Our Father, thank you that we can serve you by your grace and your mercy. We praise you that you are the Lord, that you are good, that we know and are assured that you do know all that happens, you understand, that you care and that you are the one who rules. We praise you, O God, for your Word. We thank you for your abiding presence with us by your Holy Spirit. We thank you for evidence in our own hearts, in lives around us, in fulfillment of your promises that we see, in history that we see in our own day, we're assured off for the future. We thank you for your faithfulness, for your commitment to continue to work at redeeming this world. Thank you again for calling us into your service. We ask that as we meet together, you all, guide us and help us. Thank you for other classes that are meeting now. We pray for your guidance there as well. We are thankful for those who pray for us here, who support us financially, who are concerned about how we become better equipped to serve you, and we're glad that we are a part of the wider body of Christ. And as we meet together, we ask again for your guidance and for your help in Jesus' name, Amen. Again, if you did not get the assignments of the other day that we passed out, the major assignment may appear on the table for you. All right, we are on topic 25 of evangelism or social issues. This outline here in your syllabus is basically an outline of Shink's chapter, pages 20 to 29, which you read, and one question I gave you for your readings is to consider the matter of the word indeed paradigm. How does Shink react to the word indeed ministry paradigm and how does he deal with it? Okay. Should be both. What does he say? It's right. What else does he say? Particularly at the end of his chapter, under the last heading beyond word indeed, focus on the kingdom. That's a continuing paradigm that he has. And focusing on the kingdom would be a more unifying paradigm, I think he would say. And it is inadequate to focus on one of the other. You need both. And even beyond that by focusing on the kingdom, we need to focus on the whole, God's new order, God's kingdom. And he wants our view of what his mission in the world is and what our ministry is therein to be more seamless. And so that's how he, and I ask him about this personally. I saw him in a meeting and told him that some students who read this chapter felt as though it was sort of a needless kind of a creek, a critique, almost a semantic point to say we need to get beyond word indeed, and word indeed that paradigm does seek to encompass everything. And his reply was, well, on the one hand fair enough, but he thinks in so far as those categories are still kind of distinct categories, even though we might try to carry those two buckets together. They're going to spill out differently, and we need something that has been mixed together in one bucket, if you will, that's my analogy of what he was saying. So he wants a more theological, theoretically unified vision of the kingdom of God to move beyond that. That's an interesting point, and how, therefore, to deal with that becomes something to consider. I don't think that we should, therefore, drop the paradigm of word indeed, link those of us who use that paradigm, mean what shank and others are wanting to get at, part of what using that framework of word indeed is doing is seeking to overcome some of the bifurcation that have resulted from the history as he has outlined it. And especially the past two or three centuries in the West, as in the wake of enlightenment thought, there's been a wedge driven between the real, observable scientific material world and the more ethereal, undefinable value-laden, religious, ethical world, the word indeed ministry, the need to be about mercy ministry and evangelism together as part of one gospel ministry, that's very important, and the need to have a word indeed paradigm seeks to overcome that difference. That is a real divide for us, and many people, you know, you can trace it back to a material spiritual divide in Greek thought, but certainly in modern thought. And it's not just in the Western thinking, you can see in much of the modern Christian world that same divide between kind of social ministry and evangelistic ministry, and certainly in a place like Japan, the divide has been very, very clear. And evangelicals are attempting to bring them back together, but along with shank, I have heard a number of non-Western evangelicals, whether from Africa or from Latin America or from Asia. I have heard a number of them say that some of the paradigms of word indeed aren't as seamless if you will, aren't as unified as they would like them to be. Now they don't have the same intellectual heritage, perhaps, as many Western evangelicals do. And so how to recognize that and constructively work with it, I think, is the constructive solution to the matter. Yes. That provides interesting overlap. We have been in, in your case, Ethiopia and in other certain non-Western settings, there is a sense with many Christians that if it's non-Christian, non-spiritual, non-religious, therefore it's evil. And that can go hand in glove with one, a pietistically, if you will, orient a worldview that sees spiritual and religious things as good and proper and those that are worldly to be kind of off-limits. And then if you couple that with the challenge that many in the non-Western world have faced working through the gospel in recent centuries coming to them via the West and the sometimes accompanying disdain that has been held by those who have brought the gospel for their indigenous cultures, there can be the added challenge of dealing with what is, quote-unquote non-Christian, non-spiritual, and indigenous to our settings. And so how to see the wider relationship of the gospel and kingdom to everything that we are becomes an added