Indonesia is the biggest archipelagic nation on this planet. It’s made up of an astounding 17,000 islands, with 70 percent of the population living in coastal areas. Many view the country as a divers’ haven since it is home to vibrant coral reefs teeming with colourful fish, and it’s also where the biggest mangrove ecosystems on the planet exist.
But my country is facing a severe marine ecological crisis today due to destructive fishing, pollution, climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions. Our ecosystem of mangroves, seagrass, and coral reefs is in decline. Fish stock can also be decreasing, while other sea creatures are continuously poisoned by land-based pollution.
This crisis is a serious threat within the Indonesian context, where ecological and social lives are sometimes inseparable. Over half of the population’s annual protein intake comes from fish and seafood, and around 7 million people depend heavily on the ocean for his or her livelihoods. But now, greater than 2.5 million Indonesian households involved in small-scale fishery activities are in danger of losing their lifestyle and source of income. Fishing grounds are increasingly limited, triggering conflicts amongst traditional fishermen.
Poor people in our coastal areas have suffered probably the most resulting from their dependence on the ocean for survival. Many use traditional techniques and equipment reminiscent of pudi—fishing weirs that channel fish to a selected location—and bubu, fish traps product of bamboo, to gather various sorts of seafood during low tide to feed themselves.
The marine ecological crisis, nonetheless, is increasingly destroying their source of food. It’s also erasing our culture of caring for the needy, in that coastal communities often give priority to the poor on the subject of gathering provisions from the ocean.
In other words: The sea gives us food and cultivates compassion for the poor amongst us. But each its sustenance and communal care at the moment are in peril.
Reflecting on the normal practices of Indonesian coastal communities and churches, I offer the concept and practice of “blue” diakonia (pronounced “dee-ak-on-ee’-ah”), the Greek word for service and ministry from which we get the English word deacon.
Australian scholar John N. Collins’s study of diakonia within the New Testament and in ancient Greek sources stresses that the service and ministry conducted by humans point to God’s mandate to take care of the poor. Danish missiologist Knud Jørgensen also sees diakonia as an invite to take part in God’s work of taking care of and liberating the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.
Most Indonesian believers regard diakonia as a primarily human affair, demonstrated through caring for the poor by providing them with food or financial support. Such an understanding, nonetheless, doesn’t incorporate ways during which creation itself takes care of the underprivileged.
In my view, we’d like to develop a blue diakonia that acknowledges and supports the ocean—which feeds the poor and provides life to all who depend on it—as an energetic participant within the triune God’s work.
A foretaste of the dominion
A 2023 survey by government agency Statistics Indonesia found that 25.9 million people live in poverty within the country. This makes diakonia an important practice amongst believers, who comprise 11 percent of the population within the Muslim-majority nation.
There are three diakonia models which might be widely accepted in Indonesian Christian communities, in line with Indonesian theologian Yosef Purnama Widyatmadja: diakonia karitatif (charity), diakonia reformatif (individual/community development by training) and diakonia transformatif (structural/social transformation). Integrating the ecological crisis into how Indonesian churches practice diakonia is a promising latest development. In fact, there’s growing interest in a theological discourse often known as eco-diakonia, which seeks to be certain that nature keeps expressing its agency, especially as a source of food, and that the poor have access to that food sustainably.
But in blue diakonia, it’s specifically the ocean—not nature more broadly—that Christians strive to serve and protect. The waters that cover the face of this planet are God’s good creation, as are all of the creatures inside it, which he blesses and empowers to “be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water within the seas” (Gen. 1:10, 20–22). The sea and its creatures experience God’s love as he takes care of and renews them (Ps. 104:24–30; 145:9).
Moreover, the ocean and its creatures will not be outcasts but a part of God’s coming kingdom. As American theologian J. Richard Middleton says, the phrase there was now not any sea in Revelation 21:1 is sweet news, since the sea will now not be utilized by the Roman Empire as a method to expand their exploitative economic power. Instead, the ocean will participate in worshiping God as latest creation: Its creatures will join others in heaven, on earth, and under the earth to sing to “him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb” (Rev. 5:13).
Through this angle, churches can proclaim the gospel (Mark 16:15) by letting the ocean and its creatures have a foretaste of the approaching kingdom of God. Preserving and restoring the ocean in order that it keeps embodying its role of providing food, particularly for the poor, is that foretaste—and an outworking of blue diakonia.
In the province of East Nusa Tenggara, the evangelical church Gereja Masehi Injili di Timor (GMIT) has sought to enhance marine conditions in its vicinity for the past five years.
