Jayakumar Christian - God of the Empty-Handed: Poverty, Power and the Kingdom of God

God of the Empty-Handed

Poverty, Power and the Kingdom of God

Revised edition

Jayakumar Christian

ACORN PRESS

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Copyright 1999, 2011 by Jayakumar Christian.
Revised edition.

First edition published by MARC books, 1999, World Vision International, 800 W. Chestnut Avenue, Monrovia CA 91016-3198, USA.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Dewey Number: 261.8325

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this work may be reproduced by electronic or other means without the permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Quotations marked NIV are taken from the New International Version of the Bible. Copyright 1973, 1978 International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Cover, text design and layout: Cogdell Design & Fine Art, Fullarton SA.
Printed by Openbook Howden Design & Print, Adelaide SA.

Dedicated to my wife and best friend, Vidhu, and our loving children and partners, Jayanth and Vikram.

Contents

Preface to the First Edition

The Bible is packed with numerous injunctions and commands calling the people of God to minister to the foreigner, alien, fatherless, widow and poor in their midst. Such ministry on the part of the church is not optional it is commanded by our Lord. Much has been written by people from all the various Christian traditions, encouraging the church to seriously commit itself to participate in the mission of Jesus:

to preach good news to the poor proclaim freedom for the prisoners [seek] recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lords favor (Lk 4:1819, NIV).

Until now, however, those of us who teach missions have been sorely handicapped by the absence of scholarly, compassionate and readable text that focuses on the poor, powerless, oppressed and marginalised. At long last, Jayakumar Christian has provided us with just such a work.

Christians writing is no ivory tower theorising. He draws from his heritage in India and allows his reflection to flow from his more than 30 years of experience ministering among the poor. His teaching, mobilising and writing have been shaped by his ministry, primarily in India, with World Vision. He knows his topic well, and he demonstrates outstanding depth of wisdom in his vision of mission among, with and through the poor. He shows a profound personal relationship with the God of the Empty-Handed. And the suggestions he makes for responding to the powerlessness of the poor are practical, contextually appropriate, empowering and transformational. These derive from Christians wide-ranging familiarity with a broad spectrum of perspectives on the matter of poverty.

Several years ago, it was my joy to sit with Jayakumar Christian over the course of 40 weeks in a doctoral seminar from which flowed a book that Jude Tiersma and I edited, God So Loves the City (MARC, 1994). That book includes a chapter by Dr Christian, Toward Redefining Urban Poverty. My life was enriched, my perspective enlarged and my heart challenged through the in-depth interaction of those months.

This book has a unique contribution to make to the field of mission among the poor. Here is a profoundly disturbing, yet refreshingly clear view of reality as seen through the eyes of the poor. And what we see, Christian teaches us, is that poverty is made up of a number of domains of powerlessness. Powerlessness at every level of existence is the issue. Christian mission, then, should involve an interdisciplinary search for appropriate responses to the challenge of the powerlessness of the poor.

The book is divided into three parts: Learning from History, Learning from the Poor, and Learning about the Kingdom of God. Part One should some day be published as a book in its own right. It gives a thorough yet concise overview of the Christian response to poverty one of the best I have ever seen.

In Part Two, Christian challenges his readers to look at reality through the eyes of the poor. What we see is a deeply moving picture of powerlessness permeating a number of domains of the life of the poor. Poverty is about power relationships, Christian affirms. Dr Christian deals with the poor not as objects of our mission, but as fully human subjects who represent a unique challenge, valued and loved persons whose world view is shaped by power relationships. Here Christian shows how the poor can teach us about their world. In doing so, he breaks new ground in the subject and offers us another step forward beyond the older confines of discussions about evangelism and social action that have plagued evangelical missiology for the past half-century.

Part Three is full of creative and practical suggestions as to how we can allow a kingdom of God missiology to guide us toward appropriate responses to the powerlessness of the poor. Here the reader will find a holistic, integral, ecological approach to issues of mission among the poor, a way around the sometimes reductionist, myopic, often paternalistic pitfalls experienced by Christian mission among the poor. Christian calls for approaches that address simultaneously the physical, socioeconomic, relational and spiritual domains of povertys world view.

Who should read this book? Insights in this book will be very helpful for pastors of churches all over the world, Christian relief and development workers, short-term and long-term cross-cultural missionaries, Christians involved in mission in the cities of our globe, rural and urban evangelists, and students of missiology. This book should become a basic text in mission courses in Bible schools, seminaries and mission training programs around the world.

Jayakumar Christian has helped me to rethink the way I understand mission among the poor. He has broadened my horizons, challenged my perceptions and touched my heart. I am deeply grateful for his ministry to me through this work. May we who are the people of the God of the Empty-handed commit ourselves more fully to living out the mission of Jesus Christ in responding to the powerlessness of the poor.

Charles Van Engen
Arthur F. Glasser Professor of Biblical Theology of Mission
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, California

Preface to the Second Edition

It has been a humbling experience over these last few years to see God using these five loaves and two fish the book God of the Empty-Handed