Our mid-twentieth century world is one of emerging young nations and young nations are nations of young people. What significance does this have for missionaries and mission boards?
There are simply too many foreign mission organizations. We may lack missionaries,’ preaching, and conversions, but there are too many separate missionary groups. The result: excessive overhead expense, duplication of effort, confusion in the minds of the Christian public.
Subscribed by the Delegates to THE CONGRESS ON THE CHURCH’S WORLDWIDE MISSION Convened at Wheaton, Illinois April 9-16, 1966
Fact No. 1: For the first time in sixty years, missionary books are again on the best seller lists. Students are especially interested in them.
Several years ago at the conclusion of a missionary meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the speakers, a white lady missionary from Africa raised a common question:
Culture shock has been described as that emotional disturbance which results from adjustment to new cultural, environment.’ Its cause is the loss of the familiar cues by which we interact in any society.
Identification is a prerequisite for communication. Do we have something to give? Would we like to be open to what others might share with us? Then we must identify with them.
Any mission organization by the very nature of its existence has certain spiritual responsibilities.
El Salvador is a tiny Central American republic about 150 miles long and sixty miles wide. It has the densest population of any country in continental America, averaging approximately 300 people’ to the square mile. This condition in itself provides an unusual opportunity for evangelism-people are everywhere.
Time: July 1948.
Place: a deserted street corner in Guatemala City. I could feel the heat of the rough cement sidewalk against my hands and body. In front of me a machine gun rattled and spat out hot empty cartridges that rolled down aimlessly and tumbled into the gutter. I lifted my, face in the acrid air and saw two men crawling from a shattered vehicle up the street.
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