Agora Vision Statement Draft

Who are we?

"The Agora Movement seeks to inspire & train laypeople in the marketplace to live out and proclaim the lordship of Christ over every domain of their life."

Mission

As a grassroots movement, the Agora seeks to encourage Christians in Malaysia to develop a robust and biblical worldview in which we fulfill our different vocations in the public square.

The church in Malaysia faces contemporary challenges to her life and mission in areas such as ethics, modern science, religious pluralism, church-state relations, culture, relativism, economics etc.

It's our conviction that the great challenges for the Church today are widespread biblical illiteracy and inability to engage the culture constructively and critically. As a result, our witness for Christ suffers.

Vision

We seek to establish these values into the sphere of our influence

1. The Contemplative Christianity – to think through the issues of life, faith and culture with a mind submitted to the Word of God. To spend our energy and intellects on knowing God and discerning His will and purpose for our times. To marry thinking to emotive worship, to thus become the wholesome couple God designed them to be. To inform our emotions with our doctrines, and to feed our spirituality with high quality input that will bring about a high quality spirituality and maturity.

2. The Hermeneutic Community – the contemplative Christian is then committed in fellowship with like minded believers to benefit from each other in teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, 17 that he/she may be competent, equipped for every good work.

3. The Mission Dispersion – The community then parts to their various callings and places in the marketplace with a mission focus to bring Christ light into the darkness and to reconcile man to Him. This maybe done indirectly or directly. Pre evangelism is as important as evangelism.

Doctrinal Statement

We are evangelical in that we believe the Bible is trustworthy and reliable, and Jesus is the only way for sinners to be reconciled with God.

We welcome discerning laypeople to work together in a multidisciplinary sharing to cross-pollinate ideas and contribute towards loving the Lord with all our minds.

We are not scholars, though we diligently draw upon scholarly resources. We may not have all the answers, but we shall strive to direct those who ask to those who can answer to the best of our abilities.

We have a bias towards using simple, understandable language in our conversations. But we also seek to elevate people in their understanding to progress and move on to the more complex.

We do not issue theological 'fatwas', but we do hope to bring out issues into open dialogue, even debate, in a spirit of love and respect.

We have a bias towards evangelism and translating theology into practice (praxis).