In 2020, the church partnered with the Indonesian Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries to transplant coral into the Savu Sea National Marine Park, situated throughout the province, to revive the park’s ecosystem. Since 2021, GMIT has also planted and brought care of mangroves on Savu Island. This project is “an expression of our faith as we preserve God’s gift of life, restoring and protecting mangroves just because the mangroves protect us from cyclones,” said GMIT’s former synod moderator Mery Kolimon.
“We just cannot let the mangrove ecosystem [be] destroyed—we’d like to assist restore it because that’s our call as God’s people,” added Rowi Kaka Mone, certainly one of the project leaders.
Other Indonesian churches perform ministries that aim to conserve the waters around them. For a few years, two churches particularly—Gereja Protestan Maluku (GPM) and Gereja Kristen Injili di Tanah Papua—have carried out the normal sustainable fishing practice of sasi laut, which preserves marine ecosystems by keeping an area free from fishing activities for a selected time frame, starting from three months to 2 years.
People often call GPM’s practice of sasi laut by one other name: sasi gereja, or “church sasi.” This concept “carries the blessing of the local church and, for believers, the fear of God. To break ‘church sasi’ is to commit a sin,” said a Forests News report.
Caring for widows and orphans
Nevertheless, regarding the ocean only as a recipient of diakonia—Christian service and ministry—isn’t enough, as this angle could overshadow the ocean’s agency in creation.
It is true that the ocean needs humans to take care of it. But the ocean also has decisive agencies that we should always recognize. The sea isn’t a passive object that’s fully depending on humans. Examining how the ocean plays a significant role in carrying out God’s mission, even in its recovery from anthropogenic damage, helps us realize that humans not only do something for the ocean but additionally with it.
What this implies is that the ocean can be thought to be diakonos, a deacon or minister that takes care of the poor by providing food for them. The coastal communities of Indonesia perceive the ocean as a living entity that nurtures and sustains their lives with physical nourishment. For instance, the maritime people of Lamalera in East Nusa Tenggara call the ocean ina fae belé or sedo basa hari lolo, phrases that describe how the ocean is an all-loving mother who bears and raises her children and supplies every little thing they need.
A more specific portrayal of the ocean caring for the poor is present in a 1997 study, led by Indonesian theologian and anthropologist Tom Therik, of the fishing activities of Pantai Rote, Semau Island’s maritime community. In the local language and in traditional poetry, the poor are called ina falu (widows) and ana mak (orphans). Twice a day, these widows and orphans head out to reap aquatic plants and sea creatures during low tide. This is a widely accepted cultural norm locally, because the poor cannot afford boats or adequate fishing equipment and may only depend on the bounty of the ocean for day by day sustenance.
The sea shapes the people’s culture of taking care of the poor: The waters in that area are a part of the Coral Triangle, also often known as the “Amazon of the Seas” since it accommodates probably the most marine biodiversity on the planet. It’s home to 76 percent of coral species in addition to six out of seven species of marine turtles, and it serves as a prolific tuna spawning and nursery ground.
Perceiving the ocean as God’s energetic agent, as I argue here, isn’t alien to our Christian faith. The Bible explicitly does so. In Genesis 1:22, God blesses and commands sea creatures to “be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water within the seas.” In Genesis 4:11–12, the land is portrayed as standing against evil by opening its mouth to receive Abel’s blood and refusing to yield its crops for Cain.
These biblical personifications of creation also allow us to acknowledge the numerous role of the ocean in God’s liberation of the Israelites from their oppression in Egypt (Ex. 14:20–21). The sea withdraws itself and piles as much as let the Israelites go through dry ground while it stops Pharaoh’s army from pursuing them, says Indonesian biblical scholar Margaretha Apituley.
Perceiving the ocean as diakonos—an emissary of God’s work—is subsequently a part of a biblical framework. Just because the Sea of Galilee facilitates Christ’s work by providing two fishes, alongside five loaves, to feed the multitude (Mark 6:30–44), the Indonesian seas facilitate Christ’s work by offering all that swims and grows inside it as food for the poor within the archipelago’s coastal communities.
In essence, blue diakonia is a mission for and with the ocean. It recognizes and respects the ocean as an energetic participant in God’s work. As churches support the flourishing of the seas as a method of feeding the poor, Christians and the ocean can even change into co-diakonos, or co-ministers, of God.
Encounters between Indonesian traditional maritime cultures and Christianity might be a vital opportunity for churches to handle the marine ecological crisis and its negative impacts on the poor. My hope is that blue diakonia is usually a mission that belongs not only to Indonesian churches but additionally to churches throughout the planet, just as Jesus commanded his disciples, “You give them something to eat” (Mark 6:37).
Elia Maggang holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK. Based in Indonesia, his theological work revolves across the intersections of Christianity and Indigenous traditions, especially their theology and practice regarding the ocean and humans’ relationship with the ocean.
