Friday, October 5, 2007


A group formed for the laity of the Mar Thoma Church scattered all over the world to express their opinions freely without any fear or retribution from the church so as to guide the church to transform itself to the reality that it is a global church. Mar Thoma church originated as a movement of the laity in the past in central Travanocre, which is part of Kerala now. Now it is the duty of the laity to lead the church to move forward and help it to transform as a global church by changing its policies, pracitices and precedents and constitution written about 150 years ago only to cater the needs of laity in Kerala. There are several laity faced with difficult situations in their life, but the church due to its failure to accept its global nature has disregarded such situations leaving so many laity without any solutions in real life situations like baptism, marriage and even funeral. So many laity are disatisfied with the way in which the church handled their situations and may have to leave the church or became disinterested in the church. We have to search for the lost ones and we cannot ignore the reality that laity are disinterested in the church affairs. We need to lead the church in its effort to become a global church by suggesting concrete ideas and plans so that the church may change its polices, practices without changing its fundamental belief, faith, and heritage. We need to address how our traditional liturgy can be used in a more contemporary way without losing its originality. We need to educate our young generation about our rich heritage, faith and practices, constituion, and history of our church. This is not a forum for negative criticism about the church or its authority. But we need your ideas and suggestions how the church can change itself as a global church to cater the needs of the laity living all over the world.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I really appreciate the efforts taken by Mr. Lal Varghese in the right direction to make our Chruch a global church.