Center for Strategic Studies

To be an influential voice of Indonesian Christian movements that contribute toward a vision of civil society in Indonesia. Influential here means a credible, expert, and cutting-edge source.

Our vision is FICA's vision based on of Matthew 28:19-20 in light of our God-given identity and privileges as Indonesian Christians equipped with good education. CSS strives to be a steward of those God's talents and privileges that were given to us through seeking the integration of our faith, life, and vocation.

Should we see Indonesia through our human eyes, we will be despairing skeptics in seeing the discouraging picture. Corruption, poverty, collusion, nepotism, chaos, poverty suicides, thugs, the silent tsunami, and many others. Should we see our beloved country through God's eyes and heart, however, will make us cry with Him, knowing that that very picture offends and hurts God so much, yet in our Christian faith, Hope is always there. “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?”, said the Lord (Isaiah 6:8). God is sending His Good News to everyone, including Christians. It is a Good, Pleasing News for people of all religions and beliefs. It is our job to translate His Truth, which is the key for Indonesian recovery, through our testimonial personal lives and vocations. We need to answer our calling seriously, diligently study and derive His Truth to be manifested in all contemporary aspect of lives, be it political, social, arts, economic, etc. so that It brings goodness for the people of Indonesia. Our God-given privileges are real and need to be used appropriately like the Parable of the Talents.

A vision of civil society is needed in Indonesia. It is our heavenly as well as earthly citizen duties to help achieve that. A vision of a pluralistic, free, just, and equal society where different people can live equally under law in peace and seek the truth freely. It is an urgent vision to be pursued, for the choice otherwise will cause even more suffering and pain.

In CSS, we constantly cultivate the following values, which are the pillars to carry our mission effectively. These values are deliberately practiced, encouraged, and instilled into the team culture as well as our programs and initiatives. They are derived from the Bible, and are becoming even more important values for Indonesian culture. These values are reflected in 3 levels of personal character (integrity in front of God even when people are not looking), team culture (in working with each other), and social behavior (in working with many different people in a pluralistic society as well as behaviors that truly build the society pleasing to our God).

1. Personal Character of: honesty, perseverance, humility, hardwork, discipline, integrity, genuine/authentic, compassion, godliness, faithful, gentleness, love, patience, joy, peace, self-control, and vocation development.

2. Teamwork Culture of: respect, seek to contribute, interdependent, accountable, trustworthy, unity in community, candor/openness, build each other, and fun.

3. Social Behavior of: pursuit of truth, justice and fairness, value human respect and dignity, no favoritism/prejudice, mutual respect, public manner, appreciate diversity/plurality, respect of order and law, empathy towards other, modesty, community and people builder.

To pursue our vision and mission described above, we identify these strategies as critical:

1. Constantly develop our Christian worldview. Our comprehension of who God is, who human is, what is the world and culture around us, as well as His Great Commission and Mandate have to be continuously developed and expanded.

2. Constantly develop our vocation and talents. Whatever we are given by the Lord, we have to be secure, content and treasure those by continuously developing them. We need to be the excellent model in whatever fields we are in, be as Engineers, Doctors, Teachers, Housewives, Pastors, Businessmen, Politicians, etc. We need to understand the context of our families, churches, fields, country, region, and world.

3. Sharpen the integration of our worldview and vocation. In the spirit of 1 Peter 3:15 we need to truly ask the hard questions that exist in our respective fields. For example, being a businessman one needs to really struggle biblically where is the place of profit/growth relative to people, our ethical framework, the meaning of long term debt, and many others. We need to commit to really dig the Bible for those, and bring our faith to our classrooms, workplaces, marketplaces, day care centers, etc.

4. Learn to work with people across communities and build the Indonesian social capital. Indonesia is very poor in its social capital due to years of manipulation and abuse, thus we need to reach out to communities and develop common platform for the increase of social capital. We need to go beyond stigmas and prejudices, and by trustworthy attitudes and respects, build and influence the communities positively.

The strategies above map to our current functions below, which eventually leads to programs in Center for Strategic Studies:

1. Christian worldview development and context understanding. CSS fulfills this function mainly through programs such as the Annual Overseas Ministry Conference (OMC) and various seminars and campus presentations by CSS Focus Groups. Through those programs, participants are challenged to find their places according to God's calling for them in our current public landscape/dynamic. OMC also teaches us to disseminate Indonesia's multi-dimensional reality, unpacking and studying them while at the same time we learn to enter some of them through our lives and vocations.

2. Vocational development that is integrated with the Christian worldview. To seriously learn to integrate our faiths with vocations, we develop CSS Focus Groups. Our current active Focus Groups are Science and Technology FG (STFG), Economic Development FG (EDFG), and International Studies FG (ISFG).

3. Entering public sphere and build social capital. We currently does this function through our quarterly journal, Cross Point.