Mission as Liberation and Community Living
Mission as Liberation and Community Living Introduction
I deem it a great honour and privilege to be invited to deliver a talk on the theme ‘Mission as Liberation and Community Living’. I am particularly happy that I am carrying out this responsibility as a memorial lecture to the Late Easow Mar Timothios, Episcopa of the Mar Thoma Church. The fact that I am in the presence of the Diocesan Bishop, Rt. Rev. Joseph Mar Barnabas Episcopa, the teachers, the students and the friends of the Dr. Alexander Mar Thoma Valia Metropolitan Smaraka Dharma Jyothy Vidyapeedom, gives me added joy as I reflect on the theme.
Easow Mar Timothios Thirumeni was a member of the Christha Panthi Ashram, Sihora, where he joined to be a member as a lay person. He comes from a place called Thoniamala, a hilly village on the Eastern region of Kerala, which is very close to the flora and fauna of the Western Ghats. At Sihora, in Madhya Pradesh, he used to involve himself on meditation and at the same time trying to practice the Mission of God in relation to the immediate society and very much related to the Nature.
The Sihora Ashram was established as an out reach mission of the Mar Thoma Church in 1942, trying to reach out to the communities in Northern India and to break the boundaries of Kerala. An Ashram is meant to live as a community, in a larger society, not as introverts, but as salt of the earth and light of the world. The Ashram community is therefore to leaven and transform the immediate neighbourhood. I believe that the very purpose of Dharma Jyothi Vidhya Peedam is to train students to form Kingdom communities like the Sihora Ashram.
Easow Mar Thimothios Thirumnei, then known as V. T. Koshy decided to go for theological studies to deepen his Biblical and Theological foundations of his vision. His study at the Leonard Theological College, Jabalpur enabled him to reflect further on Christian doctrines and to understand vividly the faith and practices of the Church. While continuing his membership in the Ashram he became an ordained minister and ministered to the parishes in both rural and urban areas of Madhya Pradesh, India. He did not give up his hard work in tilling the ground, drawing the water and doing all sorts of agricultural work to be close to the nature and to earn the daily bread for the Ashram community. He added cattle farm and poultry farm to the Ashram after getting an exposure and training in Japan. This style of Ashram living is nurtured through action and reflection, emphasizing a holistic attitude to reality. The very fact that he lived in Darsani Village instead of Sihora Town reveals that he had a preferential option for the rural poor.
The Sihora Ashram was a place where the villagers could come and spend time with the members. In turn, they also visited different villages in the neighbourhood. This gave an opportunity to the members of the Ashram to open themselves to other religions and cultures. The Ashram always tried to transform the life situation of the people in accordance with the Kingdom vision revealed by Jesus. This was possible only by the liberative intervention on behalf of the marginalized and empowering the people towards development by joint action. Apart from the worship services the Ashram members had in the morning and evening, they went to the Church for mediation, to mediate on the cross. This helped them to see Jesus as one who is in solidarity with all the crucified of the world. It also helped them to understand their role in Mission as bringing Good News of liberation to the created order.
Rev. V. T. Koshy was consecrated as the Bishop of the Church in the year 1975 to lead a larger community and to participate with them in the servant ministry. Though he was sent to U. K. and Canada for further studies and greater exposure he came back to India to serve as Diocesan Episcopa both in Kerala and outside. When he was transferred to northern India he remarked, ‘I am going to the Villages of India to serve the poor’. He could continue the ministry as a Bishop only for 10 years and the untimely death occurred while he was visiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He is always remembered as an embodiment of the servant ministry in the Kingdom of God and pioneer missionary Bishop of the Mar Thoma Church to the Hindi speaking villages of Northern India. The memory of his ministry stimulates the mission activities of the Mar Thoma Church. His life and work can be understood only in relation to the Sihora Ashram and its mission. It is befitting that two training institutes for evangelism in his memory are there in the Church in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. May the person and work of our dear Easow Mar Thimothios Tirumeni inspire all the students studying at Dharama Jyothi for the mission of Development and Evangelism and to catch the right vision.
