental problem from various perspectives of study. However, I am deliberately choosing to analyse this problem from a more sociological perspective. As I progress in this series of thought, it will become increasingly apparent why I deem it fit to analyse this problem from such a perspective. At the outset, it would suffice to comment that I choose this approach because it is through this approach that I believe I have found a possible solution. It is also an approach that provides for a more proactive interaction with the ecclesiological dimension of Christian theology. [Ecclesiology: theology of the Church]

In my assessment, the problem that underlies these symptomatic dislocations within the Protestant Church can be summed up in one word: INSTITUTIONALISATION.

It is an innate tendency for clusters of human persons coming together to institutionalise over time as they form alliances amongst one another. There is a tendency to formalise relationships such that they aim to attain, through that gathering, a higher purpose than each individual contained within that cluster of people. However, such a manner of institutionalisation comes at a price, at times more costly than one would deem worth. With institutionalisation comes issues of political control, bureaucratic authority, and corporate interest. These are what one may term as structural evil, which exists as a dehumanising force within the organisation itself.

In the face of institutionalisation within the context of the Church, a Christian can be placed under the authority and "care" of a leader who is less than aware of that individual's existence, and this is literally true! A person can be obligated to serve the organisational interest without knowing how serving that interest builds the individual's own faith in his life journey. Very often, compliance is demanded through the blatant exploitation of God's holy name by the leaders of that institution. Eventually, the worth of the person is gauged more by what he can do for the organisation than by who he is as a unique individual. He loses his sense of personhood and identity. And it is not that this loss of identity is replaced with the identity of Christ, but that it is replaced with the identity of the institution. This is how barcode Christians are mass-produced today.

In our minds, it seems, a church that is missionally vibrant is one that embarks on multiple mission trips each year to faraway lands, funds mission projects, sends out a couple of missionaries to third world nations to garner conversions, and has a mission month for the acquisition of mission funds every year. The goal of most Protestant mission trips seems to be that of achieving mass conversions through crusades and rallies that are attended by thousands upon thousands of people in foreign lands. Once again, the numerically driven inclinations are inescapably observable. If my claim seems doubtful, do gather some annual mission reports from various local churches and scrutinise their content.

If one has been involved in mission-talk long enough, one would notice the kind of rivalry innate in the missionary enterprise of Protestant churches. You see, every mission project (e.g. church planting, social services) is expected to carry the name of its investing institution. Conflict arises when more than two or three institutions come together to collectively embark on a similar mission project, as the issue of credit eventually constitutes a major consideration. It frequently panders into a state of empire-building and control-bidding. Of course, this may not be true of all Protestant church institutions; nevertheless, it is true of many (if not most). For this reason, we see various institutions doing the same things in the exact same locations, each bearing its own name.

Also, the way in which Protestant mission has become so anthropocentric (man-centred) is starkly apparent. Mission, from being God's way of discipling the Church, is now the Church's own self-driven enterprise of saving a world that is doomed to condemnation if not for her aggressive propagation of the gospel of salvation. So the salvation of the world is dependent on the Church's missionary success. But wait...even if it isn't so, at least the Church's success in bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth helps to hasten the return of Jesus Christ! So to prove that they are in fact fulfilling this well-meaning but misperceived obligation, these institutions project goals of multiplying more local churches just like themselves (often bearing a generic name) in different parts of the world. And in those parts of the world, the exact similar ways of worship and churchlife and spirituality are imposed on the new Christians. Never mind the cultural differences, as long as the corporate identity of the institution is preserved.

When mission is undertaken with such a paradigm, it panders into an enterprise of frantic world evangelisation and incessant attempts at making the peoples of the world say the "sinner's prayer" after us. But such is the state of mission in the Malaysian and Singaporean Protestant Church today; hence, the crucial need to recover what it means to be the Church in the world. I am not saying that all our missionary activities are misperceived and should therefore be abolished. In fact, I am arguing for a recovery of our understanding of what it truly means to be the missional people of God in the world, so that our missionary activity is truly reflective of our God-ordained purpose as the Church in the world. The question is "how".

One more post describing the reality of the Protestant crisis and we're on to the next phase of this series.

Yup, I'm at McDonald's in Singapore. Again. Taking a couple of hours off and a couple of steps back just to watch the world live from a distance whilst I absorb myself in a brief moment of solitary reflection. There is an issue of immediate urgency upon which I need to reflect and perhaps resolve within myself.

