Dialogue fever is our contemporary syndrome. Talkathons are the order of the day. The prospect of dialogue will turn on many Christian students and leaders even as the more traditional terms will turn them off. Seldom is there an issue of contemporary Christian journals without some space being devoted to this subject. And even we are writing about it here.
In preparation for the writing of this paper, many missionary and national leaders who serve the evangelical church in Central America were consulted. Their opinions reflect, in general, the thinking of a large number of Latin American Christians on this important issue.
Where are missionary candidates coming from, and what means does the Holy Spirit use to move them out of their own cultures? Mission boards, field surveys or even previous experience do not provide a satisfactory answer because they represent a past generation.
No part of the world is immune to the startling and accelerating tempo of change. In fact, the sudden exposure of nearly all the world to modern technology, the new ideologies, and the upsurge in literacy and education, plummets in the span of a decade or two whole societies and cultures into complexities which have required many centuries for development.
The proposed program for developing Christian leadership in India is the program of the Lord Jesus Christ found in the gospels. We shall confine ourselves to His program that developed the twelve apostles to become the first Christian leaders.
At the East Asia Christian Conference meetings in 1964 in Bangkok it was unequivocally stated that, “inasmuch as theresponsibility for in-service preparation rests upon the receiving Churches, it is essential that they accept this responsibility fully. They must provide for adequate language study and also for general orientation.”
The average American university student believes Christian missionary service is obsolete, paternal and culturally alien. Conversely, on-campus recruiters tell him that the Peace Corps provides opportunity for service which is relevant, fraternal, and culturally accordant. In the resulting conflict, many missionary-oriented youths are faced with the dilemma, missions or Peace Corps?
The following statement was adopted at the joint retreat for mission executives, October, 1968, sponsored by the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association and the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association.
The Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches has come and gone. Uppsala (1968), a small university town in eastern Sweden, has joined Amsterdam (1948), Evanston (1954), and New Delhi (1961) in the unfolding of the Ecumenical Movement.
The EFMA-IFMA executives’ retreat came up with suggestions about cooperating with Roman Catholics in Bible translations. What’s a missionary’s reaction on the field when he’s invited to share in a joint Protestant-Catholic project?
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