Understanding Mission
The word ‘Mission’ has become a catchword of our times. It is a word, which is widely talked about in the ecclesiastical and non ecclesiastical circles. It is also a vibrant issue in the field of theological education. There is a lot of research being undertaken in the area of Mission today. At the same time it is not a new concept. The Church has always discussed it from time to time. This paper dwells on the mission activities in India with special references to the Mission fields of the Mar Thoma Church.
Traditional Understanding
Traditionally, the word ‘Mission’ is used of sending persons to far away lands to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was the Eurocentric one, which gives priority to Orthodoxy over Orthopraxis and was antagonistic to other religions and cultures. The main goal has been numerical church growth trying to add as many persons as possible, dis-regarding social and cultural growth. The characteristics of this traditional understanding of Mission according to Dr. Gnana Robinson are as follows:
1. A Sender – receiver relationship
2. The assumption that the sender possesses the full truth and has the inescapable Commission from God to bring this truth to the ‘receiver’ somehow or the other
3. The ‘receiver’ is the heathen, who still walks in darkness and has no knowledge of the Truth. If he does not receive the truth in the way the sender possesses it, he will die in sin and lose eternal life. Hence is the urgency of mission
4. The revelation in Christ is final and once for all. This means that outside the institutional Church there is no revelation of God. There is no true revelation in other religions
5. This world suffers under the powers of the devil. Men and women should therefore flee away from this world if they have to inherit eternal life. It is not the responsibility of Christians to get involved in politics. The Kingdom of God is beyond this world. This earth should first disappear. Only then the Kingdom of God will be established
6. God works in this world through the Church in “Word and Sacrament’. It is therefore not correct to say that God is present among other people and religions and that he works among them
7. Changing political and social structures is not our task. Individual conversion is the main thing. When individuals change, structures will also change
8. “Righteousness” is the gift of God. It is therefore in vain that men and women struggle to establish justice in the world. Peoples’ struggle for justice, awareness on slavery and bondage, education for liberation are thus not Christian
9. The Gospel is not influenced by the context. The search for a contextual theology is wrong. Indigenization, inculturation and dialogue with other faiths and ideologies are also therefore wrong.
This sort of traditional understanding came up when the society was feudal in nature. The context then was non-liberative. Hence the characteristics of the understanding of Mission were distorted and prejudiced. They favoured the dominant class in the society, and explained spirituality as characterized by dichotomies such as material-spiritual, inner-outer and personal-social. Today concepts have changed. When change is a continuous process, paradigms of Mission also changed from time to time. This is going on.
The Present day Context
The traditional type of missionary approach is seen today by many as intolerant and arrogant. For the friends of other religions in Asia, Christianity is seen as an agent of western imperialism and aggression. The word “Mission” now carries the connotation of the imperial expansion of the western religion, Christianity. This may not be true in the Kerala context, where the presence of St. Thomas Christians are there from first century A. D., but is true by and large for the rest of India.
It is true that the Asian Christians are now taking their context seriously. By re-reading the Bible in the Asian context they have come to a new understanding of God, human, world, cultures, religions, the Church and the Missionary responsibility.
Let me pause here to look at the present mission and ministry of the Mar Thoma Church in the mission fields of India. Church life remained isolated in Kerala more or less till the 19th century. Right from the beginning of the 20th century members of the Church were caught by the missionary zeal and decided to spread the gospel to the places wherever God led them to go. It is with happiness that we could speak now of having mission centres now on the length and breadth of the country starting from Kanyakumari District in the south to Tibetan Boarder in the north and Maharashtra in the west to West Bengal in the East. Now there are community of believers in various language areas with some of the leaders of the local community serving as ordained ministers and evangelists. Yet a large number of evangelists are even now coming from Kerala. Institutes like Dhrama Jyothi and institutes at Sihora and Hoskote can motivate more and more people from the villages of India to come and have training for the ministry of the Kingdom of God. The Evangelistic Association and the Dioceses of our Church are sending evangelists for Mission to the remote areas of our country. It will be appropriate to have introspection over here as to what all things are given significance for the furtherance of the Gospel. When the people are embraced as the members of the church, it is quite essential that we have landed property and infrastructure facilities for community worship and other community activities. This should not belittle the importance of human centred action where believers are given proper Christian nurture and brought up in communities where they will have holistic development. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is liberative, life giving and life affirming.
