The third OMC conference was held in Columbus Ohio in 1996. The title of the conference was “Gospel in the Era of Transformation”. Glancing from the title, one would think that FICA did not know theology and worse was starting to adopt a social – liberation theology. For one, the Gospel will remain the same in every era; and second, the Gospel is the transforming force behind every human era. So, what the title really meant and what was FICA’s intention behind the title?
To answer those questions, we need look back the context and the dynamics in FICA at that time. In 1995, Indonesia was a bustling country. Indonesia was like the present China trying to lower inflation and control the economy so it would not be overheated. The housing price shot to the roof and business expanded in meteoric rate. It seemed like there were tens of bank opened in a year ready to lend the money.
The dynamics had changed in FICA as well. More and more students came to get under-graduate degrees instead of graduate degrees. Majority of the fellowships in West Coast had been incorporated to be a local church and left student fellowships concentrated mainly in the mid-west. However, the main shift in the internal FICA was majority of the staffs had come from Chinese background. Their background carried a lot of baggage. The main baggage was and still is materialism. The overwhelming family pressure for their children to focus on wealth left them to ignore to live out the Gospel.
When things are good, it is easy to ignore God. Most of FICA’s staffs from Chinese background were living in prosperity and insulated from the human right violations, injustice, and pain experienced by the rest of Christian communities and by the poor. Through the third OMC, FICA was asking the question of how to be the Gospel to Indonesia at that time. This was the right question to ask then and it still is the right question today. We were dwelling on that question 3 years before the bottom fell because of what God had revealed to us in the previous OMC.
With the sense of urgency and awe, we realize that we need to be transformed first before we could be the agent of transformation. The second and third OMCs were used by God to help us see the real danger of evil in Indonesia, which we otherwise would not see. These OMCs were also used to prepare us for what would have been God’s plan all along, which was to reform and restore Indonesia through His people.