The Church: A Dispersed Presence in the World
Sadikin Djumin

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The article begins with several fundamental convictions. First, the church, which is defined as God’s people in this article rather than church building or denomination, is called by God to accomplish His grand plan for the world. The sole purpose of the church’s existence is to do God’s mission in this world. The second conviction is that the church is and will be the main vehicle of God to do His mission regardless its past, present and future failures and weaknesses. Third, the church needs to constantly recover its life, purpose and witness in the world in order to be effective salt and light of the world. Lastly, it is possible for the church to meet the challenges and crisis posted by the world and to respond to the changing needs of people in the world. It is made possible by God’s sovereign power because He promises the providence of resources, strength and wisdom needed by the church to achieve His mission. It is for the love for God and His people, the church, which gives birth to the writing of this article.

This article has two goals. The first goal is to reflect back the purpose of the church in the world. Secondly, it presents a reminder for the church that it has the calling to be a dispersed presence in the world if it wants to be true and faithful to the Cultural Mandate and Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. The calling for the church to be a dispersed presence in the world has to be the main reason and drive for its purpose and tasks when the church gets together as a gathered center. A disclaimer: the calling for the church to be a dispersed presence does not mean that Christians are to neglect fellowship. Forsaking fellowship or meeting with other Christians does not represent the belief of the author, and in fact, it is not in line with the teaching of the Bible (Hebrews 10:25).

Let’s start with our first question. What is the purpose of the church in this world? The quick Christian ‘standard’ answer usually given is to proclaim the good news to the lost people. Unfortunately, subconscious mindset of many Christians about the purpose of the church in reality is far from the ‘standard’ answer. Not realizing it many times, Christians including the author are trapped in the thinking that the church is to provide nice spiritual recharging sermons for themselves to go through another week, or Sunday school for their children weekly.

Therefore, reflecting back the mission of the church by studying the whole Bible is a continuous must for Christians. A successful effort to encapsulate the purpose of the church was accomplished in the Lambeth conference of 1988, which addresses the concern for mission of the church from both Old Testament and New Testament. In essence, the church has the five marks of mission or purpose, which are listed as follows [1]:

• To proclaim the Gospel
• To teach, baptize and nurture new believers
• To respond to human need by loving service
• To seek to transform unjust structures ofsociety
• To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, to sustain and renew the life of the earth

From the five points above, we can easily identify that the work of the church should be outwardly focused. Teaching, baptizing and nurturing new believers can be considered ‘inwardly’. But, this is not really true, because the believers are empowered in order to do the rest of the work.

In addition, learning the Great Commission of Jesus Christ, we can easily identify that the commission is a go-out command to reach out to the world. The calling for the disciples of Jesus Christ to be salt and light of the earth also has the emphasis of being out in the world to show people the taste and the light of God’s love and truth.

Therefore, for the church to be faithful to its five marks of mission to reach out the world, it needs to re-think at least three key issues: its mission/ministry model, its leadership, and its tension between being a movement and becoming an institution.

Mission/Ministry Model

According to the authors of the book Invading the Secular Space, Martin Robinson and Dwight Smith, the majority of the churches (as institution) still adopt the 19th century parish mission model: one minister in one building in one parish. This ministry paradigm centers on the ability of the gifted pastor or teacher to attract people around the parish/community to join the church, and to espouse certain church doctrines or practices. As a result, the church heavily depends on “come and see” programs to draw people to itself. This model is effective when the predominant worldview are those of Christianity, and when people believe in the truth and authority of the Bible and hold in honor the value of the church.

Unfortunately, today’s world has becoming even more agnostic, relativistic and postmodernist than before – ‘mind your own spirituality, please’. It is no longer friendly to the message of the Gospel. The ‘Christians are bigots’ perception has also become more pervasive in our society as we witness the increasing negative sentiments and publications about Christianity and the church. On top of these, the widely publicized scandals of TV evangelists with their questionable programs further repel people away from the church. Hence, the parish model that relies on centrality of the church to attract people is no longer effective today.

