Discipleship, Spiritualities and Dialogue work with member churches, ecumenical and interfaith partners, government and civil society to offer a more intentional way to affirm the agency of those who are marginalized, to participate in their struggles and share their hopes; explore together ways to overcome marginalizing tendencies; and to resist/confront forces of marginalization and exclusion in and across specific contexts of the world. This programme area also offers a timely intervention towards renewed shared theological reflections and analyses, advocacy, action, and communication at, on, from and beyond the margins with the hope of encouraging and transforming churches and societies to be more just, responsive and inclusive.
In the midst of a violent, abused and grieving world we are called to rediscover radical discipleship
A re-envisioning of Christian discipleship, however, has to take into account Christianity’s part in colonizing violence and occupation. The deeper work calls for a post and decolonial modelling of the body of Christ. Our ecclesial life together must be a life in dialogue and conversation to transform discipleship, de-centering it from the grip of coloniality and empire tendencies.
In the midst of a violent, abused and grieving world we are called to rediscover radical discipleship; to live distinctively open and sharing lives growing as resilient communities; to witness to God’s offer of full and flourishing life, as embodied love in practice, demonstrating an empathetic spirituality in our work and witness; and to live as citizens of the coming new heaven and earth.
1. Confessing Witness to Life Flourishing Discipleship
a) Global DARE will focus on bringing newer, younger and cutting-edge scholarship (scholars and practitioners) to the ‘weaving mat’ to explore and interrogate new models of mission and evangelism.
2. Spiritualities in Conversation
a) Global pilgrimage: Drinking from many wells across member churches/regions to listen, experience, explore and map spiritualities on the ground and how these interact in contexts that are plural (cultural, religious, secular etc) and its influences/implications for our understanding discipleship and models of mission and evangelism.
b) Regional Workshops to reimagine discipleship (away from colonial overtones) as deepening resilience, as resistance, and to witness to life flourishing spirituality and discipleship.
3. Consultations on Discipleship, Spiritualities and Dialogue
a) Eco-feminist and womanist discipleship is very important to CWM’s witness to nurturing and building life flourishing communities that includes the ‘whole’ inhabited world.
b) Black, Dalit and indigenous liberating discipleship: The witness and struggle of communities in this new Heaven and Earth will be expressed in the lived realities and faith of those who are presently consigned to the margins of existence.
c) Bodies and Embodied Discipleship: The struggle for a New Heaven and Earth is one that has to be undertaken in the knowledge that our present ways of being and living are not ones that has affirmed all God’s creation.
