Sekularisasi, Kultur Digital dan Geliat Agama: Tantangan dan Sketsa Berteologi Digital di Indonesia

Secularization and digital culture are the influencing aspects that define the characteristics of religious societies in the 21st century. As a formation of the history of social change, these two elements greatly determine the efforts of religion, in doing theology and church services at the present, in the term of digital theology. Indeed, It is determined by the surprising rise of the COVID-19 pandemic which forces religious efforts to deal with digital things. As a new experience, digital theology seeks a form as to how the social change made it. Elements such as secularization, digital culture, and church formation become the important aspects to determine the direction of doing theology. Based on these new experiences, this paper will describe a sketch of how to doing digital theology in Indonesia, especially in the case of GMIT. With the theology of incarnation as the frame, digital theology puts the relational substance (God-human, among human relationships and between the real and digital world. As the digital world as a locus, digital theology therefore over a liquid digital church and the presensia-accompaniment model of a church mission to be the sketch of doing theology in the digital context in Indonesia.AbstrakSekularisasi dan kultur digital adalah dua elemen yang berpengaruh dalam ciri keberagamaan masyarakat religius di abad ke 21. Sebagai bentukan dari sejarah perubahan sosial, kedua hal ini sangat menentukan upaya beragama, berteologi dan bergereja dalam konteks kekinian. Salah satu istilah yang dikedepankan adalah teologi digital. Bentuk berteologi digital saat ini justru didorong oleh situasi pandemi COVID-19. Sebagai sebuah pengalaman dadakan dan baru berteologi secara digital menjadi upaya mencari bentuk mengikuti perubahan sosial` Elemen seperti sekularisasi dan kultur digital dan geliat beragama menjadi aspek yang menentukan arah berteologi. Dengan berpatokan pada pengalaman baru inilah tulisan ini berkenan memberikan gambaran sketsa berteologi digital di Indonesia melalui pengalaman bergereja di GMIT. Payung teologi inkarnasi yang dipakai sebagai usulan berteologi, mendasari keterkaitan relasional baik antara Allah dan manusia, antar-manusia maupun antara dunia real dan digital. Dalam memaknai ruang digital menjadi locus berteologi, maka sketsa gereja cair digital, dan model kehadiran digital presensia dan accompaniment menjadi sebuah tawaran bergereja dan bermisi dalam konteks digital di Indonesia.

Participation in the “Synodal Way”: A Few Comments in the Light of Karol Wojtyła’s Theory of Participation

Announcing in the German Church the so called synodal way provoked discussions concerning the participation and joint responsibility of all the faithful in the implementation of the Church mission, especially with regard to exercising power and making binding decisions. The aim of the presented reflections (comments) is to look at the discussion in the light of the theory of participation, analysed by Karol Wojtyła in his work The Acting Person. The co-existence of the community of action and the personal value of the act and experiencing as one`s own jointly made decisions may set the direction for new paradigms of exploring sensus fidei.

Mengisahkan Ziarah Eksodus Melalui Eskterior Bangunan Gereja

The exterior of Church building is the clearest face of the community of its members because it is openly showed by anybody. It is not only evidence of the very art and historical heritage but also a content of theological narrative and re-narrative of Church role in the world. This writing will show that there is a theological narrative behind the Church building. In this writing, that theological narrative is limited to the story of the journey and the sojourn of the Israel people in the wilderness to the promised land. From the exodus narrative, I renarrate the role of the Church in the context where it lives. This writing used the theory of bottom with three elements, namely: concept, category, and proposition. The early concept is the exodus narrative according to the Bible. Catching the category, this exodus concept will be anriched by the blended with the narrative of some Church buildings in Indonesia, theology of the Old Testament and liturgy, the anthropology of culture, and the philosophy of architecture. The result of this research is renarrative of the living Church buildings. The proposition is an offer on an interrelation between Biblical narrative, a historical roll of the Church building, and the renarrative or the storytelling renewal, with the present of Church mission. Eksterior bangunan gereja adalah wajah paling jelas persekutuan anggotanya, sebab terlihat secara terbuka oleh siapa pun. Ia bukan hanya bukti mahakarya seni arsitektur dan peninggalan sejarah, tetapi juga berisi narasi teologis dan merenarasikan peran gereja di dunia. Tulisan ini ingin memperlihatkan bahwa ada narasi teologi di balik eksterior bangunan gereja. Dalam tulisan ini, narasi teologi tersebut dibatasi pada kisah perjalanan dan persinggahan umat Israel di padang gurun menuju tanah perjanjian. Dari narasi eksodus tersebut, saya merenarasikan peran gereja di dalam konteksnya.Tulisan ini menggunakan teori dari bawah dengan tiga unsur, yaitu: konsep, kategori, dan proposisi. Konsep awal adalah narasi eksodus sebagaimana kesaksian Alkitab. Untuk mencapai kategori, konsep eksodus ini akan diperkaya dengan memadukan narasi beberapa bangunan gereja di Indonesia, teologi Perjanjian Lama dan liturgi, antropologi budaya, dan filsafat arsitektur. Hasil penelitian adalah renarasi bangunan gereja yang hidup. Proposisi berupa tawaran akan hubungan-hubungan antara narasi Alkitab, guliran historis bangunan gereja berdiri, dan renarasi atau pembaruan penceritaan, dengan misi gereja kini.