challenge. And so that whole dynamic of what is indigenous and how it's viewed is very important. I may have mentioned about a demon student here doing a doctorate dissertation on worship in Mexico and how most evangelical Presbyterian churches in Mexico are working through the issues of music and worship and only a very few would even consider by his own research, this person is doing the dissertation, would even consider the possibility of employing traditional Mexican music and worship because of its evil associations. And so that becomes an extra connection there to that challenge for sure. Another way it gets played out in our thinking, and I've heard this, I remember hearing a story from a friend years ago, and I'm not wanting to question what he did, but the thinking behind it was interesting and illustrative, I think. He had been working as an engineer, and he said, you know, I got weary of working on projects and products that were not eternal. What's eternal are people's souls in the Word of God, and I felt like I wanted to do something of value for that which lasts eternal. So by that reasoning, he went and joined a Christian organization to work in evangelism and discipleship. Now again, I don't want to question how God led him per se, but that thinking of saying what is temporal is not valuable, what is eternal is, is laden with some misunderstandings that those of us with a more covenantal reform world view would want to question. What God wants us to do and calls us to do as a part of redeeming the whole earth is a part of what his mission is all about. Let's move to, we could talk a great deal more about that, but that's the sum of the topic. Topic 26, personal undoing. I have a few quotations in your syllabus from Sonnet, which we can review together, and I want us to discuss a little bit about what happens in cross-cultural living and experience and how one can undergo that experience of being ripped apart and feeling lost and then being reshaped into a new person. But as Sonnet points out here, as missions of the modern era were to find encountering the reality of God beyond the inherited terms of one's culture, produces a reliance on that culture as a universal normative pattern. A fresh standard of discernment is introduced by which the essence of the gospel is unscramble from one cultural yoke in order to take firm hold in a different culture. And then those who like Paul felt the raw sharpness of the break with the past were constrained to interpret it as having occurred by the action of a God whose power exceeded one cultural expression of it. These quotations are from readings that you did earlier in the term. Recently, I heard the testimony of a North American who had gone elsewhere in the world to a very different part of the world on a short-term trip. And you all have heard these sorts of testimony, perhaps you've even given one. But he was saying how he had no idea how limited his view of the world was, how limited his view of God-wise, until he went to this particular setting, was with Christian students who were different than he was, who worshiped differently than he did. And it was difficult for him to put words on it. But he said it just- and he wept. He started weeping as he told us where he said it- it just exploded. It just exploded me and exploded my experience of God. It's that sort of almost indescribable experience that I want to consider together. Under this title of personal undoing, I know for me personally, and I want to hear from some of you as you would share with the rest of us, I really had no idea what I was getting into and what we were getting into when we moved to Japan. I really didn't. And I mean, there are the obvious things of cultural adjustment about learning how to eat and learning how to handle your shoes and a missionary colleague and I who we'd each been there just for a little while and couldn't read and speak a great deal. We were on a train and on some of the trains in Japan, long distance ones, they'll bring carts down the aisle and sell you different things. And we bought what we thought was some lemonade. It wasn't just lemonade, we were tasting, we were going boy, this really tastes good, this is some kind of lemonade. You realize it was too high or it had some juice in there. And we just got to lab, we said you know we can't do anything, we really don't know anything. And there is a point in that where you just have to laugh almost just as a matter of survival. But as you're going through it, you really can't control it and you want to try to control it oftentimes just to kind of hang on to yourself. But it's something that God takes you through in a way that is really scary at times because you don't know the person that you're becoming. And this new environment, genuinely is new and it's managing you and you're not managing it. And there are times when you just are lost. You just, if you feel indescribably lost, I know in moving to Saint Louis a few years ago, there would be times and I still occasionally, I've been here over, it takes they say about two years to kind of get to where you feel in some measure, comfortable somewhere. But I would just be here and you just driving along and say, why am I here? What's going on that indescribable feeling? And when other languages involve that compounds it and it makes the adventure that much more acute. And you really do get shaped into a different sort of a person and one of the best words I know and that this I'll be quiet is that your instincts get changed about any number of things, about politics, about war, and that's particularly important at times like now where we're living in the fall of 2001. Your patriotism, a lot of things just get shifted somehow, those instincts. And so that's what I'm talking about, about this unraveling or undoing that goes, that comes about in that