“Everything that is not growing will slowly decay,” says Dr Bambang Budijanto, General Secretary of the Asia Evangelical Alliance (AEA), as he highlights the challenges facing the Church in Asia today. Following AEA’s 11th General Assembly in Mongolia, Budijanto and other Asian leaders have now published their reflections on what they see as the only way forward: repentance, focusing on discipleship within families and truly empowering younger leaders to participate in God’s mission.
Held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from August 7-12, 2024, the General Assembly brought together two hundred Christian leaders from national Evangelical Alliances across the region under the theme “Disciple or Die”.
Commenting on the radical choice of words, Budijanto emphasizes the dynamics of living faith and spiritual growth. “Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, but to grow spiritually, we need to help others grow in Christ (discipleship). We grow by helping others grow; conversely, you will slowly die (spiritually) as long as you ignore the last command of Jesus.”
He emphasizes that “holistic discipleship is the only strategy Jesus gave the Church to fulfill its mission on earth as the Kingdom of God. There is no middle ground. Either a church is moving toward fulfilling its mission as the sign of the kingdom of God, through discipleship, or it is slowly decaying.”
Budijanto points to a 2015 study by Barna Research Group that found that only 20% of Christians in the US were involved in any discipleship activities. Similarly, a 2019 study by the Bilangan Research Center put the number in Indonesia at 37%, but the percentage was lower for the younger generation.
“The majority of ‘Christ-followers’ in the US, in Indonesia, and probably all over Asia and the whole world disregard discipleship and are contributing to the church’s slow decay,” Budijanto laments.
He considers the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 as “God’s gift for us” and the primary path to personal spiritual growth and the way for the Church to thrive and transform the world. “Only through obedience to the Great Commission, where every church prioritizes discipleship as its core business and every believer commits to discipling others, will the world be transformed,” he says.
Empowering younger leaders as reinforcements, not replacements
Sanya Ladaphongpattana from Thailand sees the emerging issues with lack of discipleship among the younger generation as a result of shortcomings of the older generation.
“We need to shift our paradigm and change our mindset paving way for younger generation to lead,” he says, adding that “the world and situations today are very different and need a ‘new wine skin’.”
He believes that most countries in Asia today have a common problem in the “crisis in leadership” that causes young people to stop going to church. He says that this is a key theme that emerged from his conversations with Christian youth in Thailand.
“They want to see role models, servant leaders who have character, which is quite hard to find,” he says. The General Assembly was a wakeup call for leaders “to reflect, repent and change our perceptions toward children and youth. To encourage and support them through discipleship, give them opportunities to lead and serve, allow them to make mistakes and grow.”
Rei Crizaldo from the Philippines, Coordinator of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Theological Commission and a younger leader himself, echoed the importance of letting the younger generation get involved early on to allow them to be partners in leadership.
“Focusing on the young people has always been considered important. But what is often lacking is the intentional effort to consider the next generation not as ‘replacements’ for the coming future but as ‘reinforcements’ in the here and now,” he says, adding that it “demands a commitment to make spaces for them and involve them in ministry and in critical conversations wherein decisions about how ministry ‘for’ and ‘with’ them are being developed.”
He also emphasized the importance of equipping younger people with proper theology that speaks to their reality. He says churches need to “engage the young people not with more ‘entertainment’ but with deep ‘theological anchors’ they can rely on as they embark in a world drowning in information but starving for wisdom.”
Crizaldo calls for theology not to be restricted to specialists in seminaries but “something that is owned and nurtured by the whole people of God” and that addresses “everyday issues of what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus” rather than technical points of doctrine.
“Good theologizing and effective disciple-making have to dovetail if Asia is to see disciples who can persevere through persecution and suffering on one hand and on the other address the growing number of false teachers and spread of strange teachings especially in digital spaces,” he says.
Discipleship must start in the family
Another key issue that several leaders highlighted is the need for family discipleship at home.
“One of the most profound insights that emerged from our table discussions was the essential role of authentic relationships in discipleship. We often strategize about programs and initiatives, but the foundation truly lies within our families and close communities,” commented John P. Mridha from Bangladesh who serves as a member of the AEA Youth Commission.
“Witnessing families being the bedrock of mission and discipleship underscored the truth that ministry begins at home. It’s in these intimate settings that faith is nurtured, values are instilled, and future generations are equipped to carry the torch of the gospel forward,” he says.
Crizaldo agrees: “Discipleship of the next generation cannot continue to be ‘outsourced’ to the church and its leaders, it will have to commence at home, with the primary responsibility for discipleship formation taken up by the whole family.”
The church should consider the potential of parents and the elderly as the primary force for life-to-life disciple-making, he says.
“This attention towards the importance of the ‘family’ as an immediate site for discipleship all the more becomes important as today’s generation, the GenZs and Alphas, have less and less experience, exposure, and even fascination towards traditional Christian routines, such as participation in weekend church services.”
In a joint reflection, Gwen De Rozario-Seah and Grace Hee who serve as Directors of the AEA Family & Children Commission and AEA Women’s Commission respectively, also highlighted the great missional potential that lies in families: “Spiritually healthy families are missional and will help accelerate the great commission in an exponential way.”
However, they lament that “unfortunately, the opposite is true” and warn that “if we continue with this ‘great omission’ and do not take intentional discipleship of families seriously then our members will continue to have a ‘church centric’ mindset, believing that it is not their responsibility to reach the lost or disciple their families.”
They express concern about the trends of domestic abuse in Christian homes, the rise in porn addiction and the “slew of ideological and societal challenges facing the next generation” that they believe will only worsen, unless there is a change in paradigm.
“Dysfunction in the family will impact the church of today and beyond,” De Rozario-Seah and Hee say.
Recognizing that many church leaders today are struggling with retaining their second, third or fourth generation members who have grown up in the church, they caution that “the turning away of hearts most likely started long before the day they walked away from Christ.”
“We had ‘left the back-door open’; because parents, grandparents were not intentional about family discipleship and the church omitted to equip them. Family discipleship must be at the very foundation of our generational discipleship strategy.”
Despite these challenges, Budijanto is hopeful that change is possible if the Church becomes a place where the older and younger generation come together in following Jesus Christ.
“We envision expanding intergenerational discipleship movements and initiatives, fully involving members of the younger generation in helping to lead these movements with a new vision (Acts 2:17),” he says.
“We pray for revival, a significant movement of the Holy Spirit, mission movements, prayer movements, and discipleship movements to sweep across Asia and beyond in these coming years.”
