Moving the Church Out to the to the Community

Moving the Church Out to the to the Community

The world is constantly seeking meaningful relationships and a community that one feels accepted and secure. Communities living in the margins have a higher risk of relationships being strained at all levels: spousal, families and neighbours. There is a desperate cry for belonging, acceptance and meaningful relationships. Thus, when the local Church is able to live out a community of love and service, it has much to offer its neighbourhood. When the Church shifts its priority from focussing on numerical growth and individual spiritual transformation to transforming relationships that culminates in a church that models a community of love and which embraces the poor, the Church is able to transform neighbourhoods.

Reducing the Great Commission to numerical growth and individual spiritual transformation

Some churches appear to adopt a reductionist approach in obeying the Great Commission. The gospel of the Kingdom of God is reduced to a message that focuses primarily on personal salvation. For this brand of church, the call also largely focuses on spiritual transformation but neglects social transformation. In short, the rich vision of Christian transformation is reduced to a community of spiritual faith which does not meet the social needs of the poor nor does it offer love through practical help and service. This reductionist approach is focused on conversions and transformation of individual spirituality. Individual transformation does not translate into empowering the person to be part of a community of faith to influence transformation in their neighbourhood. The reductionist approach basically starts with an evangelistic programme that reaches out to individuals but neglects the commitment required to build a community of faith and love. Some measure of social welfare help is thrown in, but it is used to draw in individuals to hear the gospel.

The reductionist approach to the Great Commission, firstly, results in an over-emphasis on individual evangelism and church effectiveness popularly measured primarily by numerical growth. Such contemporary church planting methods are in danger of over-emphasizing individual conversions and forgetting the end objective of building a community of faith, love and service. ¹ This problem of neglecting community care is particularly magnified in poor and marginalised communities.

Secondly, the reductionist approach fails to appreciate that at the very heart of the gospel, there is the call to build communities of faith, love and service as opposed to individuals of faith built to evangelise others. A consequence of this approach is that surrounding poor neighbourhoods comprising different ethnic groups is excluded from this transformative vision. Thus, the scope of life lived under God's lordship in love and service to others outside the Church and care for all that God has created is diminished. The approach also has the further danger of deepening hostility between races or at least fails to address the issue of distancing other religious adherents as it projects a crusader faith bent on winning numbers but lacks charity to the needy and disadvantaged. ²

Thirdly, the reductionist approach leads to an erroneous assumption that evangelism and conversions will automatically bring about just societies. Looking at some of the most evangelised nations in Africa and South America, it is obvious that these countries are struggling with a culture of corruption. When vital considerations of just and ethical values based on loving relationships are dispensed with for the expediency of numerical growth, the Church will not become a community of faith and love as God intended it to be. It is not empowered to influence the transformation of society into a kingdom of righteousness, mercy and justice.

Hence, when the Church puts the Great Commission ahead of the greatest commandment, it has lost its authenticity. The Church is set on a performance mode that contradicts its foundational objective to glorify God through a community sharing God's love. A community exalting crusading evangelism and numerical growth over the greatest commandment of love will result in shallow relationships and it cannot offer a model of God's community of faith, love and service.

Recovering the greatest commandment to build communities of faith, love and service

The Great Commission of making disciples of all nations must be subject to the greatest commandment to love God and one another. The Church needs to be clear of its core vision of mission - social action is just as much an important and integral call of the Church as evangelism.

The outcome is neither of the two, i.e. improved standards of living and conversions, but a transformed community of faith, love and service. And this is achieved only through a balanced and holistic approach.

In Table 1 (beside), I have listed some general characteristics of a church vision that is subjected only to the Great Commission, and one where the Great Commission is grounded on the greatest commandment.

The failure of the church to appreciate the fundamental vision of developing a community of faith, love and service will have far reaching consequences and results in an inaccurate reflection of the gospel.

Firstly, as the approach is by default limited to reaching only certain individuals and families in the neighbourhood, it makes it difficult for the local neighbourhood to participate in this type of church.

Secondly, it does not work towards the holistic and integrated needs of the neighbourhood, nor often times even of its own members. Its programmes are primarily designed as a tool (even tuition classes) for converting individuals but not transforming the neighbourhood. And sadly, for the poor and marginalised, the good news may be personally engaging but socially irrelevant!

Thirdly, mission that is divorced from love and helping the whole person is guaranteed to bring hostility from adverse religious groups who perceive the Church as an agent of conversion and as wanting to destroy their culture. This increases the effect of causing further offence and allows extremist groups thereby to incite greater polarisation.

Finally, the spiritual Great Commission approach has the further danger of conveying an implied message that building a community of God's love is secondary to the Great Commission. Tragically, it is possible to evangelise without loving God or the neighbour.

Indeed, the Church which practises only the spiritual Great Commission approach has little relevance to economic inequities, human dignity, ethnic polarisation, poor governance, corruption and citizenship roles. At the end of the day, such churches have precluded or derailed themselves from achieving the biblical mode of community transformation and building a community of God's love.

Contrarily, the Church with the greatest commandment to love approach takes a long term view of working towards community transformation. It is there to build a 'church community in mission' ³ with a long-term witness and transformative impact in the neighbourhood. It is noteworthy to see a few churches taking a holistic greatest commandment to love approach, and having a long-term commitment to community transformation that develops a community of faith, love and action.

Footnote

¹ I believe that the rationale of starting cell groups is a positive move in the direction of strengthening community. But, it can easily steer away from its true goal when it replaces its core objective of building a community of faith, love and service with evangelism. Hence, cell groups have to keep their vision clear to avoid being side-tracked.

² On the other hand, mere social work is also inadequate. It is in this backdrop that more radical models in working with the poor are needed. The gospel has to move beyond the either or other categories (personal redemption to transforming society). It cannot do so through just conversion programmes or social work. The answer is not a simplistic one or the other, and it not necessarily even in sequential order of the two or the two being done simultaneously together. The crux is that a group of believers must come together to live out a community of faith. They must be committed to empower their community to transform the neighbourhood and to promote God's peaceable kingdom of righteousness. Reaching out and social action belong together; so do prayer and service. They all form a web of connectedness in building the Kingdom of God.

³ A term borrowed from CB Samuel.

This is an extract from Kon Onn Sein's article "Transforming Neighbourhoods: Grounding the Great Commission on the Greatest Commandment." The full paper will be published in the upcoming NECF Malaysia Forum VI. Onn Sein was Managing Director of the Foundation for Community Studies and Development, an organisation focussing on poverty alleviation and community development programmes for the poor and needy, in particular the Orang Asli and the urban poor.