A Statement Of Faith And Mission
We believe: As people of God we are called and sent to keep hope alive in the midst of despair, to nurture faith in the God of life while opposing the forces of death, to sustain love and solidarity among people in a wolfish global society and to participate in God’s covenant with the poor and with the earth, as followers of Christ Jesus expecting God’s reign of justice and peace to come.
As a theological community we believe that worship plays an important role in our personal and corporate life. As a response to God’s gracious call, we try to worship the Trinitarian God with a meaningful liturgy which is relevant to our Indian Context. In this, our Chapel which is situated in the centre of our Campus, plays an important role in our life.
The mission requires commitment as well as understanding. We have to be equipped for various ministries in Church and Society. Training in a theological seminary is one of the ways in which this takes place. T.T.S. provides space, time and facilities to tap resources which may help the Churches in their ongoing task to equip its members, male and female, young and old for its ministries. We want our theological reflections, our worship and work to be relevant to the context in which we are placed. That is why we work in the Tamil medium, study Tamil culture and other religions, and that is why we learn to analyse Indian Society, get trained in Pastoral work and communication, and to develop musical talents and skills in song-writing and drama.
We want to do theology not merely through reading books and listening to lectures, but mainly through our involvement in the society. Our Internship and Off-Campus programmes and the R.T.I. Exposure are part of the academic requirements and help us to do theology in a meaningful way.
In exposures we encourage each other to listen to people’s life stories, get to understand people’s mind and ways of communication, to empathise with their problems and to understand the causes of their suffering through critical analysis.
In our attempts to be relevant, we seek to listen to the biblical message as the source of our faith. It gives us a spiritual grounding for personal formation, for a critical prophetic vision for Christ-centered discipleship and for God and people centered hope.
It teaches us to be relevant by going against the stream, towards the source. It brings and keeps us in touch with the one who goes ahead towards Galilee, towards people who live in the periphery, in the shadow of death. It sensitizes us to turn aside to God’s presence and all in the burning bushes of people’s suffering.
We try to find ways to support people in their struggles against the structures and forces which harm them, be it economic policies of global accumulation, social and economic discrimination on the basis of caste domination and patriarchal power, or the oppression of religious and ethnic minorities. We are particularly concerned that our Christian involvement will be in co-operation with others, in order to strengthen the secular base of Indian Society against the immense dangers of religious communalism.
We dream of a Church and theology which witnesses to the presence of the God for whom the last comes first, whose wisdom revealed in the foolishness of the cross – knows and open ways of solidarity and love, which include those who are excluded.
We place ourselves under the call of Jeremiah not to boast of wealth and power, but to grow in the knowledge of the LORD “who practices steadfast love and justice in the earth” (Jer. 924).
