Glocal Series: “Why Glocal”
Why Glocal?
If you’ve been a part of Trinity Life Church (TLC) for even a little while, you’ve probably heard terms like domain engagement, with this being what Mike, Missy and I have been trying to develop for the church in West Bank. This blog post will further explain domain engagement and how all Christians all called to, and may participate, in this process.
Societal Servants
Jesus says, in his Sermon on the Mount, citizens of the Kingdom of God (Christians) are the salt of the earth. At the point in history that Matthew was written, salt was primarily used as a preservative to prevent decay. By way of implication this means that Christians are preventing the decay of society. Jesus continues to say that they are also light that point to God by their good works. Jesus uses the rest of the sermon to highlight that the former and latter is possible through thinking and acting in ways that are commonplace in the Kingdom of God. Importantly, Christians are salt and light because of being the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:2-10), which is only possible by being in Christ.
In short, Christians, being in Christ, preserve society and point people to worship God through a Kingdom-cultural lifestyle.
Societal Sectors
Domains, most of which is included in the diagram below, constitute the grid of society. Christians, as they live and work in one or more of these domains, are to be salt and light. Notably, a key way they may do this is by leveraging their vocation, gifts, talents and skills in the domain in which they are involved.
Local Engagement+ Global Engagement= Glocal Engagement
Consider the New Common (formerly 225 Wellesley), a space that TLC is leasing for domain engagement in St James Town. Residents of this neighbourhood have expressed they are experiencing poverty. Some of these residents have started businesses but have said they need help expanding. In this example, Christians in TLC who are involved in the economics domain may partner with these residents to host workshops about marketing and accounting, and through leveraging these skills Christians can be salt and light in St James Town.
In addition, the purpose of Mike, Missy and I travelling to the West Bank is to establish the ground work for TLC to participate in domain engagement globally, as Jesus doesn’t restrict the local church to a certain geographical area—in fact, it’s the opposite! And as you are empowered to engage locally, you will start to impact the world globally.
Because of this, our current local engagement team will become our Glocal Engagement team. We’re really excited to start taking this new bold step of faith into what God is calling us to do. This week we’ll be sharing more specifically what this means for our church along with some of our experiences participating in different domains.