Doing Church Missions in Indigenous Community Poverty-Stricken Remote Rural Areas: Lessons from Indonesia

Abstract

God calls his ecclesial church to go out to proclaim his Gospel to all creation and baptise, teach, and make all nations his disciples. Local churches, particularly in Indonesia, commonly carry on the calling by using the so-called One Duty (the Missio Dei)-Three Tasks (koinonia, martyria, diakonia) tasks. Reality shows of not uncommon partial and unbalanced implementations of the three tasks, mostly heavy focused on koinonia but less in both martyria and diakonia. The study objective is to assess implementation of the church missions view of drawing general lessons for a more effective implementation. The study was conducted at a small-sized church congregation in an indigenous community in a remote rural local area, using a mixed literature review, field observation and interviews, and conceptual synthesis methodology. The key findings are that mission fields are diverse and wide and requires contextual missions, the diakonia task plays a pivotal role, and a small size of congregation is good for quality-oriented missions, the Strength Gift Based Community Development conducted in a holistic integrated transformational mission is an appropriate approach. The study contributes to interdisciplinary understanding and formulation of basic principles in doing integrated missions by local churches, particularly in rural areas with indigenous community, remote location, and poverty-stricken mission fields.