cross-cultural experience with any human being and perhaps in a acute way that which involves intentional Christian living and ministry. But some of the rest of you, would you share some of your experiences or observations about this process of cultural undoing, if you will, personal undoing that you undergo in the cross-cultural experience? Okay. Before I had gone to Mexico, I'd seen myself as a very relational person who liked to spend time with people all the time and could just hang out, but when I went there and spent some time with them and seeing them, sorry, seeing them in their context and kind of learning the way they did things, I was just astonished by how much more communal and familial, family-oriented they are, just one example of something that I had to get used to, when you go to someone's house or go to a small party at someone's house, here in the state you go in and you just might say hello to the host and go talk to whoever you see that you know and you would make spend your time there with us people the majority of the time or you might switch over to someone else that you know. But in Mexico you go in and you introduce yourself to every single person as soon as you arrive and that's the same way when you leave and say goodbye, you don't just say goodbye to whoever you are standing with but you say goodbye, you go and say goodbye to every single person and just that's just one small example about how they're always thinking of the whole group as opposed to individuals. And so while here in this culture I was pretty relational there, I kind of had to start over again and start seeing everything in a group way because I was very individually focused and focused on me and like if I went somewhere and met some people like for a meeting like an informal casual meeting and we weren't having any snacks or anything but I just happened to have my soda with me, they'd be like where's the soda for everyone and at first I was like oh they're just choking around but then as I got to know it's like if you show up anywhere with any food you better have it for everyone and so that's just the way things were there. So I mean I don't know if that's really yeah it's relational so I mean it affects other areas too. The next time you come to class you'll bring a snack for others of you come on, don't be shy. I know many of you have had this sort of experience as well so please share with the rest of us. Come on yeah would you? Thank you. One of the biggest things going to Latin America Argentina was getting used to the time. I just went crazy because if we had a meeting at eight o'clock I'd show up at eight o'clock and maybe they didn't come till nine and so at first it was hard for me not to take it personally in Argentina it's very European so I mean you eat the meal between eight and midnight. So if you invite someone over to your house or let me say it this way first we were invited over and someone would say come over to our house for dinner tonight. Let's eat early so come at nine and we'll eat at 10 and that was early because they might eat to 11 so you know I mean I'm about to die of hunger and it's hard to concentrate if for instance you're going to have a dinner at the church and it's announced for eight o'clock and it'll serve you till 10 but nobody it doesn't seem to bother you're the only one bothered you know everybody is you could throw the watch away but that was a big adjustment I can't say that I ever fully adjusted to that the social part of breeding for instance in Argentina you greet men hug women women hug men men hug men you kiss the women men kiss men so I didn't mind a women too bad it was really hard for the men I was a big adjustment to get used to that but I have to say having come back I've been back in states two years after years I found very cold and I found very cold I walked into I was I worked in as a church planner and I directed the Bible school and you go in the office everyone greets you with the kiss so I felt very cold coming back and it did time it's been kind of awkward coming back here I'll just share one more comment in Argentina they they they have a national drink called Mati it's kind of an herbal tea and it's you it's in a it's in a cup like this with a metal straw and you you pour a little hot water in it it's just a little bit and you drink it and then you pass it around it's gonna like the peace pipe and everybody does it 35 million people in Argentina is probably 34 million to drink Mati but the the thing about it is what happens with with Mati that you get such interaction and discussion with everyone doesn't matter if you're in an executive meeting or you're just sitting out on the grass with friends and everybody does this so at first you know I didn't really care for the Mati but I realized I liked what happened when you were with people drinking Mati if you didn't drink the Mati you kind of out an outsider but that was that was an adjustment and I really liked what happens in the interaction there yes my own testimonies to use it with the indistinguish America the culture here is quite different from that of us but I would want to just choose two things that have been even disturbing me up this time when I was at Kevin North America when I arrived the first thing I discovered was time of the way people salute the others I would see even a student we just say to professor high and then we just go away he would not take time to consider where he is speaking to his sub I mean so proud Nate I brought that maybe just a kind of dose they know but they continue with everybody with the president of the college and they can even call his name not using the title John you just go away one day when the class began the time I saw this was before a the classes began when classes began the first professor in administration was professor rice I