Are We Reducing the Church to a Mere Property? “We have sent our boys to take control of the church building and lock it.: said, Habil Gyan of the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church, Mumbai. I don’t deny that the 72 Valmiki caste people have no right over the church at Asroi (Aligargh) in the Indian State of Utter Pradesh. With the BJP government in the center and the property take-over would be quite easy, that too, when the Ahelesh Yadav government is not interested in protecting the minorities, except the members of the Muslim community. But Christians have more serious lessons to learn from this. One Mr Anil Gaur, who returned to the Saivaite faith had said, it was because they (72 people) were unhappy with their religion, “But we found ourselves in no position among Christians. As Hindus we had no status and were restricted to doing menial jobs, but even after remaining a Christian for 19 years (almost one generation), we saw that no one came to us from their (upper caste) community. There was no celebration of Bada Din (Christmas). The mission just built a church for us in the vicinity where some of the villagers got married. That was all.” Going by the statement of Mr Anil Gaur, it is quite evident that the SDA church must have done ONLY the following: 1. SDA is known for their ‘Sheep Stealing’ and is interested in Churchianity (increasing the number of those who are baptized by SDA); not Christianity. 2. They must have constructed a Church from the supports from US and would not have appointed a pastor to minister to them. It is also possible that there were two churches – one for the Caste Christians and another one for the dalit Christians. 3. Most of the pastors in SDA, behave like US citizens and interested either in migrating to US or interested in mobilizing money from US. In either case, there was no Pastor to minister to them, and conduct services even on festival days. A Pastor, who has the rights to solemnize the marriage must have come from the long distant, just to conduct the marriage and go. The Natti Sabai of Prakasapuram, Thamizh Nadu, who invited the SDA Church into India, severed their link later, as SDA Church was more Western than the Anglicans (Natti Sabai was formed by Chattampillai, as he did not like the British hegemony in the administration of the church. We have rich lessons to learn from Rev CTE Renius, the apostle of Thirunelvelli / Thoothukkudi districts of the Indian State of Thamizh Nadu. This German missionary of the CMS, was interested in: 1. The convergence of the different caste people as mere followers of Jesus Christ. He opposed to having different dining halls in the seminary, though such move was opposed by Sashtri Vedanayam Pillai 2. Never gave baptism to anyone, unless he was deeply rooted in Christian faith; and he used to quiz them to know the reason for his decision to become a Christian; some time people had to wait for one or two years, till they exhibit and articulate the their faith in the Salvation of Jesus Christ. 3. He was an advocate of developing local leaders and made Mukkandar each and every village, while a Catechist will be in-charge of few villages and the Catechist would visit all the Sundays to conduct services, while the Mukkandar organizes morning and evening prayer (Sat Sang) everyday. Reclaiming the prosperity should take back-seat, while Re-engineering the way churches / pastors, function should be the priority, if not ready to have a re-look at the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jeba Chandran / David Pothirajulu / Bishop PushpaLalitha Eggoni / Bishop Timothy Ravinder / Ralph Garlin Clingan / Paul Francis / Charles Edwin G / Vincent Rajkumar / Siga Arles / Alex Harris / Chilkuri Vasantha Rao / Asir Ebenezer / Kasta Dip / Vasantha Rajagopal / Margaret Solomon / Poovelingam Solomon / Indira Iyengar / Ratna Solomon / Anita Hedal Mary / Cynthia Stephen / Dexter Maben / Sam L. Carr / Abraham Jefferson Christopher
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 08:26:07 +0000
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