Voice of Asia (2)
2. What is the greatest source of Christian discipleship in the Asian context? For example, cellgroups, relationships, preaching, books, etc. Why?
Many local churches in Malaysia would be very happy to admit that it's their cellgroups that are responsible for the discipleship of their people. But I think that most of them are simply replicating a system that they think will most effectively grow their churches in numerical terms. I'm inclined to think that for most of them, cellgroups are a mechanism to invoke growth in numbers rather than a platform for effective discipleship and relationship-building.
As far as the preaching goes in the local church scene, my personal opinion is that the quality of sermons preached here leaves much to be desired. Sermons that are informationally packed seldom move people to action, whilst sermons that are moving are at best sensational and motivational with little thought-through theological substance. Hence, I don't think the preaching ministry here has been the greatest source of Christian discipleship. Similarly, Christian books that seem to be selling very well in the bookstores are either experientially subjective books written by certain factions of western Christianity or prescriptive "how-to" books that border on instantaneous pragmatism.
I will not say that there is, at the moment, a great source of Christian discipleship here. Many people think that just because we have international speakers coming our way and we have the best of church discipleship models being sold in the Christian marketplace, our discipleship must be strong. Some churches, especially the megasized ones, are involved in seminar and conference frenzies, thinking that this is how discipleship should be done. The grander and the larger the scale, the better.
I think our understanding of the Christian faith needs to be restored into a communal paradigm of life and faith before Christian discipleship can take place effectively. After all, the community of faith is the interpretive community for the revelation of God. Much of Christianity here needs to rise beyond an individualistic paradigm. Local Christians need to learn to live within community, for community, and be accountable to community for the way they choose to express their faith in their lives. Only within such kingdomic relationships will Christian discipleship take place in an authentic and effective way.
Comments (2)
I would love to hear your thoughts bridging, if not integrating, the notions of power encounters (as in Voice of Asia 1) and community (voice of Asia 2) in the Asian context.
Posted by Winsome One | September 13, 2006 8:34 AM
Hi there,
Thanks for your frequent and very beneficial comments, really appreciate your interaction.
My friend, Joshua Snyder, very observantly notices that much discipleship in the Asian Christian community here (particularly the urban Chinese community he frequently interacts with) takes place in the context of "sharing one's personal encounters with others in the community". Power encounters bring the people into a personal experience of metaphysical reality, and the subsequent building of faith takes place as they share these stories within community. The community then eventually incorporates these stories into the formation of a language to express their collective experience with the living God. It seems like this is what happens.
I think a missiological anthropologist would be more well-equipped to analyse this phenomenon, whereas I'm approaching it from the perspective of a contextual theologian and affirming that the sharing of one's stories within the faith community is a theologically legitimate and (perhaps the most) effective way of discipleship. This, of course, creates a problem for us because many of our faith communities have allowed discipleship to be reduced to the impartation of manual-like abstract propositions.
Cheers!
Posted by sk | September 13, 2006 3:51 PM