I am thinking of my life as a ministry of friendship to the world. I believe that my purpose as a Christian minister is that of ministering the redemptive love of Christ to lives, some of which are broken and others that perhaps seek purpose and direction. I am required to minister the love of Christ unreservedly to all who would be willing to follow the way of Christ and journey with me as we learn together to carry our crosses in this life for the Lord.

Throughout this journey, like most other ministers that I have come to deeply honour and admire, I have met peoples from all walks of life with various experiences and backgrounds...and who have varying motivations for their desire to engage me as a spiritual guide for their lives. Many of these relationships have been intimately enriching and mutually cultivating to say the least.

But there is also another dimension of this journey in which I have to live out the rather confrontational dimension of the gospel as I lead people to choose whether or not they desire to truly live in the way of Christ. As I have often said before, there is something about the way of Christ that is very "in the face", which obligates the individual to respond with a "yes" or "no". It is very often this dimension of the Gospel that causes me to experience the hostility of my fellow pilgrims.

There are times when a refusal to follow the way of Christ (whilst ironically still professing the Christian faith) is justified by a subjectivisation of the demands of the cross. My relationship with my fellow traveller suffers when my intentions, motivations, and requirements are questioned. Some reactions I have heard were "I don't have a problem following the way of Christ; it's your way that I have a problem with", or "This is not what God demands of me; it's you who demand this of me". Now, if they were right, then God have mercy on me (and I say kyrie eleison a thousand times over). But if I was in fact not wrong, then this projection of guilt upon me is nothing more than a subjectively feeble attempt at self-vindication. Of course, from where I stand now, I am inclined to think (perhaps even to a point of confidence) that the latter is true.

Sounds simple enough. But what if the attempt at self-vindication panders to an abusive exchange?

Over more than one occasion, I have felt deeply hurt over the awareness that I was treated with less respect and dignity than I thought I deserved (especially through the use of inappropriate words and condescending speech) - never mind gratitude! Over more than one occasion, I felt that my voluntary role as a spiritual guide was taken for granted as if it was something I owed to the other person just because I myself chose to embrace this path of ministry. Over more than one occasion, I felt that somebody else was hurtfully manipulating our relationship with self-motivated intentions. It was as if I was there not as a spiritual guide, but rather, a conjurer sent by God to help them fulfill their own fascinating desires and deepest dreams. Now, what of this? Shake the dust of my feet and move on?

The reality is...I have no answers. I cannot change the hearts of others; as it is, I struggle to change even my own heart. Should I voluntarily accept the abusive inclinations of those who reject my guidance, or should I depart from them? I suppose no one should have to put up with the tendency of any other fellow human person to treat him as someone worthy of less dignity and respect. But then, my Christ did the exact opposite without uttering a word regarding the preservation of his own human dignity. So really, I have no answers.

I look back within myself and see that my heart is not like my Saviour's. It is a long journey before I arrive at that point of accepting any abuse that may befall me without any due consideration for my own sense of self-respect and dignity. Perhaps these experiences are merely God's way of being my spiritual guide, his way of making a better person out of me. I am becoming increasingly convinced that my ministry to the world is, in fact, God's ministry to me.

I pray for the grace of God to mould me to be like him who was trampled upon by those who did so just because they knew he would accept it without retaliation. If I have in any way (in this reflection) made myself seem more righteous than I really am, it is just blatant evidence of the hideous depravity that consumes my being.

Pity party is over. Time to get over it and move on.

"With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world." (Max Ehrmann, 1927)

The Word of God does not exist in a vacuum. It was delivered to man over the dimensions of space and time. To think that one can objectively impose personalised interpretive values in one's reading of scripture is grossly subjective, to say the least. Of course, one may declare in warfare-like tone, "sola scriptura"! But then, to embrace the principle of sola scriptura is itself to appeal to tradition (history), isn't it? Further to that, to employ a particular stance of hermeneutics on the sola scriptura principle as well as to scripture itself is to also embrace the use of reason (philosophy), isn't it?

I do not debate the primacy of scripture in the formation of life and faith. But what I do debate is the way some segments of my well-meaning brethren refer to their "scripture alone" spirituality as if reading scripture through one's own hermeneutical lenses was the only way one could ever derive authentic Christian teachings. Tradition and reason are dismissed as non-Christian enterprises.

The Church of Jesus Christ is a historical entity, this being a reality we cannot deny. Together with this history behind us is also centuries of grappling with scriptural interpretation. The faith that has been passed down to us is one that is centred on scripture and yet appeals to tradition (history) and reason (philosophy) as handmaidens, in order to facilitate a more adequate interpretation of scripture itself.

