Mission in the Marketplace

From 7 December

Glad Sounds Opening at Starhill - Dec 2009

'Louis Vuitton is in Starhill. Bulgari is in Starhill. And now, Glad Sounds is in Starhill.'

With those words Bishop Philip Lok of the Lutheran Church in Malaysia and Singapore opened the newest branch of the church's bookstore in Starhill Gallery, one of the luxury shopping centers in Kuala Lumpur's exclusive Bukit Bintang district.

The opening of Glad Sounds at Starhill couldn't come be more timely or seasonally appropriate. Amid the annual holiday shoppers flooding malls here and at home and litanies of woe rising from pulpits worldwide decrying the pop-culture, consumeristic highjacking of the Christmas holiday, the story of this store's opening carries with it a subtle critique of the overly simplistic counter-cultural tendency to make Christ and commerce mutually exclusive.

In places like Malaysia, where for Chinese and Indian Christians the sharing of the Good News of one's faith with the Muslim Malay majority is punishable by severe fines or imprisonment and similar social stigmas and pressures keep curious Muslims from entering church buildings, shopping centers and store fronts act as a secular sanctuary of sorts - providing a safe place to explore and, at the very least, entertain the idea of The Other.

The anonymity and neutrality involved in the exchange of money for goods and/or services actually makes the marketplace an ideal setting for ministry. [If an accusing glance were to come one's way, a shoulder shrug and statement of 'Only Shopping' would provide an easy escape route.]Underscoring this main point, during the grand opening of Glad Sounds it was announced that the first customer of the new branch had indeed been 'a member of the majority religion,' to which those present responded with muted cheer - for a new point of entry had been established to reach out to that population.

Using the hands of businessmen and shopkeepers alike, God's work can now be done among the well-heeled patrons of Tiffany & Co. as it among those on the other end of the social spectrum like migrant workers from Nepal and indigenous populations of Orang Asli.