The Call for Revolutionary Revivalism and Peaceful Revolution

On 15 November, I presented a paper on ” Reconciling Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi” at the Liturgical Center, Chennai as part of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in India convocation. In the paper I highlighted the need for ‘peaceful revolution’ and ‘ revolutionary revivalism’. I also impressed upon the people that the gospel of Jesus Christ as a pursuit of truth (satyagraha) is a tool for social freedom. The paper was followed by Rev. Dr. Lewis Logan presented a paper on Martin Luther King Jr. About 200 people both from AME church, USA and AME India attended these presentations. The 100 odd African American Pastors (and their Spouses) and AME Indian pastors (and their families) were blessed by these discussions on Nonviolence and Truth. I urged AME to push forward in their commitment to the underside of India, particularly the marginalized in their struggle for justice. A discussion on women’s issues through the film Lajja was also prepared by wisdomtree.

Cafe Theology: Faith conversations in the real world

I am absolutely sure that Wisdomtree: The Academy of the Faithful has been called to ‘resource’ and ‘engage’ in cultural apologetics. The immediate need (as I see it. Call it hindsight, insight or foresight) is to make young people be conversant about the beauty – truth and goodness of Christian answers to life. We are asked to defend our Christian hope: ” Why I live what I believe”

It is important that we equip our younger people (both students and working professionals) to share the beauty -truth and goodness of the gospel during their student/start-up years. Coz’ thats when they meet more people of other faiths and beliefs. Me thinks, evangelism in the future will be through (one-on-one) conversations in coffee houses, movie halls, malls, office spaces and drive to work.

We need to equip our young people to speak the gospel intelligibly, attractively and responsibly. The Academy of the Faithful is offering a unique course: Cafe Theology – faith conversations in the real world to help young people understand/live their faith that they would be conversing in informal settings.

Topics Include

Life – Identity/Meaning – Work – Relationships – Entertainment – Technology – Power & Success – Justice – Living Faith

This course is designed to make young people ‘future ready’. It is actually intended for young people who are passionate about ministering to contemporary/urban audience engaging in culturally relevant formats and ideas. Wisdomtree plans to offer this course for young people (twice each year) in Chennai. Classes would be held on 8 weekdays (fridays) spread over two months. Other formats are being planned for Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Mangalore, Mysore, Mokokchung, Vellore etc.

The first course begins Oct 12. There are only limited seats (6 Nos). The idea is to train 12 people each year in each the cities. For information about schedule and course curriculum write to: contactwisdomtree@gmail.com

Encountering Culture, Engaging Lives (Bangalore)

Capstone Ministries (Bangalore) has launched a cultural apologetics course to equip youth workers to engage in culturally relevant evangelism in the city of Bangalore and elsewhere. The Academy of the faithful (Chennai) is resourcing this course. About 9 people have registered for this course that is spread around 6 months. Classes are to be conducted once every fortnight. This Sunday (30 Sept, 2007), I traveled to Bangalore to take the first class titled: Engaging the urban sub-cultures. Please pray that this course would fuel the evangelistic thirst of the participants.

A future ready camp!

Last weekend we (the Samuels – Vandana Samuel included) were at the WAC camp – fun filled activity camp – designed for Generation Strange (to borrow Slip knot’s words). The camp conducted by WAC was specially designed to help us be “future ready” – to be able to reach out to the younger generation. You never get to hear music bands, activity games, crazy games, Playstation games, remote controlled car race, theme parties, dawn worship and discussion from Spiderman movies in a Christian camp. The camp featured Blood Covenant – a christian death metal band who really rocked. Collin, a dear friend of mine, put together this camp and I must say he has has really done well.

I was happy to be a part of this camp. The theme of the camp was ‘No Compromise ‘ and so we decided to speak on issues that young people struggle in the ‘REAL’ world. There is a need for the message of Abundant life to penetrate the inner core of being and radically transform our LIFESPACE. I spoke on Spiderman movies. My talk was titled, “The web of life: What lessons can we learn from Spiderman?”. I highlighted the issues of: identity, choice, responsibility, guilt/forgiveness, relationships etc. I also did a workshop on Linkin Park titled: Understanding my music.

The camp was also great because my friends Paul and Anita ( Capstone Ministries), Remo and Susan (Reaching Hands Society) were there too. Collin, Remo and Paul are guys I discuss ministry a lot and I do learn a great deal from them too. They are such an inspiration for someone like me in my middle years and being passionate about reaching contemporary audiences. It was a great time of meeting friends as families. Paul and I prayed for our ministries and it was a great time of bonding (together with God).

I have learnt precious lessons at the camp. There’s so much to do to catch up and compete with those who are attracting young people with a different message about life. This is something that Remo, Collin, Paul and myself are constantly at it. The Camp was great. It was a learning and an unlearning experience. I do realize that there is a need to re-think camps if we are serious about reaching T20 audiences.