We identify below six of the contextual issues in order to understand Mission.
(a) Poverty
The most distressing issue of a large number of people in India is that they not only continue to be poor but have become poorer even after considerable developmental activities. The bulk of capital investment is in the hands of the industrial or advanced sector on the belief that rapid industrialization would create more job opportunities and thus reduce income inequalities. But what has really happened is that the advanced sector has gained considerably more expansion and the poor had been further impoverished. As Dr. K. C. Abraham observes, “Poverty is not merely an economic problem. There is a system that produces it and perpetuates it”.1 (K. C. Abraham, Liberative Solidarity, CSS, Thiruvalla, 1996, P. 152). Nobel Laureate Prof. Mohammad Yunus of Bangladesh is assertive in saying that, ‘Poverty is not created by the poor people’. It is not a fate. Poverty can be removed, provided humans have a will to do it.
(b) Caste
Caste plays an important part in the life of the people in India. To get a seat in a college or to apply for a job, caste factor dominates even today. Dalits, who are at the very bottom of caste hierarchy because of their traditional jati occupations such as disposing of dead animals, rubbish, sewage etc are the weaker sections of the society. To meet the basic needs of life and that of the family they borrow money from the land lords and become bonded labourers for life time. They are not only poor and powerless, but also suffer from the stigma of untouchability and or unapproachability. The discrimination against this people from the rest of the community continues even today. This is a mindset. Our constitution does not permit the caste discriminations. We need transformed communities for liberation and to perpetuate the spirit of equality.
(c) Ecological Crisis
In the past it was often thought that ecological crisis was an issue only of the industrialized countries. But today we realize how important an issue this is and how urgent our response to this issue should be as it poses threat to life wherever we may be in any part of the globe. Ecological crises is spreading to the villages of India in the modern context of IT boom. The stubborn resistance of the poor tribal women in the now famous Chipko movement against the Government’s decision to turn their habitat into a mining area, has brought to our consciousness the inseparable link between the struggle of the poor and ecological issues. The cry of the poor in the Narmada Valley is not only to preserve their own habitat but also to protect forests everywhere from destruction. The ecological crisis is to be seen especially as the cry of the poor. The experience of deprivation and exploitation is linked with environmental degradation. Shortage of fuel and water adds burdens to all, particularly to the life of women. It is said that the tribals are made environmental prisoners in their own land. Dalits, whose life has been subjected to social and cultural oppression for generations, are facing new threats by the repeated destruction of natural environment”. It is said that if there is a third world war, it will be a war for water.
(d) Religious Fundamentalism
The phenomenon of Religious Fundamentalism is on the rise in India today. Mention needs to be made in particular about the Hindu fundamentalism. Ayodhya is a case in point. The Hindu fundamentalism is based on a certain philosophy called the Hindutva. This was initiated by Veer Sarvakar, later expanded by Golwalkar. He advocated that “the non-Hindu people in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, and must entertain no ideas but the glorification of the Hindu race and religion …”2 (“Fundamentalism: The Indian experience” Christian Fundamentalism, World Alliance of Reformed Churches, Geneva, 1994). The recent attacks on Christian missionaries, rape of nuns, burning of the Bibles etc. are an eye opener to the reality of religious fundamentalism creeping into Indian context today.