However, recently, there is a mission/ ministry model that has proved effective in the rapid growth of the church in the regions such as India, China and Africa. It is known as the Antioch church or missionary model. It is modeled after Acts 13 where the Antioch church commissioned Paul and Barnabas to do God’s plan for the Gentiles. This “go and be” model changes the very basic assumption about the interaction of the church with the people. Instead of inviting people to itself, the church empowers its people to permeate the secular space to meet the real need and change the society. This requires a shift from centralized to decentralized ministry. It also give birth to a new concept of “spherical” ministry, where home churches/groups and small cells/ groups are key medium to permeate and influence the secular society for God. These ministry spheres have the primary goal of becoming the church that reproduces their own ministry spheres in their surroundings.

This model with its emphasis on outward interaction with the world also gives the solid reason and sense of urgency for the church to empower its people to achieve personal transformation and maturity under God’s grace (its activities as a gathered center). Personal transformation and maturity here includes the growth in the intimate relationship with God, basic spiritual disciplines, genuine relationships among Christians, teamwork attitude, understanding of God’s mission and calling, and the use of spiritual gifts for building up the church and accomplishing God’s plan. Without this transformation and maturity under God’s grace, Christians will either become paralyzed under Satan’s false accusations and guilty feelings, or will be no different from the world and lose its saltiness and brightness (1 Jn 2:14- 16; Matt. 5:13-16)

Leadership

This new mission/ministry model also sheds a new light on the church leadership. The model requires more workers and leaders to do God’s will in the world. For that reason, the church leadership should put a high priority on enabling its people to exercise their spiritual gifts and to fulfill their ministry functions – either in the church to empower other Christians or in the world to do God’s will – as God calls them (Eph. 4:11, 12). And, at the same time, it empowers personal transformation and maturity of its people under God’s grace as we mentioned before.

The leadership structure, therefore, needs to move away from a bureaucratic hierarchy (a pyramid model) to a network of concentric circles (a decentralized corporate model). Each concentric circle represents team of leaders in a sphere ministry. This concentric leadership model shares equally among the leaders the burden and responsibility of empowering God’s people and raising workers and leaders in all levels. In addition, this model provides more opportunities for God’s people to get involved in ministry and to step up as leaders as God calls them.

However, this leadership model does have its own challenges. First, the leadership needs to build a culture of creating ministry structure based on the function to empower God’s people toward the mission of the church. This means the leadership needs a constant reevaluation on its ministry structure to determine its effectiveness on accomplishing the church’s mission. Secondly, the leadership must reproduce new workers and leaders rapidly and empower them with God’s Word and maturity so that they can be sent out to do God’s work in the world. Failure to do so will hurt the church’s ability to send out more workers of God to the world and its integrity in the world. Third, the leadership needs to be able to bring all leaders from diverse ministry spheres in unity and constantly remind them about God’s calling for the church (its vision). This means that the leadership must work hard to communicate, coordinate and build relationships among leaders. Lastly, the leadership needs to be willing to spend its leadership resources for establishing a wider sphere ministry to reach out the world. Good and faithful stewardship on leadership resources is key and a must.

“Movement versus Institutionalization” Tension

As with all other organizations, the tension between being a movement and becoming an institution also exists in the church. In fact, it will always exist. The Antioch church or missionary model is a movement model that is very dynamic as sphere ministries are created to reach and change the world. The focus of this model is the multiplication of mobilized God’s people to the secular world.

However, as the church gets bigger, there is a need to create organization to maximize its resource. It is nothing wrong with this need, because there is a place for organization in the church for maximizing the church’s limited resources. Nevertheless, it will become a problem if the church starts to shift its focus from being a dispersed presence in the world (its mission) to maintaining its internal structure and activities for survival (institutionalization).

Therefore, the church leadership needs to look constantly at its ‘Movement vs. Institutionalization’ gauge to determine if it is still agile and flexible to address the real need of the people of the world or if it has become a mammoth that loses its steam to be God’s representatives in this world. Secondly, the leadership needs to engage heavily in studying God’s Word, studying the realities and affaires of the world, and in prayers for God’s love, wisdom and strength to better serve Him by being His agents of change in the world.

Sadikin Djumin serves as FICA President since October 2000. He obtained his M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Ohio State University. He currently works as integration engineer and resides with his wife in Columbus, OH.

Footnote

[1] Robinson, Martin, and Dwight Smith. Invading Secular Space. Oxford: Monarch Books, 2003.

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