Intercultural ministry is “the defining theological line of the twenty-first century.” So begins this volume of fifteen essays that seeks to answer the question: “how do we build healthy communities that bring us together as next-door neighbors and global neighbors?”
Globalization is complex, highly debated, and often misunderstood. A number of Christians, acting out of fear, seek to resist globalization. Others, because of its complexity, have given up trying to understand it. Instead, they attempt to ignore this global-sized elephant walking around the room. Bryant Myers in his book, Engaging Globalization, offers a balanced approach to this topic, helping Christians understand the history and effects of globalization and how they can get involved in order to play a constructive role in the globalized world community.
John Mark Terry and Robert L. Gallagher, articulating their thesis in the concluding chapter of the book, assert that we can learn from both the successes as well as failures of the efforts of missionaries who have gone before us.
I agree with the importance of taking an oral approach to sharing the Good News about Jesus Christ because there are over four billion people in the world who can’t, don’t, or won’t read. Few, if any, of these people, would read scripture, even if it was published in their language.
Samuel Escobar’s analysis in his work The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone that the new global mission is characterized by “missions from everywhere to everywhere” offers a helpful backdrop to what the editors were aiming to accomplish in Churches on Mission: God’s Grace Abounding to the Nations.
Evangelical Christianity’s explosive growth on much of the African continent cannot be fully understood without paying attention to the leaders God has used to bring this about. The present book breaks ground in the study of leadership in African churches by building on a foundation of extensive empirical research.
If it be true that second century Christians sometimes formed themselves into burial clubs in order to achieve a type of organization legal under Roman law, then that fact could give the Czechs, the Basques, and other oppressed minorities today some good ideas on how to run an underground church in an unconventional form.
Mary Slessor was an impressive woman. Born in 1848 near Aberdeen, Scotland, nothing in her early years would have led one to think she would become such a significant person in mission work in Calabar (Nigeria).
Ambassadors for the King to the Muslim world must be equipped to give an answer for the hope that lies within (1 Peter 3:15). We are taught that we must contend for the faith (Jude 3), and that we must take every thought against the knowledge of God captive under Christ’s authority (2 Corinthians 10:5). Every missionary to the Muslim world wrestles with how to approach their Muslim friend when confronted with objections that strike at the very authority and core message of Christianity.
The Holistic Worldview Analysis (HWVA) strategy is a holistic development strategy that engages closely with a community to understand its survival strategy and then works towards strengthening it so that the community is able to solve most of its own problems. While this concept should excite most people by the way in which it engages with the community, building on the ownership and capability they already have; it often doesn’t find common ground with those that believe development is a top down process.
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