(e) Religious Pluralism
Today the Church is faced with a situation which is new. In the past the contact with other faiths was primarily to enrich and expand the Christian faith. Today, however, the situation is changing. The other religious traditions present themselves as universal alternatives to the Christian faith. Religious pluralism has become a reality in almost every society: There is also a developing discovery of the riches of other faiths. The present day youth show an interest in having inter-caste and inter-religious marriages. This raises several challenges.
(f) Globalization
Although globalization has got its merits in terms of information technology and development, the poor and the marginalized do not find protection and security under it. Today Globalization and marginalization go hand in hand.
As Dr. K. C. Abraham very rightly points out, “we should learn from the experiences of the poor. They have lived in solidarity with one another and with the earth. Their communitarian value system is a sustainable form of development. This is the global solidarity that we propose for the future, giving a new direction to the process of globalization”3 (K. C. Abraham, Liberative Solidarity, CSS, Thiruvalla, 1996, P. 152). It is observed that a viable option here is to take efforts to integrate globalization and contextualization. The process of globalization is not complete without the contextual and the process of contextualization is not complete without the global.
It is in the light of these present realities that we want to look at the Mission perspectives of the day.
Mission Perspectives
Mission belongs to God. Humans are called to participate in God’s Mission. This participation will be meaningful only with an adequate understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Gospels narrate how Jesus lived in history, moved through the villages of Galilee and responded to the cries of the poor and marginalised. Life of Jesus Christ is an enactment of His message. This is the model for all people engaged in Mission activities. There are theologians who take John 20: 19 – 23 as the basis of Mission instead of Mt. 28: 18 – 20. The paradigm here is incarnational and is marked by a spirit of service. This establishes a model for discipleship. In the mission fields every believer is drawn into active discipleship that continually emphasises to live as the community of disciples in the world as the first fruit of the Kingdom of God. The present mission activities of our church are to be evaluated in this context.
This paper attempts to understand mission through the following six areas.
(1) Mission as Humanization
Gospel proclamation has a significant place in mission. When believers are added to the church, do they become integral part of the community? Late Dr. M. M. Thomas spoke humanization as part of the goal of mission! “…our mission is to make clear that salvation is the spiritual inwardness of true humanization and that humanization is inherent in the message of salvation in Christ”.4 (M. M. Thomas, Salvation and Humanisation, p 10). The prime importance in our mission fields should not be establishments, but people who are to be liberated and drawn closer to the saving grace of God. In the wake of the society becoming increasingly technocratic men and women are at the danger of being reduced to the level of machines and being exploited and used against their own will. In a technocratic world persons are no more in a position to decide their own destiny. The gospel of Jesus Christ presents a counter culture.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is to save people from the danger of losing their humanity. Neither religion nor technology has the right to deprive people of their humanity. When we study other religions and meet other people we speak to them in human to human relationship. Men and women, as the image of God, should remain always human; and should not be reduced to machines. “Mission of Salvation and the task of humanisation are integrally related to each other even if they cannot be considered identical” 5 (M. M. Thomas, Salvation and Humanisation, p 8).
This discovery of the humanity leads us further to the realization of the common humanity of all people in this world. All Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Communists and all others – belong to the one human family of God; belong to the one household of God (Oekumene). One God has created us all and one Saviour has given his life for all of us.
(2) Mission as Solidarity
The Almighty God incarnated in Jesus Christ as fully human. Dr. Gnana Robinson speaks about Solidarity as the Missionary Principle. The Mission of the Church is the Mission in Christ’s Way. God in Christ, entering history was incarnating to have solidarity with the creation in order to redeem it. To be in solidarity with some one means “to step in for him/her”. The incarnation of God in Christ is the concrete expression of God’s solidarity with the suffering humanity. Again the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross is the sign of God’s solidarity with the suffering people. It affirms the fact that God steps into liberate those who are dehumanized and threatened. God steps in human history in order to give “abundant life” (John 10: 10) to all those who are denied of opportunities to give fuller expression to their life in this world.