saw him pushing his books to the class when I just ran to get the books for him on the pushing machine then he was a kind of trying to be useful me taking those books for him but I insisted then I pushed the books to the class I did a class I took back the books to his office so after two days we had a class once a week I had two days one professor professor strong was a lady she called me to her office and asked me whether if I am teaching her I mean she is teaching me and I can do that to her I couldn't know what to tell her but I only said I can do that because she's a teacher she's my teacher this accent would I in Nigeria or teachers is that how they are treated I told her yes we supposed to give respect to our teachers this is went to the whole the whole the whole of the college everybody in the college said that once students from Nigeria pushed the rice books to the office but it is not continuing on time I wonder the following after a month one the the press of the the provost of the institution called me and was asking me that he learned that this what happened I didn't stop anyway then I told him that that's what we do in Nigeria so I continued doing that the class over this was in summer so in fact I did the whole I did that in the whole of my stadium those who were teaching us it became a different thing I was looked upon as someone who doesn't know anything who doesn't know anything I went back to Nigeria even my brother here if I see a professor with something to carry he would be insist if I want to grab it he will insist so I would see a student going with our duties considering what they are there is anybody around who is a spirit officer so these two things have disturbed me very much and understand is a culture so I can't tell you what we do in our culture just what I have been experiencing I want to share with you so cultures are different in Nigeria we give respect to our spirit officers that does not take away anything from us but that has been I think maybe you have adopted a culture different otherwise I would assume that when you were time back maybe you were giving respect to your officers you may want to say that during that is not a respect but which is what is a respect at all so that is what I want to share with you thank you okay well thank you though the cross-cultural adjustments that need to be made are significant and what it does to you personally is significant and again when language is involved especially and where you are doing involved in two or three or more languages and what that does for your relationship with God can be terribly significant and speaking of Japanese and English I've heard a number of Japanese Christians tell me when they have become say been in the United States and become a Christian and then move back to Japan I've been involved in a church there they would say in Japanese but they would say it's as though I'm worshiping a different God almost here now it's not just language a lot wrapped up with that sort of a statement but sometimes the cultural location of your relationship with God can be that significant and deep yes what role does orientation play orientation can certainly be helpful for for adjusting expectations giving some coping strategies you know it's not always a necessarily a bad thing that someone cracks up someone falls apart it may not always be a bad thing ultimately but perhaps it's more constructive if you can help people cope to the point to where they can at least be functional and by the grace of God through the help of others and through some coping strategies can I don't want to say manage their way because that keeps it's too much into your control per house but at least remain functional as a human being and allow God to shape you into a you know a new sort of a hybrid person if you will culturally speaking so orientation can be helpful certainly in in giving some guidelines in terms of what to expect what not to expect and how to cope and to prepare someone perhaps emotionally to as it were given to the process of undergoing the change so a word of warning about orientation being sometimes too narrow and restricting how someone will move into a culture and respond and learn all right well let's move into the next topic about cross-cultural relations and the second point in your syllabus is in reference to a particular book that I didn't bring along today but for your reference I don't think that I gave you readings in this but it's from from Lincoln Felder and Myers ministering cross-cultural and incarnational model for personal relationships 1986 what this book does it goes through kind of sets of corresponding values that differ according to culture and some of the ones that have been mentioned already this morning for example about time how as you will know for many of us you know beginning on time is so very important and it just guides the way things operate and it's so ingrained literally into how we operate that we're supposed to start at eight people don't come until around nine and that just really bothers you four reasons that are good reasons but it's ingrained that it's just so nerve-racking when when things don't happen quote on time there's those sorts of values values about how you demonstrate respect what family is and those sorts of things and this book talks about that and the recommendation here is is that moving cross-cultural you need to become a quote 150 percent person to where you recognize that you're going to be limited as an edic person an outsider in becoming fully inside you can become maybe at most 75 percent of the target place but you're going to lose some of your own cultural heritage as well and so a composite figure to be 150 percent the model so the book suggests was Jesus Christ he was a 200 percent person he was perfectly able to become incarnate who he was and