I am nervously trying to address the current enthusiasm and modes of Christian witnessing from my limited understanding; my intention here is not in anyway to criticise or upset anyone. There has been a growing emphasis on certain kind of graphical emotion-filled vocal witnessing to pressurise people to submission and make others feel guilty and God-less. These have a way of destroying the dignity of people in these revival meetings. These types of witness meetings to me represent a lack of real engagement and involvement; it has the danger of being judgemental. These emotion-filled occasions may often degenerate into observational event, a spectacle. They see a crowd and not individuals or their real needs, it is not a person to person engagement, it is where that you are taken for washing and hanging out on a washing line. Let me explain, few years ago a well-respected member of a faith community got up in one of these revival meetings and said he is blessed for knowing Jesus and asked the community to pray for him. This news got immediately on to the gossip hotline and rumours were abound about his personal life, how he fell from grace and then found it necessary to follow the way of Jesus and a born again existence and experience. This is a real danger and there are many such real life stories. In corridors of conferences, one may listen to analysis of these heart rendering stories after many revival meetings. This is execution by ‘friendly fire.’

People are often called as witnesses to an event, as ‘witness for prosecution;’ witness to an accident or criminal act, but only very rarely to give an account of a real experience from the point of humility and an acceptance that it is God who came in search of us and not the other way round. Our ‘being and becoming’ is our authentic life situation because of the Grace of God. ‘Not yet, but yet to come’ experience of growing into maturity and perfection with dependence on God and his mercies is an important part of Christian spirituality. Christian witnessing is not about taking pride in our effort in achieving a state of sainthood because everyone else apart from us revelling in sin. Testimony or witness has such an inevitable bystander status. We do not want to live, but wish to watch others live and criticise them at length for not following the edicts of Christianity as we perceive it. But what we need to think is about involvement and partnership. We should be developing a partnership with our Lord through our prayer-life for becoming agents of his love and compassion for the world that we live in. We often do many things and claim these are all God’s doing. We say what we want to say and then claim that those are God’s word. This is a lie and this is hypocrisy.

I would like to see a Christian living which is centred on the love of Jesus, where Jesus is at home and at the centre of our living. That would mean a Christianity that is not all about orthodoxy or correct belief, but more about orthopraxis or correct action. We know by heart John 3: 16, but do we really care to look at what St. John says in his first letter? St. John says, “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” The theology of our belief system has nothing wrong in it, it is watertight and we make every effort in making it watertight as well through the structural aspects of churchmanship, but the practical aspect of that theology is very patchy and leaky in our living. We do not walk the walk or talk the talk as God meant it to be.

This raises the important question: Don’t correct actions follow from correct beliefs? Actually correct actions should begin with correct feelings and spiritual exercises. ‘Kingdom of God is not a matter of words but of power, the power of love.’ Jesus was all about compassion and compassion is not just an emotional outbursts and knee jerk reactions to events. It is about justice on one hand, celebration on the other. The celebration about the opportunity to share the pain, share the shame. Jesus celebrated with people on the margins of society by accepting their hospitality and giving them an understanding of an indwelling God, a God who understands their situations who has both empathy with them and sympathy for them. He did not see a crowd; he saw individuals in the crowd with individual problems and needs. Zacchaeus was trying to see Jesus from the comfortable hideout on the branch of a sycamore tree. But Jesus not only saw the sycamore tree with it foliage and branches, but also saw the real needs of Zacchaeus perching on it. Therefore Jesus looked up and said to him directly, “Zaacheaus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” (Luke 19: 5). The ‘abide with me’ messages of St. Johns Gospel give us a full insight to this total involvement with God. Further more this gospel gives the emphasis that Jesus is ‘the way’ for our liberation from our bondages.

I would like to see Christianity moving from being an institutionalised religion, to being a way of life and spirituality again. Power structures and empires had their day. What we need is to feel being human again. We lost our humanity; we need to find it again. We need to become aware of a cosmic Christ, which means recognising that every being has within it the light of Christ. This is the source of both revelation and reverence. We have imprisoned Jesus in our little churches, parishes, revival groups, and constitutions. If we have that awareness we can no longer take things for granted.

People live their whole lives outside of themselves without any relationship with an indwelling Christ. And this living outside of us is one of our addictions of life. We live in a family, but we are not family-centred, we have wives, husbands and children, but we are not wife-centred or husband-centred or children-centred. We have membership in a parish but we are not parish-centred. Our involvement is all about ourselves and our egos. We spend all our time, from cradle to grave, building ego boundaries and recognisable identities for ourselves. We have an economic system based on setting us such addictions of life. All these addictions are mostly based on a consumer culture of advertising our ability to acquire what others cannot dream of. We empty ourselves and work very hard to acquire things not for our needs, but for our greed; this greed takes us into areas of danger which may destroy economic systems.

Having a second home or most expensive cars or designer dresses may all be linked to credit cards or second mortgages, which people may find difficult to service and honour. Initial dream was for a single house with garage and number of cars, but now the dream is for one most expensive car with all modes and comforts and two different garages in two different homes, may be one in the city and another in the country side. This is causing tremendous economic instability at the present time, the current financial meltdown is the direct result of this second home mortgage rush for rental income or making a quick buck and not because of the need for a house to live. We are becoming an ‘inside-out generation’ without anything inside. We do not cook and eat at home any more; we have ready cooked meals, eat outs, and barbeques. Living outside with nothing inside has become a new culture.