To understand community, we have to place humans as an intersubjective beings. Here human fulfilment is only in relation to the other. The other is the extension of our own being, not as an object to manipulate but as a subject to respect. Here solidarity becomes the corner stone of human existence.
Dr. Robinson talks about Solidarity in Community; Solidarity in Suffering and Solidarity in identification as given below. 6 (Gnana Robinson, A Voice in the Wilderness, p 105)
(i) Solidarity in Community
In the Asian context, God’s solidarity with people can be understood in meeting the people in their community, in an atmosphere of the love of Christ and living in solidarity with them. This is the reason why Mar Thoma Church insists on the missionary-priests and evangelists to stay in villages among people and to have places of worship, wherever there are believers. The strategy in our mission fields should be to build smaller local communities which could be countersigns to the existing society where there is a spirit of consumerism as well as prevalence of caste system. Such counter communities could evolve out of our rural congregations where church life is not so distorted by the power wielders generally found in urban areas.
The style and character of our response to God in our midst can be discerned only in and through a community that constantly worships the reality of God’s presence in this world. The community accepts as the pivotal concern to know God in and through life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In such a community living, mission takes place no more in monologue, but in an atmosphere of mutual give and take, where dialogue takes place. Mission here becomes a proclamation of Christ by word and deed in our present day context. Mission is also the endeavour of the worshipping community to celebrate and to enhance God’s gift of life.
(ii) Solidarity in Suffering
Mission is solidarity with people, especially the suffering, the victims of the system and the marginalised. What does it mean to live in solidarity with suffering people-being homeless, jobless, starving, sick, oppressed, exploited, persecuted, robbed, raped, hungry and dying? It means to step in on their behalf not only to share in their shame, pain and suffering but also in liberating them.
In such suffering of His people, God also suffers pain. Christian suffering has both the healing and the liberating effect, because God in Christ is involved in it. If the Church is to be the Church, it must have the marks of Jesus Christ upon it – the marks of the beatings, the nails, and the crown of thorns – the signs of the cross.
(iii) Solidarity in Identification
Christian identity is related to one’s relationship with God and relationship with fellow beings. True identity of a Christian begins with Jesus Christ-understanding him, feeling with him, rejoicing with him, suffering with him and struggling with him. Our solidarity with the suffering people is in our identity with the identification of Jesus Christ. The identity of Christ is a “mocked” (Lk. 23: 36), “spat-upon” (Mk. 15: 19), “beaten” (John 19: 3) and “crucified” identity. As the “Servant of the Lord” he had a “stricken, smitten, afflicted and bruised” identity (Isa. 53: 2, Mk. 9: 12). A Christian, denying himself and taking up his cross and following his master, loses his/her own identity and gets a new identity through his/her solidarity with the mocked, the beaten and the spat-upon people of this world. One cannot understand oneself without having solidarity with the people of this world, particularly the oppressed and the rejected.
(3) Mission as Witness
Mission is to be understood as Integral Mission. It includes both verbal proclamation and healing action. Christian Mission strives not just for “Church growth” but for the wholeness of creation. George Soares Prabhu, a Roman Catholic theologian, pleads that the ‘Great Commission’ text is to be read as part of the Gospel and particularly in the light of Mt. 5: 13-16. Mission is not just ’Christocentric’ (making disciples of Christ) but also ‘Theocentric’ giving glory to God by building up God’s kingdom. Unless the Church lives as the symbol and servant of the Kingdom, it cannot engage in authentic mission.
