Abstract:
This article proposes a critical paradigm to identify missional areas that have received scant
attention from the church and to theorise ways in which alternative modes of doing mission in
the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present a solution against tendencies
which marginalise and exploit the poor. Examining ways in which local churches in South
Africa responded to challenges posed by COVID-19, the article identifies socioeconomic
challenges that have been neglected by the church to posit that COVID-19 has disrupted
traditional practices and exposed missional blind spots. Building on Keum’s ideas of ‘reversal
of roles’ and a shift of the mission concept from ‘mission to the margins’ to ‘mission from the
margins’, the article notes that shifting of religion from public to private sphere as a result of
COVID-19 will redefine the church and proposes that church mission should be located where
the poor people are. The article concludes that COVID-19 disruptions allow for emergence of
alternative ways of being church and new modes of socioeconomic organisation with new
possibilities presented through an alternative theoretical hermeneutics of missiology that
locates experiences of the poor at the centre.
CONTRIBUTION: This article represents a systematic and practical reflection within a paradigm
in which the intersection of philosophy, religious studies, social sciences, humanities and
natural sciences generate an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary
contested discourse.