So the next time we encounter a preacher who quotes less than a dozen passages from scripture, we would do well to think twice before saying "he is not bible-based enough". Many preachers out there are quoting scriptures up, down, left, right and centre...and yet distorting almost everything the Fathers of the Church have ever said about those passages. Why? Because these preachers appeal to "scripture alone" (which utterly defies the Church's understanding of the sola scriptura principle).

Ironic, I know.

It is the first dimension of faith described above that I feel has been largely neglected in the theological world, and which the authentically Asian paradigm of faith can recover. All too often, we have sought to express the propositional dimensions of faith to (or even impose them upon) others without first having introduced them to the person about which this body of propositions speaks. In essence, we are demanding that people believe what we say about someone they have not even known. I believe that, whilst this body of propositions has a legitimate place in the God-talk of the faith community, it finds its place only after Christ has been made known as a person whose way is worthy of our following.

It is very often the way we have shortchanged our Gospel (through propagating the embrace of a body of faith propositions instead of following the person of Christ) that has caused much of Christianity to have become a battlefield of conflicting ideologies. Christ is not an ideology; he is Person. He is neither calvinist nor arminian (and I suspect he has yet to come across the term open-theism). He is the Christ. And we seek to follow him, lest we should allow our battle over ideologies to cloud our vision of the Christ of the cross.

Faith itself as a belief falls short of knowledge, and is thus epistemologically deficient. What is believed needs to be subsequently explored based on the underlying assumption that the propositions upon which faith was initially based are the result of a self-revelation of a rational and consistent God. Faith seeking understanding is an epistemological venture in that faith seeks completeness. Whilst such completeness must be recognised as something beyond the reach of those in the temporal order, adequacy is desirable. For the attainment of this requirement, reason assists in the transformation of belief into knowledge by providing evidential support to the former.

However, it is vital to acknowledge that in studying the faith, we are also studying the world. In studying the world, we are also studying the language of our fellow human persons. This calls for a measure of openness and vulnerability in learning to understand and to converse in the language of others' before we can reasonably expect that others should reciprocate in the like gesture of attempting to learn our language. Fellow learners learn, not just from independent study of literature and their selected spiritual guides, but also from one another. In cultivating the willingness to present ourselves vulnerably to learn and to be corrected is already itself the culmination of the goal of learning.

As learners and believers of Christ - who is the Way, the Truth and the Life - we must also live in humble acknowledgement that our understanding of this Truth is incomplete. The desired completeness may be unattainable in the course of our lives in the temporal order. Thus, it is crucial that we live in an openness to hear and learn from the "truths" of others; for in so doing, our own knowledge of the Truth will be enriched and deepened. And hopefully, as we share our truths, others will also engage in our stories. Truth is never meant to be enforced, but rather, something to be discovered and shared. The learning of one another's languages is the act of facilitating this discovery for one another.

Christ learned. He learned how to be human and to live like a man. He learned our language so that he could teach us the language of heaven. More than that, he revealed himself through our language, through a story in which any human person would be able to understand. It is in learning that he taught; and likewise, it is in learning that we teach.

To learn is to be like Christ.

We are called to live a purpose larger than ourselves. The task of subservience is about faithfully living out our little life stories. Whilst these stories may be small and short and seemingly insignificant, they are not ours to alter or to shape. The Author of our small stories has a way of synergising these stories together to form a synergistic symphony that emanates to the world as
the Story of the Kingdom of God.

It is that one day when we return collectively to the embrace of our respective faith communities, reaffirm our identities as the People of the Way, and resolve to walk faithfully in the way of Christ. And what is that way?

"Why does the Church of Christ exist in a state of disunity?"

"What should we make of a relationship between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic couple?"

This has been yet another experience in coming to terms with the acute debilitation of my linguistic eloquence when plucked out (albeit willingly) of my familiar environment, and placed in an environment wherein I am forced to communicate as a "weaker other". And it is during such moments that the splendour of God's wisdom and the power of the Holy Spirit is made most apparent.

In the final analysis, I suppose mission is very much about surviving embarassing moments so that we're in touch with the fragility of humanity. The missionfield is truly one place that frequently makes me look back at my degree certificates and say to myself, "So what?" Whoever it was that claimed mission was about getting the world saved sorely missed the point.

My ephemeral absence will cease within several days, as I will be back on Friday.