“Religious pluralism is a given fact in our world to live with. The future lies not in shedding or suppressing the particularities of our diverse religious and cultural heritage, but in finding non hegemonic way to celebrate them. Religious pluralism provides opportunities for people to appreciate the faith and traditions that are different from ones own. In India, different religions share the same culture. S. Samartha writes ” To reject exclusivism and to accept plurality, to be committed to ones faith and to be open to the faith communities of our neighbour’s, to chose to live in a global community or communities, sharing the ambiguities of history and mystery of life- these are the imperative of our age”.6 [“Samartha, Globalization and Cultural Consequences in ethical issues in the struggle for Justice. – eds. M. P. Joseph & Daniel D, Thiruvalla, CSS, 1998. p193”]. Plurality is Gods gift and diversity is very much an ingredient in God’s creation. It is a challenge to cherish religious pluralism. Generally in our religious consciousness we guard our own religion in our private space and we do not allow others to intrude into it. But pluralism and its impact demand an exit from our privatization. It leads us to a new orientation altogether.
Accepting the reality of religious pluralism among us today, we need to reconsider the traditional mission practices. A dominant thinking on this area is that we need to move away from a triumphal model of mission to a solidarity model. In situations where life is threatened or destroyed through religious fanaticism, we need to reflect on God’s life giving mission. Here we need to assert that God is a God of Life and to believe in him is to participate in the life giving activity of God. The question our mission activities should pose is how can the structures of relationships be life enhancing. We need to affirm the supremacy of life over death, in other words a denial of life will mean rejection of the God of life. Life is what we share it with others. Our faith in the liberator God enables us to struggle against all forces of oppression. God of the Bible is also the God of justice.
Therefore, mission requires our commitment to values and structures that enhance life. It means to have a lifestyle that rejects patterns of domination and excessive use of resources. It leads us to build communities on the local level that live out life giving mission.
(4) Mission as Community Living
There is a criticism about the Church that it has failed in its Mission of community formation and community living. The Godhead as we understand in Christianity as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is revealed to us as One in community. The relationship that we see in the Godhead is oneness in plurality. Jesus Christ formed a community of 12 disciples. They were together with Jesus Christ as the earliest form of the Body of Christ. They were asked to be together as a community for receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts tells us how the early Church (the band of disciples) was engaged in the Mission of Community formation and Community Living. This became a reality in spite of inner struggles within the Church and exterior forces in the form of persecutions. Communities were formed when the scattered disciples travelled to different places. This was the Mission of the early Church. At the same time the Apostles encouraged and taught the early Christians to lead a community life. Thus community living was also a Mission. The Jerusalem Council dealt with common issues and promoted unity among the various religious communities.
The world today is a fragmented world though we speak highly about Globalization. There are so many people who live alone, crushed by their loneliness. More and more people seem to have lost their balance because of their family life has been unhappy. Widows and single parents need support. There are so many who are looking for a sense of belonging and a meaning to their lives. These days we need many small communities which will welcome the lost and lonely people, offering them a new form of family and a sense of belonging. This is a new form of Mission.
Communities are basically places of communion before becoming places of co-operation. The ecumenical circles will be more meaningful if they are nourished first by the spirit of communion. If we crave for unity we must also work for unity. True ecumenism is not the suppression of difference; on the contrary it is a learning to respect and love what is different. It is to be in communion with God and to grow in love for others.
Community is a living body. The Eucharist is a community celebration, which makes it possible for the community to rejoice in the dynamism of community living and give thanks to God for the community growth. The Church community should be signs of joy and celebration which paves way for the human communities to rejoice. If people are accepted with their limitations as well as their abilities, human community gradually becomes a place of liberation. The terrible places of disintegration on earth can thus become one of life and growth. Thus a community living can be a sign of the resurrection. This is Mission.
(5) Mission as Eucharistic Living
Generally, when believers join the church, they continue their Christian life through community worship, where the Eucharist is celebrated. The Eucharist is a prophetic protest against the existing unjust and sinful structures. Poverty, casteism, hunger and unjust suffering are unfortunate realities of life for a large number of people. The global world system as seen today is greedily exploitative where as the Eucharist reminds us of care and sharing in love. The world relations torment people and fragment nations, where as the Eucharist builds communities. The global world exhibits parochial interests where as the Eucharist is universalistic and points to one larger fellowship in the Kingdom of God. The international scene is marked by the tendency for arrogant domination, where as the Eucharistic living is a sacrament of humble service.
