Articles

This article is a response to the article “Biblical Holism and Secular Thought in Christian Development,” by Joel Matthews (July, 1999)

This article is a response to the article “Redefining Holism,” by David J. Hesselgrave (July, 1999).

I am writing this as someone committed to the local church and the local church’s role in world evangelism.

It was late summer 1939. I was relaxing on the streets of my hometown, thinking about visiting my aunt’s market stand for something to eat. Not a care in the world. Until I glanced at the headlines in the newspapers being hawked on the street corner. A huge, foreboding statement jumped out at me: CRISIS IN EUROPE.

Scripture shows that God has never been entirely predictable. Who could have foreseen his decision to wipe out most of humanity and start over with Noah and his family?

When we went to Belgium in 1982, our daughter was 4 years old. Like Belgian children that age, she was expected to be in school seven and a half hours a day. So, four days after our arrival on the field, we enrolled our excited little girl, armed with a shiny new book bag, new pencils, and a new eraser.

We see our friends in support roles as “the forgotten missionaries.”

The converted Muslim imam closed all the windows, dropped the shades, and quietly, cautiously played the forbidden tape—an ancient psalm of David in the style of the minaret so familiar to him. With an exhilarating mixture of fear and joy he allowed the missionary to share this unique and wonderful moment with him.

The missions community is becoming increasingly aware of music as a means to understand peoples and communicate the gospel to them in culturally relevant forms. Undergirding this growing emphasis is the conviction that music must be understood and communicated in its local variations.

The spoken verse hung in the air like the dust raised by a passing truck. The men and women in the church in Ghana waited expectantly following the reading from the Vagla New Testament.