perfectly able to be second person the Trinity as a model for us but that's an interesting book and I would recommend it to you to give some labels on some of those kind of postures of understanding cultural differences simply as cultural differences now where the trick comes is in our day it's very popular in this environment to only allow respect for difference and not critique of difference and that's where we need to be very very careful and that's tricky when you're going across cultural boundaries you you are a learner you are respectful vis-a-vis the other culture of the people there but at the same time we do share common humanity there are common standards and the gospel does bring critique and there is right and wrong and that is Christians where we need to have both of those postures in view I do want to look a little bit at Shinkh's chapter on the wider context of conversion beginning on page 85 I think he has some very helpful things to say to us about what is happening in religious conversion in general and Christian conversion in particular and say on page 86 he contrasts in the first paragraph in what in East Africa at least what Catholic and Calvinist missions did in terms of wanting to develop a whole new kind of civilization there in comparison to the British and Germany evangelical Protestants who were more focused on the individual conversion of peoples and he concludes that paragraph by saying whichever approach was taken there was always a socio political dimension of conversion in Africa it was always present there was a recentering that had to occur with people whether it be with respect to Islam or Christianity or traditional religion whatever it might be it was a complex of loyalties and identity that was involved it was not just a simple okay you turn from this religious faith to this religious faith and that's all that's involved here and that's what he wants to argue and so he sets forth a number of postulates and I want to walk through these with you they're in italics beginning at the top of page 88 just read these and then come in on them as we would like to his first postulate is this so long as a people's worldview provides coherence and reassurance and amidline specificity they are unlikely to convert to an alternative worldview conversely rapid cultural change or social crisis is a synchronic of conversion on a wide scale generally that's true people are undergoing change or open to new things and that's why demographic studies for example of church planning points you to areas where people have moved there are new that's going to be associated with an openness to change go into areas that things have been the same there's not much upheaval things are set you know why upset the apple cart there's not going to be a likelihood of religious conversion secondly with respect to cultural systems his postulate top of his page 89 the capacity of a cultural system to exert control over his populace is a key determinant of the extent to which an externally sponsored conversionist initiative will succeed you have something coming in from the outside seeking conversions depending on how that host cultural system is controlling its inhabitants will be related to the success of of religious conversion growth I would suggest to you that this postulate has a great deal to say about why Islam is growing and in all likelihood will continue to grow in North America because I think in North America things are so much up for grabs here so many people being uprooted there's little consensus about what's right what's wrong who God is all those sorts of things people need to belong and Islam presents a cohesive sensible socio religious cultural way of life that's going to be attractive to nomadic North American people I think Islam therefore we'll continue to grow not just about any not just among any one type of Americans but among all sorts of of North Americans thirdly I'm talking about colonialism the non-West conversion the colonial context became stereotyped as religious change under duress the coercive dimensions were quickly not overt or nonetheless real becoming a Christian and a colony was perceived as ensuring one's economic and professional security and that often indeed was the case in other instances refusing to convert was a way of demonstrating one's loyalty to the nationalist cause an interesting twist on this possible is what happened in the first half of the 20th century in Korea Japan had colonized officially from 1910 in the meantime the Christian church had grown extensively throughout Korea and what happened for those resisting Japanese colonial rule and those who pushed hard for independence from Japan amongst Korea not always but oftentimes were leaders in the Christian movement and Christianity provided an alternative to the Japanese rule that was there and helped strengthen Korean nationalistic independence you see and so refusing to convert if you will to the Japanese imperialism that was being imposed via colonial rule refusing to convert was a way of demonstrating a loyalty to the Korean nationalist cause that again oftentimes was aligned with the Christian faith that had become closely connected with being Korean that's a different sort of a twist on this phenomenon in terms of modernization autumn of page tiny for traditional cultures under threat from Westernization modernization the Christian message proclaimed by the missionary contributed to the sense of personal and social fragmentation as the 19th century progressed the missionary's message increasingly reflected the fragmentation of Western culture and conversion became focused on the spiritual here again that more fragmented modern Western world through which the Christian faith was brought into so many settings and in contrast to a more seamless traditional view you had a compartmentalized