The Eucharistic community is called to increase hope in the midst of hopelessness, enlighten people in places of darkness and enhance life in the midst of violence and culture of death. Think of the millions of people that gather around the Eucharistic table across the world every week; they have the potential for transforming the world. Sacrament is for sacramental living. Eucharistic living is thus an alternative way of life to transform many of the existing problems. This is Mission.
(6) Mission as Development
Development is a term widely used in the context of Mission. Development is liberation, liberating the ‘enveloped’ (bonded, imprisoned) to breath freedom and experience peace.
(i) Youth and Development
Mira Kamdar in her book ‘Planet India’ describes India as a developing country and a global power house. As the fastest growing democracy India is transforming the world by touching the lives of people in more ways than it is presently known. ” There is no challenge we face today, no opportunity we covet where India does not have critical relevance.” India is fast becoming an important centre for research and development for scores of major multinational companies. The greatest challenge for India is to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Eradication of poverty is the greatest challenge when India’s youth filled with fresh confidence fuelled by high expectations, believe that the future belongs to them. Development is a voluntary process. We need a positive decision to work for development. It is to be holistic. Development is to be inclusive, integral, participatory and sustainable. Here the poor are to be liberated for the total community living.
(ii) Development Programmes
The four developmental programmes initiated by our church in the mission fields of southern India are
(a) Education Assistance programmes for the children in the mission fields to educate them up to school final class. This is empowering children. Here parents are encouraged to deposit Rs. 10/- per child pre week for 50 weeks. The mission will also contribute its share.
(b) Marriage Aid Programme for the girl children in the mission fields. This is empowering parents to send their girls in marriage with dignity. Parents are requested to deposit Rs. 10/- per child per day for 6 years. The scope is to have a deposit with the help of the Mission for a sum of Rs. 30, 000/- to be released only after the girl attains 18 years of age.
(c) Community Health Programme: Qualified nurses are employed in the Villages under the supervision of a medical doctor to care the children, women and the aged. This programme is to empower women in the mission field.
(d) Audio–Visual Awareness Programme: Meetings are conducted in the villages by empowering the youths and giving awareness on HIV / AIDS, addiction etc.
Planting trees, saving water, rain water harvesting, disposal of waste, vermi compost, kitchen garden, cattle rearing, making value added products are some of the developmental activities we can attempt in our mission fields at the neighbouring ares.
(iii) Ecology and Development
Ecological crisis that we have today raises some fundamental questions to our value system and life style. An alternative lifestyle based on a prudent use of natural resources is quite necessary. We are related to nature and our existence depends on maintaining the inter relatedness one exists for the other. All beings have a right to exist: the disable and the weak, the nonhuman nature, the animals, the birds and reptiles. Noah’s ark included all of them. They together constitute Gods oikos. Ecological crisis we have today is the result of the distorted, uncontrollable power humans exert on nature. It necessitates humans assuming ethical responsibility recognizing the dignity of the earth and respecting the eco-justice.
God in his mercy sustains even the little ones; the birds in the air, the lilies and the grass in the field. Humans taking care of them is assuming God given responsibility. We can know and experience Gods mercy only in solidarity with the nature and their struggle for life and wholeness. This mission is liberation of creation.
Conclusion
Mission is community oriented. It will have dynamism only if community living is made possible. On this planet earth no one can remain or live as an isolated individual. We can live only in relation to the other and or to the nature. When globalization tends to be a concentration of power that refuses to accept democracy and participation and promotes consumerism and material benefits, Mission of God revealed in Jesus Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit liberates people from individualism, inequalities, marginalization of the poor and weaker sections of the society and leads them to a life in abundance and to a relationship where community living is possible with God, fellow beings and nature. Mission is therefore liberative. It is in the liberation of creation that community living is made possible. This is the experience of the Kingdom Community. Mission is to serve for the fulfillment of the prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven – Amen”
