Seeking the Shalom of Your City

 

Tan Keng Tiong, a Masters of Divinity student with Fuller Theological Seminary was invited to encourage the FAIM team and friends on 24th August 2024. It was FAIM's 12th Anniversary. Tiong, as he is fondly known, discusses the challenges we have in the mission field and how we might use our giftings and tools to reach the lost. In his message, he encouraged FAIM with these words:

I begin this message with the conviction that FAIM must be God’s instrument, Jesus’s hands, and feet, that inhabits and serves the world, as a living witness to the gospel of God’s kingdom among your people of diverse faiths and beliefs, lostness and brokenness, in your respective cities. In short, we must seek the shalom of our cities. 

We are thankful to our brother for a timely reminder and encouragement to pursue God's call for His glory. Below, you can read his full message to us.

Seeking the Shalom of Your City by Tan Keng Tiong

 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29: 7)

Dear Chindu, Rachel, Pastor Sam, Stella, Sara, Liliana, and Dr. Rachel,

 I thank God for this opportunity to celebrate His goodness toward Faith Ablaze International Ministries (FAIM) over the past 12 years and for many more to come. When I first met Dr. Rachel,16 years ago in 2008, I wondered if she was a pastor, a missionary, or a professor who teaches in a seminary. Now that I have gotten to know her better, I see that she embodies all these roles, and her ministry and team are genuinely pastoral, missional, and the vision and mission of FAIM is rooted in strong biblical and missiological foundations.

The world we live in is becoming increasingly complex, with significant brokenness and a sense of purposelessness among old and young people in many cities today. New religious and philosophical ideologies are also emerging that challenge the truth claims of the Gospel. In this context, a Christian organization that is both pastoral and missional is essential for navigating such a complex environment. My conviction is that FAIM must be God’s instrument, Jesus’s hands, and feet, that inhabits and serves the world, as a living witness to the gospel of the kingdom of God among your people of diverse living faiths and beliefs, lostness and brokenness, in your respective cities. In short, we must seek the shalom of our cities. 

Let me ask you, what are the most pressing spiritual, emotional, sociopolitical issues and challenges your cities are facing today? For my Singaporean context, the challenge is twofold. First, we have bought into the technocratic humanist story of the West that believes that we are capable of making progress through science and technology and achieving happiness and prosperity without God. Second, in Singapore—one of the most urbanized and pluralistic societies globally, the distinctiveness of the good news of Jesus Christ is fading as the church increasingly resembles the world around it. Are you encountering similar challenges with the dual forces of secularism and pluralism that are pressuring the church and complicating our mission and public testimony?

How shall we respond to such a challenge? What can we do about it? In today’s sharing, I want to encourage you, together with your team, to seek God to help you develop a personal ministry of God’s presence and approach to pastoral care and missionary engagement in the culturally and religiously diverse city-states where you live.

 Pastoral care is a significant and practical way to participate in God’s mission and it is the responsibility of the whole church. Pastoral caregivers are agents of flourishing. They seek the welfare, the wholeness, the shalom of every individual and family, assisting them to thrive by “moving toward becoming the person they were created to be and to approach who it is God wants them to be.” And in the process, care seekers are being transformed to “become agents of flourishing themselves who help others around them thrive.”

 What is the scope of pastoral care? What areas should we as missional-caregiver be attentive to? Mission is commonly understood as the church's participation in God's mission of reconciling people to God, to themselves, to each other and to the world. And spirituality is commonly referred to the human capacity for relationship with self, others, the world, God, and belonging to each other in an integrated whole. As you pray about developing a personal ministry of God’s presence in your city, think about how it may be grounded in the concept of shalom that captures the notion of peace and wholeness in these four foundational relationships: with God, with our “self,” with others and with God’s creation.

1)    Finding Peace with God: Hospitality as a Way of Reaching Out

 First, let us look into helping others thrive in their relationship with God. A ministry of God’s presence must account for the movements and exchanges of globalization and immigration that have brought diverse worldviews into your cities. Not everyone in your city adopts a concept of God, while others have diverse conception of God. How then do we help others discover God as revealed from Scripture and find peace and wholeness with God the Father through following Jesus right where they live?  Being aware of your city’s culturally diverse dimension means embodying an inclusive, dialogical, and hospitable vision of pastoral care that respects others’ diverse worldviews and honors others of who they are. We can start by listening and listening is an act of hospitality and a practical intercultural exchange. Listening recognizes everyone as God’s beloved and image-bearer, regardless of race, language, or religion. Henri Nouwen too observes that listening affirms others’ “hidden gifts” from their cultural and religious insights and how through hospitality strangers are welcomed in a safe, personal, and comfortable place where change can take place in friendship and acceptance. When we serve others through hospitality, we as pastoral caregivers are also being transformed and healed in the process.

2)    Seeking Acceptance with Oneself: Storytelling as a Way to Self-Discovery

Second, let us look into helping others thrive in their relationship with “self.” A ministry of God’s presence takes time to study and immerse in the stories your city is telling to your people. What is the narrative your city is telling about success, happiness, and a good life? Are those stories life-giving, or are they causing people to become more anxious as they try to fit into the society’s narrow definition of success? Do these stories help people develop healthy relationship with oneself, or do they breed self-rejection, unhealthy competition, fear, and insecurity? Missional-pastoral care is attentive to places of hurts others are carrying and the potential damages to the core of one’s being. How can your ministry help others come to accept the gift of being and becoming their true self? When we recognize that self-rejection is a prevalent emotional and spiritual sickness afflicting countless of souls in our cities, we can affirm that the claim that we are God’s image bearer is the truth that will set one’s free. But how do we assist others to discover their worth as God’s image bearer? Storytelling has the power to weave together our human sinfulness and divine belovedness and be retold in a way that facilitates healing and restoration. One way to affirm others’ belovedness is creating a safe space where we as pastoral care givers can freely share our stories of brokenness and lostness without the fear of being judged. As you share your stories and listen to others’, God’s Spirit is capable of helping both caregivers and care seekers to see how their stories of shattered dreams are not destructive, but redemptive.