We graduated from one master bedroom with his and her washbasins to two separate master bedrooms. Husbands and wives now live in different cities and only come together for weekends for going away again on Monday mornings. It is considered to be economically sensible to live apart within the same city and only meet when it is absolutely necessary. We hang everything out, our intimate relationships are analysed very graphically in day time television shows. We speak before we think; everything is out there, nothing inside. Our credit worthiness is available at the touch of a button. We spend and spend without having anything in the kitty. Most successful people in our times are the ones who live on others’ savings. Some apparently charitable people are those who sit on committees who dream of humanitarian causes and collect money and then spend the money on five star living.

They have the ability to make others feel guilty and become immune to their own social obligations and moral and ethical codes. This is part of living an inside-out life or hiding reality under a respectable mask. This type of people want others to see how good they are, how concerned they are, but at the same time exploiting simple ‘honest to God’ people. Our church life is mostly Sunday morning worship-based, not centred on a personal relationship with Jesus. It is all about rituals and sermons not about a personal conversation with Jesus. We love to wear our faith on our sleeves, everything is externalised including our devotional worship and Holy Communion. Now we can observe a Holy Communion in God’s channel at the flick of a button. Christian ministry is now a television show. We carry with us a God-shaped hole in the centre of our lives. But Psalmist told us, ‘be silent and know that I am God.’ This knowing bit is missing from our lives. This is the biggest vacuum in our lives, which is being filled by cult figures and demagogues. Mainline churches need to have sensitivity to sense these micro trends of how demagogues and new age worshippers are brainwashing our younger generations and taking them away from traditional influences. It is difficult to say a word against these wonderful new smooth operating master-minds, they are so clever in hiding their motives and pulling wool over our eyes and capturing the imagination of young people and destroying their lives and enslaving them to new ideologies. These micro trends will grow eventually into mega trends and it will be too late to react then.

We give more importance to vocal ministry in our worship and Christian living. Yet in addition to this ministry there are many other forms of ministry. All of us are called to variety of ministries and, at different times to different ministries. "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but is the same Lord works in all. But the manifestation of Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all" [I Corinthians 12: 4-7]. It is time that we considered the need for various types of ministries that we can bring about to address the relational or pastoral needs of our community; so far we have been only concerned about the structural needs of the church. I shall briefly mention some of the ministries that may be of help in our spiritual journey.

1. The ministry of "being": This is the ministry of those in our parishes who are called to be a faithful person to God and to others, and whose lives quietly radiate that centeredness on God. All of us share in this ministry: to be a "ground" or "anchor" for fellowship. Those called to this ministry help to deepen and centre the worship just by their very presence. Their gift is one of love and faithfulness, and a life grounded in the Spirit. They may also be led to nurture others in the spiritual life. They are the silent majority, but we try to ignore them and give more significance and importance to a minority of wordy persons who talk a lot or sing their hearts out with very little living.

2. The ministry of serving: There are those in our parishes who are led to express the compassion of God by serving the needy, both physically and spiritually. They are sensitive to the needs of others and responsive to them. They provide support in many ways (large and small) to others-for example, bringing a warm cooked- meal to someone who is ill, or baby-sitting for busy parents so that they can have a break from tedious routine life.

3. Social Ministry: There is also a social prophetic ministry, being led by God to bring God's justice, peace, and righteousness to the world situation-for example, to the poor and hungry, the homeless, the battered, the lonely and forgotten. These are people who are led to be an instrument of God's love and justice to others, work for peace, prison work, and many other forms of "social" ministry.

4. The ministry of teaching and mentorship: Those called to this ministry rely, like all of us, on the indwelling Teacher. This ministry is important today, when we no longer come from a joint family system that worked and lived together, where teaching was done by example or osmosis. This is for providing care and nurture by helping others in their spiritual lives, and those in spiritual torment and difficulty. Their gift is one of truly listening to others, and to help them discern where God is leading them. This ministry goes beyond individualism to a shared experience of God.

5. The ministry of leadership: This is a very responsible ministry of a priest or bishop or even a lay person with a calling. There is a different kind of leadership from being an official priest, where such a leader takes on a servant role. We are reminded symbolically of this of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. They are given the gift of helping people in need under God's direction. This is the ministry of the pastoral care in partnership with lay people. We need to take pastoral care more seriously, which is the real need of our times.

Perhaps we need other ministries too in our communities. It seems that we are given different ministries at different times, and are sometimes called to. When we appreciate these different roles, there will be real healing. Jonathan Sacks wrote “We live in a fractured world, we do need healing. The God who gave us the gift of freedom asks us to use it to honour and enhance the freedom of others.” Life alone living outside is only half a life, Life with Jesus is a call to responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are twins. It is time to internalise these things to have a real involvement with an indwelling Christ to create an inclusive community to build God’s kingdom on earth. The day is almost over, evening is approaching, it is time to return from outside to inside and to have a real communion with God and prepare for the next stage in our journey with our Lord