view and the expectation amongst many Western missionaries was is that it's just a spiritual conversion that should be going on here without realizing there's a whole total life that's being threatened here because it all comes together in one package brief personal testimony on this point in my own thinking and experience in relation to going and ministering in Japan when I first went to Japan and I had a Japanese colleague who kept telling me this my first few years there my first went to Japan just to put it in simple terms you know I basically preaching you know the salvation gospel message if you believe in Jesus and you're saved okay what this colleague was telling me was that's fine to a point but this is you saying this to these people over here and what they're hearing is not what you're saying even though you're getting the words right even and it became increasingly evident then to me that this sort of apostate that shank is mentioning here and had to be the case to where okay it can't just be just a religious message only it needs to be a comprehensive message and so then my notion of what ministry in Japan and cross cultural missions effort with respect to Japan needed to be and I drew this out I could go back and get out of my files and show you how I drew it out for myself so I could picture it this is what became my notion then of what missions need to be with respect to Japan here's Japan here's a United States looks like a tooth but it's the United States and here's here's Britain and in Europe it needs to be a comprehensive whole presentation of a Christian way of life that's what needs to be brought here because on whether it's with respect to politics or social behavior or families it needs to be though you'll a whole nine yards here needs to be brought in but later on I began to see how that really though is not recognizing the reality of the way God comes and has the gospel translated within that setting it's not as though he jerks all this away and just put something totally new in as difficult in his painstaking as the task always is and seeing the gospel and Christian way of life re-entangled into a whole new setting and so my view then changed and it remains to be much less definable to where the gospel is articulated and lived out in new and fresh ways in new settings in consultation with other settings and exactly how things will take shape I mean how the terms seka and guine are going to be worked out fleshed out understood changed altered the whole term for God coming out over generations that will be fleshed out boy we're not real sure but God's it work in leading in as it were growing this plant in his own way and the comprehensive nature is there yes but a whole new system that's brought in no um to illustrate that another way when we and I hope this is not a matter of self-defense or self-justification I think it makes the point when we were leaving Japan and our church kind of had a going away time for us um celebration that we were leaving um they um one woman came up and told us as you know what meant probably more than anything else to us that you guys did as a family was to have your children attend our local schools because that showed us that you were just part of us you're right here with us I had a missionary colleague someone who's a very good friend of mine and we would talk about this in friendly terms and whatever okay but I'm saying this just to make the point he said I think that you're putting your children in local schools was wrong because what it was showing to the christian to japan was is that you were saying to them it's all right to have your children in a pagan educational system now I don't want to get into views of educating children because I know different people have very strong views about homeschooling or christian education I don't really don't want to get into that I'll just tell you a front that my wife and I don't have terribly strong convictions about that maybe we should have but we don't but I think there were contrasting almost worldviews happening there and the view that was coming to me that you're you're condoning a pagan system really had the view of needing to bring in a whole new system and root out what's there it's all bad and I would disagree with that now be interested to come back and revisit that a few years later I don't know how that discussion would go and again I'm talking about something that's friendly and all that but I think that makes the point how there's a whole way of life is wrapped up and how you approach it is important okay multiple facets of conversion his page 91 a conversionist message will appeal to a variety of motives while some motives may be rejected motives that arise out of a sincere yearning for life change can be used as bridges into a comprehensive application of the Christian message to the needs of converts I mean you don't want to use the need you know convert to Christianity we'll teach you how to read and you'll get a great job and you're set for life that's not a great motive to present for conversion but you know a need for example this is saying a need for you know your family life to improve that's not perhaps the central basic need of converting to Christ but that's directly related this is a suggestion that's sort of a need can be plugged into and it's summary and then I'll have some questions if you want for the many people who have changed religious affiliation without a vivid religious experience and yet have matured into voter adherence seeking to appreciate their pilgrimage within this water framework lens validity to their experience I mean it's it's an ongoing pilgrimage not to deny you know the maybe a point that you can define it as when you've kind of gone from the kingdom of artists to kingdom of life but to know that in its full aspect conversion is in many