3)    Discovering Joy in Serving Others: Seeking the City’s Shalom through Partnership

 Third, let us look into helping others thrive in their relationship with other people. A ministry of God’s presence takes time to pray and reflect how the church can seek the wholeness of the city through partnership with government agencies, and other corporates to create equal opportunities for everyone to thrive, and an inclusive society where everyone regardless of ethnicity, religions, sexuality, and socioeconomic classes, can live harmoniously and peacefully together. As you reach out to serve others, look out for families and communities who are living primarily in the margins, not just the dominant center of power and control. Who in your cities are labeled as the “outsiders” and the “outcasts?” Where do they live? What do they work as? In what ways are they being excluded and discriminated by the dominant majority? What are their memories, hopes and dreams? A city’s shalom reflects the “fullness and wholeness of God’s creation, a shalom that is fully embodied rather than merely abstracted.” Such a grand vision cannot be achieved by a single church or mission agency. Henri Nouwen succinctly said “We don’t minister to; we minister with and amongothers.” Pray about and look out for partnerships that your ministry can collaborate and work together for the common good. Partnership upholds the values that we are better together. A shalom-oriented partnership is rooted in covenant and neighborliness.

4)    Cultivating Hope Towards a New World: Solidarity in Human Suffering

Finally, let us look into helping others thrive in their relationship with God’s creation. A ministry of God’s presence recognizes that a call to follow Jesus is a call to suffer. As global citizens living in different cities, our lives are intimately and vulnerably interconnected. We all have shared responsibility to and are equally exposed to the threats of global challenges such as wars, climate crises, and economic uncertainty. However, the vision of the New Creation gives all of us as pastoral caregivers and care seekers the hope “that comes forward from God’ future” to sustain us in the present. Our mission and pastoral care must be grounded in the firm foundation of Christ’s resurrection. The “already-but-not-yet” nature of God’s Kingdom also reminds us that while God’s reign has broken into our world as demonstrated in Christ’s earthly ministry, suffering continues to be a universal reality for all humanity and creation. How then shall we respond? Understanding that God suffers with us is a crucial practice of pastoral care in a global context where we continue to witness human suffering everywhere around the world as a result of oppression, corruption, and violence. The notion of a suffering God yields not only personal, but also social and political possibilities as both caregivers and care seekers identify their own suffering with Christ’s forsakenness on the cross. Rituals of lament and prayer can help us connect with Christ’s suffering and remind ourselves that we are not alone. Lament can help care seekers (both individual and group) honestly and intentionally name the pain and suffering one is going through, and through prayer, look to God and acknowledge His care and active involvement. Lament connects our suffering with that of the larger world. This fosters inclusion and disempowers separation and hostility in a broken world.  

Conclusion

            I began this message with the conviction that FAIM must be God’s instrument, Jesus’s hands, and feet, that inhabits and serves the world, as a living witness to the gospel of God’s kingdom among your people of diverse faiths and beliefs, lostness and brokenness, in your respective cities. In short, we must seek the shalom of our cities. 

 This missional pastoral care seeks the healing and wholeness of every individual and community, and assisting all to thrive and together improve the conditions for others’ thriving. Thriving must account for the notion of peace in four foundational relationships: with God, ourselves, others, and the creation itself, without which our ministry of God’s presence is not holistic. Thanks again to Dr. Rachel for this opportunity to share and celebrate God’s goodness to FAIM.  

My prayer for FAIM is this: That everyone in your cities, who come into contact with any members of FAIM, will be in touch with Jesus himself. Like the Samaritan woman and many outcasts commonly viewed as “outsiders” in the gospels, these people in your cities will experience Jesus’ personal presence of love and healing through their contact with your presence. Their lives will never be the same again. Because they will be living in light of truth, the truth which Jesus himself embodies, the truth that points to the ultimate reality of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This truth will set them free, free from bondages and falsehoods. Because now they live in light of an absolute, loving, personal, and relational, trinitarian God. And now they shall thrive in their respective cities and social contexts. Amen.     

For Further Reading

Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2015).

 Bevans, Stephen B, and Robert J Schreiter. Models of Contextual Theology Revised and Expanded ed. Faith and Cultures Series (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002).

 Block, Peter, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight. An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture (Hoboken: Wiley, 2016).

 Branson, Mark Lau, and Alan J Roxburgh. Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions: Confronting Modernity’s Wager (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2021).

 Corbett, Steve, and Fikkert, Brian. When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor ... and Yourself. (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2014).

 Nouwen, Henri J. M. Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1986).

 Rah, Soong-Chan. Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times. Resonate Series (Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015).

 Sang Hyun Lee. From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010).

 Stott, John R. W. Issues Facing Christians Today. 4th edition, fully revised. and updated / ed (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006).

 Van Engen, Charles. Transforming Mission Theology. (Littleton: William Carey Publishing, 2017).

 Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church 1st ed (New York: HarperOne, 2008).