WAC camp is just an attempt to be at the cutting edge of reaching young people with the message of ABUNDANT LIFE. There’s more work for the oXyGEN circle ( offering Christ to the young generation) to do.

Engaging the Urban sub-culture

I led the workshop titled Engaging urban Sub-cultures at the Advanced Mission Leadership Training programme hosted by India Missions Association. This was an opportunity to put together all the random thoughts that have provided the fuel for my engagement with films for unfolding a religious discourse.

• The first step is to locate the discourse of desire and despair in urban legends.
• The second step is to engage the gospel story and find points of contact and/or departure.
• The third step is to provide (and defend) the Christian answers that is true, good and beautiful.

This is was the first time I had presented my fully developed theoretical framework for Christian engagement with films. The seed thoughts for this have been provided by Theodore Turnau, Paul Tillich, Peter kreft, A.G. Hogg and J.N. Farquhar. A few have asked me to put this in some form that could be read by some more people. That means more work…

Living out of suitcases…

I am back from the adventure camp. I really want to thank the people who prayed for the camp. I am happy with the way we ministered at the camp, oftentimes without words. A lot of young people have shown willingness to attend ” No Compromise” beach camp later this month. We hope that the beach camp would be another opportunity for them to meet with God.

I need to leave to Hyderabad today itself. It looks like I have come home only to dump dirty clothes and pack my bags for the next one. I guess, this is part of the calling. I am facilitating training sessions at the Advanced Mission Leadership Training Programme organized by India Missions Association (IMA) at Hyderabad. I am leading a discussion on the topic, ” Engaging the gospel with the urban sub-cultures”. I would be presenting the need to use popular cultural texts (particularly movies) to speak christian answers by locating the urban discourse of desire and despair embedded in popular culture. I am looking forward to these training sessions. Even the preparation for the presentation offered me an opportunity to work on a theoretical model for years of ‘off-the-feet” thinking. I am sure, the next three days would be a great time of learning….

I am also meeting with few friends and discussing my ministry plans in Hyderabad. Please continue to pray for me as I minister in Hyderabad. I am back on Sept 16 and you’ll know it when you find new blog posts….

without words

I have realized that so much of our evangelism needs to be ‘without words’. In world driven by images ‘visuals’ attract our attention. And so, we need to be seen and not heard (to borrow words from a popular petra song). We are used to talking. Not just talking but talking loud. We say things that we don’t believe, things that we don’t practice and even things we don’t intend. It is easy to preach a sermon. You can google-search and pull it off the net. There are books that give you sermon outlines or you re-play a sermon that you have heard elsewhere. God has been gracious and even used our ctrl C + Ctrl v hermeneutics and copycat homelitics. But then, God want us to make a definite difference. He wants our lives to speak out the gospel ‘loud’ and ‘clear’. Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the light of the earth”. We must shine…shine….shine. If we are lit on the inside, it is difficult to hide it. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Jesus encouraged his disciples to shine the light for other people. He never asked us to be salesmen for lights and tubes. And often times, that is what we are. Mere salesmen roleplaying and mouthing big sales talk. Jesus asked us to live – and live a good/meaningful lives at that. Our lives are blogs that people read. They know how we live lives, how we find meaning, how we cherish relationships, how we are guided by godly wisdom, how good our values are, how consistent we are in living out our beliefs, how we are Jesus-like… etc. Those who see us would quickly spot the difference. Our ‘desires’, ‘needs’, ‘tastes’ ‘choices’ and ‘hungers’must be different – gospel informed and gospel transfored.

At the adventure camp that I went to, this was the particular challenge for the leadership team. How do we speak/share the gospel without words. How do we help people see God behind the scenic beauty? How do we help people listen to God? How do we help them experience God and set out on the adventure of knowing God? We recognized that we must help them join in our journey of knowing and following God. We decided to invite those young people to be our ‘friends’ and see us – our lives. Hopefully, our lives have spoken the gospel without words….

Jesus wanted us to be ‘lights’ so that as we shine in the dark corners of our world (at least the part of the world we step in day-in and day-out they will get a better understanding of God. So of them will also praise our father in heaven. How I live my life matters more than what I tell my friends, neighbours and casual accquaintances.

As an “emerging” new christian, living in the world of despair we must commit ourselves to missional living. We can (and must) shine ‘hope’ into their lives and situations…if only we live out the gospel! We must engage in evangelism. But as one follower of Jesus discovered,” use words only if necessary”. Let’s pray that we find grace to speak the gospel “without words”

Sam’s off to Avalanche

I am off to Avalanche – an exotic out of the world place – for an adventure camp. I have been asked to do talks on leadership and I plan to to use John Maxwell’s ‘Today Matters’ resource material. I am looking forward to the camp where about 80 young people have registered. A dear friend of mine is co-ordinating this adventure camp.