ways an ongoing multi-fasted sort of an sort of an experience yes just a sentence or two maybe the question is about if indeed it's true and statistics seem to bear it out that where Christianity is seeing the greatest growth in terms of conversions is amongst those of the so-called primal religions primal religions instead of Muslims Buddhist Hindus etc might not that lead to a world where kind of you don't have primal religious anymore you just kind of have the big religions and then what are we going to do and might not that suggest that as Christians we need to work on our evangelistic efforts among Muslims etc it's of course it's hard to predict what will happen demographically just because statistics show that in demographics indicate that Christian growth is occurring among adherence of primal religion that obviously should not mean that we therefore relent from evangelistic focus on others and how to better become equipped and there's a lot of work being a lot of energy being poured now to it with respect to Muslims not just since September 11th but even before that we definitely need to ask Christian people need to continue to to think work, pray, labor, zealously to work them on Muslims and perhaps the fresh focus on during the past generation or so on the 1040 window which recognizes that in that geographic region it's primarily Muslim Hindu and Buddhist and that in fact is where there are the fewest Christians that focus that has been brought to much of the Christian world as helping us labor and more intentionally so that's a good question all right a few more comments from Shank page 93 second paragraph herein lies the weakness of evangelical ideology because it stressed so forcefully the role of the individual it couched all its thought about strategy and tactics and individual terms it was assertive repeatedly that it converted individual word in sure social and political change collective action by the church quad church was ruled out of bounds evangelicals therefore found conservative effort in addressing social issues difficult to contemplate and herein in this relates to our previous topic about dealing with social matters evangelicals are more more concerned about social matters but there's still a divide if you will or a line between social relief and even development and being concerned about structural change speaking of the past 150 years in Christian circles to put it in terms that are familiar to us generally evangelicals have yes gone gone for this but here that's been the levels yeah I don't know if those terms are fully adequate but that's generally what's happened again it's been many non-Western evangelicals will say we have to be concerned about this as well take for example the macro economic structure of the northern affluent the affluent northern hemisphere and the poor southern hemisphere relatively speaking and the matter of foreign debt structural concern we as Christians need to be concerned about that I concur with that viewpoint now I do not can view confer with a viewpoint that you know bring about structural change and the world's going to be a happy place as much too simplistic but to have this as a part of the comprehensive view of what God's all about and when his mission's all about seems to me the only right without taking away the bite of the proper biblical evangelical stress on the individual only shink is wanting to imply I certainly don't want to imply that you take off take away the need for individuals to come to faith in Christ and be called to repentance in fact that certainly is while not the whole story part of the story conclusion on page 102 to make conclusions first conversion is a considerably more complex process than is usually described fair enough second rather than starting with imported models and assumptions about what conversion involves assessing what is happening needs to begin with the sociopolitical context in which conversion is taking place what's happening within the context what's happening with the converts how is there change in moral and ethical behavior on individual and social levels etc and you know this could go towards for example answering the question that is often raised well if there are so many Christians in Rwanda why did that slaughter take place that's a legitimate question to ask you know and then the demographics of who's Christian who's converted what's happening there how much time is evolved and how we understand that comes to play here as well I gave you a few readings from from a kosuke koyama Dr. koyama is Japanese missionary to Thailand in the 1960s was there for about eight years since then he's been teaching in the United States stimulating writers written a number of things his best known works entitled water buffalo theology which our library has a copy of and that stems from his own personal undoing of kind of going to Thailand with a package and realizing that what these farmers out there working alongside the water buffalo needed to see and hear and what conversion meant for them looked a little different than what he went in thinking and this title of this work no handle on the cross is drawing on a similar analogy of oftentimes expatriate missionaries will kind of walk into a new setting with their brief cases so to speak and they open up the briefcase and say okay here it is this is the truth take it or leave it what he's suggesting is instead of in that sense thinking that you have a handle on the cross and got it all figured out is that you need to let the cross have a handle on you and especially when you're moving cross culturally you need to be in a pastor of humility and learning while having conviction yet but being a pastor of humility and learning I think if nothing else while I don't concur necessarily with everything he says in the way he puts it as instruction on