Sailing through the waves: Ecclesiological experiences of the Gereja Protestan Maluku archipelago congregations in Maluku

The archipelago context of Maluku represents the living dynamics of Christian communities in that area, which becomes an ecclesiological foundation of the Gereja Protestan Maluku (GPM). Christianity, the embryo of the GPM, is the fruit of the evangelical works by European missionaries, particularly Dutch missions from the 18th century onwards. The Dutch-type Christianity had been adapted into models so that the form of institution and Protestant teachings in Maluku moved dynamically following socio-political and cultural changes along with the colonial and the post-colonial history of Indonesian and Malukan society. It attempts to describe the manifestation of the Calvinism-model of Christianity that is continuously being contextualised through absorbing various elements of worldview, tradition, and the religiosity of the archipelago society. Cultural hermeneutics is used to interpret the socio-cultural phenomena in which the church lives in and to construct its theological understanding about Christian identity. The ecclesiological construction of GPM, in turn, is structured by plural social orders. The reality also influences the perspective about GPM from many different worldviews of the Malukan archipelago society. The contextual ecclesiological perspective, therefore, is constructed based on intermingled understandings that theology of the church can only be built by considering multifold dimensions of a particular society. The result of this research pertains to the constructive understanding of a specific ecclesial context of the GPM in their struggles for theologising their existence as God’s people and, at the same time, as an integral part of certain society in Maluku and Indonesia.Contribution: As the living contextual church that struggles for proclaiming God’s love, the GPM has a theological responsibility to conduct its church mission based on its ecclesiological understanding and practices contextually. The article contributes to the enrichment of the theological discourse on the crucial roles of a church in Maluku, in the eastern part of Indonesia.

Discipleship and Stewardship as Vital Aspects for Church Mission: A Case of Kwamrombo SDA Church in Arusha, Tanzania

This study sought to establish the linkage between stewardship and discipleship in the context of Kwamrombo SDA Church in Arusha City, using 20 church members as participants. Data was collected through face-to-face interviews and the thematic approach was employed in analysis. The study holds that in order to resolve the discipleship and stewardship issues in the Kwamrombo church, members need to make decisions to equally support the church through discipleship and stewardship. If couples plan their finances together, they will be more likely to remind each other on the importance returning tithe and giving offering faithfully. They will also be of help to their children and other church members. Church programs need be conducted in a holistic approach by encompassing both spiritual and economic empowerment aspects including entrepreneurship and personal financial management. There is need for intentional discipleship program that will enable the church members to know their God given responsibilities as Disciples of Christ. Church pastors and church leaders need to launch stewardship programs that will include faithfully receiving the word of God in their lives and living in harmony with the word. This will motivate members to return tithe, give offerings and participate in discipleship programs effectively.

The Abduction of Preaching. Priest's Speech in the Structure of a Political Myth

This article offers an analysis of hybrid forms of religiousness arising from the interaction between the orthodoxy discourse and the political discursive environment. These forms are the result of attempted redirecting of the secular politics' tasks to the clergy and the church audience, that is, attempted political secularization of the Church.A precedent was the project to legitimize within the Russian Orthodox Church the so-called Maidan theology, which served as ideological accompaniment to the 2014 coup d'etat in Kiev. Since then, manifestations of political secularization have become regular.In September 2019, several dozen Orthodox priests published an open letter on the topic of the detention of street rioters during the Moscow City Duma election campaign. The letter had an emphatically political nature, as it was aimed at supporting people who were not simply seeking to state their views, but provoked the police to use force, escalating the conflict. The signatories of the appeal willingly or unwillingly joined this position, which at that time and in those circumstances meant direct interference in the political conflict. They had one important thing in common: they saw their own social role outside the church as more important than their servitude at church.The synthesis of Christian preaching and political propaganda is formed by stealing the language (in the sense established by Roland Barthes) of the Orthodox thought and is, therefore, doomed to create a hybrid, internally contradictory narrative that has nothing to do with authentic Christianity. This phenomenon can be characterized as the hijacking of the language of Christian preaching and the transfer of its sacred function into the sphere of the political. The most important task for Orthodox Christians is to purify, authenticate and naturalize the language of church mission, separating it from the influence of pseudo-Christian stylizations of secular politics and ideology.

Missionale ekklesiologie in die Afrikaanse gereformeerde kerke sedert 1990

Missional ecclesiology in the Afrikaans reformed churches since 1990This article argues that “missional ecclesiology” in the last decades became a new mission paradigm for churches in South Africa, especially after the demise of apartheid. After an overview of the development of a “missio Dei” theology, the article examines texts from various South African churches in which this terminology is used. The article concludes with a section which underlines the importance of missional ecclesiology in the context of the local congregation. Congregations are seen as “missional”, challenged to be present in local communities as a living witness to God’s love. Missional ecclesiology has its theological foundation in the “missio Dei”. In missional ecclesiology, mission is understood as part of the nature of God as well as the nature of the church. Without mission there is no church. Mission is not a project, it is existential. However, there are diverse interpretations of “missio Dei”, “missional ecclesiology” and “mission” itself. As a result, many congregations find it difficult to identify with missional ecclesiology and enter a process of transformation. The historical analysis presented here contributes to a better understanding of the terminology as well as the challenges facing churches in the 21st century.