Wholistic Mission for the Transformation of the Church and Society

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Wholistic Mission for the Transformation of the Church and Society Prof. Dr. Saw Hlaing Bwa Ph.D I. Wholistic Mission Wholistic mission is the process of event in the Field of the Spirit of Life for the embodiment of the “Kindom” of God in the whole creation; it is the obedient and prophetic participation in the process of God’s creative transformation for the new creation. II. Theological Approach Theological starting point of wholistic mission must therefore be a creation-centered approach, and not merely redemption-centered. We have already been too much oriented our mission on the redemption centered approach with negative attitudes on the world, people of other faiths and human socio-economic and political context. A redemptive centered approach is characterized by the conviction that culture and human experience are in need of transformation or radical replacement. The world, rather than the vehicle of God’s presence, the world distort God’s reality and rebels against God. Hence, mission comes to mean bringing God into the world where God is not; or bring Christ into the world where he is absent. A creation-centered orientation sees the world, creation, as sacramental. The world is the place where God reveals Godself, where God works, and where God is eternally presence even before the presence of the Church’s mission. God suffers in and with the world, offers himself as a sacrifice for the creative transformation. According to the creation-centered approach, human experience, cultures, historical events, political process, religious faiths, socio-economic and political process are the locus in which God is actively present. They are the sacrament which signify the reality of God’s love, and in which God’s presence is made known. They are therefore the source and the starting point of our theology of mission. The church does not possess her own

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