It’s amazing how God brings opportunities by our way. Sometime back this friend had called me up and we were discussing how to take the abundant life (Jesus’ promise to those who follow him) to young people. We wanted to do something different. We met in Cafe cofee day, drew plans and kept them in prayer. And here we are, month after month doing programmes for young people.

Please, pause for a minute or two in prayer for the next four days and offer a prayer for the small team that is involved in friendship evangelism. Our hope is that we would push all the 80 odd lives that we meet, an inch closer to Jesus.

Sam Thambusamy

The blog initiative

The wisdomtree blog initiative was launched soon after I launched wisdomtree – The Academy of the faithful. I was aware that blogs were hugely popular. I wonder why I stayed away from blogging for the last 2 – 3 years. I did try getting into blogs once but I couldn’t keep pace with the demands of keeping a blog up and running. Blogs are a great way to tell your story.

For the uninitiated blogs are personal log/entries on the web. The modern blog has evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. The term ‘weblog’ was coined by John Barger and its shortened form ‘blog’ was coined by Peter Merholz. After a slow start, blogging has gained rapid popularity. When it was launched the Xanga site had only 100 diaries by 1997 but by Dec 2005 it crossed over 20 million. In May 2007, blog search engine Technorati tracked close to 71 million blogs. Surely, blogs are a big thing on the net.

We live in a wired (weird) world. The audience are the emperors of choice. The choice of the topic (taste) and truth (perspective), not to mention the time to listen, depend entirely on the audience/seeker. In the ‘nu’ world, we need ‘nu’ methods to re-tell the gospel. I find blogs as a great tool to reach out to the new generation. We meet them where they want to read. We speak when they want to read. They get to listen when they want to read. Believe me, there are many people with questions google-searching on the look out for answers in the blogosphere.

Let me share the wisdomtree experience. Wisdomtree (wisdomtree.wordpress.com) is a team blog. We have a small (four member) blog team and we have so far posted 52 articles/write-ups. Wisdomtree has already registered 3733 hits.

The following are some of the search tags that brought people to wisdomtree blog articles.

• movies portraying perfect marriages
• harry potter
• Creating a new future forgetting past
• value of life moral movies
• Rajni-mania
• controversy related to shivaji the boss
• youth apologetics
• spiderman lessons
• Popularity of shivaji
• blood diamond danny archer
• Sometimes I wonder if God will ever forgive
• my experience tells me otherwise
• Social themes in tamil films
• i feel like there is something missing
• movies moral
• is marriage relevant?
• moral themes in Spiderman the movie
• film theology culture
• Mirrors and truth
• do people fall in love only for lust
• youth luke 12:13-21 bible study

I am sure you’d agree that wisdomtree blog has met the ‘questions’ out there. The list above is just a sample of what young people are looking for. Even today, the blog entries dealing with Spiderman, Harry Potter, Failure, Blood Diamond, Kabhi Advida Na Kehna, Nishabd are top posts. The blog entry “Is life worth living? is also regularly visited. We had 513 hits in three days ( I’m pleasantly shocked!). Danny Archers question in Blood Diamond: ” Will God ever forgive us for the things we’ve done to each other” is a favourite search tag.

It is obvious that they are looking for meaning, identity, significance and to make sense of news/views/reviews around them. What an opportunity to share the counterperspectives of Jesus to “Generation WHY”. We have been able to present christian (counter) perspectives to bear on popular cultural texts such as movies, news stories, music vedios, magazine articles and advertisements etc. We don’t claim we have done much but at least we have been able to reach out to the ‘nu’ generation with the attractive, intelligible and responsible gospel.

At the seminary, I have been challenged by Paul Tillich’s method of corelation. We must co-relate the answers implied in the gospel with the questions that emerges in the (cultural) context. Afterall questions are ‘quest’-ions.

It is said that he who captures the epoch, captures the story. Conversely, he who captures the story, captures the epoch. Who are the storytellers of our times? J.K Rowling, Dan Brown, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Carl Sagan and a host of Hollywood/Bollywood producers are the story tellers who capture the imagination of our generation. We are called to be Story tellers/keepers. We need to re-tell the gospel story in a manner that would capture the imagination of contemporary audiences. It is not just enough to re-tell the gospel “attractively” and “intelligently” to command a listening by contemporary audience. It is important that we re-tell the gospel story “responsibly”.

True, telling the gospel story in an information age isn’t easy. But then, every generation of story keepers have done it facing the odds. We can (and we must) re-tell the story of Jesus and keep the story alive. Believe me, blogs are a great way of connecting with Generation WHY?