posture and attitude speaking about moving cross culturally Dr. Koyama has a great deal of helpful things a grand amount of helpful material for us so I hope your reading through him was was helpful in stimulating to you in that regard and that's why I included it and especially as he's talking about what's happened in Asia and how Christians there have had to deal with how the gospel has been presented I'm moving ahead quickly forgive me because we have guest speakers coming in next time to talk about this in following topics topic 28 is on ecclesiology given you a couple of topics from shank basically saying that within the past 200 years the main motif was so theology what does it mean for someone to be saved but there wasn't much at all reflection on what is the church there was emphasis on seeing churches grow seeing them organized and what that meant but what is the church what's it all about theologically speaking wasn't given a great deal of reflection and that was setting for the modern missionary movement I've included some writings from Paul Hebert Dr. Hebert is was missionary in south india taught for many years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School anthropological insights for missionaries one of his most helpful books very stimulating writer and I appreciate this piece that I gave you about as it were balancing out evangelism in church and kingdom he talks about first how we need to avoid reductionism through we focus either on or only on either evangelism or church or the kingdom at the expense of the others but he has those triangular pictures for you in your readings where you need to have all of them and not just two of them either and then with the king and he doesn't use covenant terminology explicitly but I think that's really what he's talking about the covenant lord as the king ruling throughout his kingdom and that is to guide our understanding of the place of the church and evangelism with respect individuals and the wider kingdom aspects public issues that come into play and that will help our working out of the understanding of what the church is yes oftentimes what if you focus only on the kingdom and lose sight of who the king is what has happened is the Christian distinctiveness of what you're about gets left out and so you become aligned with all other good causes political social whatever they might be because that's bringing in the kingdom of God and that's much of what happened in the 1960s and evangelical saw that and therefore withdrew from some water Christian circles because you know hey the revolutionary movements that are bringing about liberty from economic and political oppression amongst some of these countries that's what the kingdom of God's all about but where was the Christian distinctive role there yes what about the way that Hebrew puts the kingdom more foundational than the church and for example we're looking at his page 159 is that right just want to I want to make sure that I'm being fair to him in evaluating what he's having to say I'm reluctant to give a quick answer because I want to go back and make sure that I'm reading what he's saying but let me do that and we'll look at that next time and I think some of the things that we're here next time we'll touch on that as well and where evangelism church kingdom actually fit in relation to each other and so forgive me for not having it right at my finger test but I want to make sure that I'm being fair to him in that question okay all right in closing let me just make I'd like to spend more time it'll make a quick remark about ecclesiology and mission and Ephesians, Colossians, Titus and First Peter it strikes me that in these letters both Paul and Peter are writing to the church to the collective people of God and they both are thinking of individuals in the church individual people that they mention on occasion and have known personally but they're also thinking of the collective people of God as they write in these letters as you recall both Paul and Peter mentioned responsibly to political authority families within work often times in looking at these letters those social political responsibilities are viewed as the responsibilities of the Christian believer out in the world fair enough but in thinking ecclesiologically I would like to suggest that Paul and Peter are thinking of the church of the people of God in a scattered sense if you will but still as the people of God together as organically related corporately identified amidst those social responsibilities so in thinking about how we as the people of God operate in the world and this can come down to ones own personal personal priorities if you will it's not as though you have a sphere of government you have a sphere of family you have a sphere of work you have a sphere of church only you know when I belong to these different groups and these groups are there in Paul and Ephesians chapter one through five and a half talks about here and then he starts talking about here and here and Peter when he's in first Peter 2 he starts talking about government and then working family in one sense sociological speaking yes but theologically speaking it seems to me an addition of this you have the church here
and God has placed his church in the world to be about his mission work within these various spheres of life I don't think it that simply a semantic matter nor do I think it's simply a mind game and what you can venture yourself off I think it's a reality of where God lives where God is at work and how we understand and go about church work mission work in the world as is people so you can chew on that next time we'll move on to urban mission and ministry in the St. Louis and we'll have some guests with us Barry Henning and Bill Yarbrough from New City Fellowship to leaders in those discussions thank you God bless you