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January, 2009

Missions = Challenging Culture

In a recent update I spoke about Missions being equal to "challenging culture".  This concept had been passed on to me by a missionary a few years ago. It took a long time for me to understand what he was really saying.  This was mostly because we think of culture in a limited way - just maybe the sociological thinking of people in a far away place.  And we also limit our view of the gospel as "believe in Jesus, be saved...okay, all taken care of."   Below is a clarifying statement that I wrote to a friend who suffered due to my lack of clarification:

The concept of our greatest goal being the challenging of culture is a broad way of saying bringing the gospel to bear on all of life.  The idea is that we are all blinded by our culture and when we become a Christian we are part of a new "tribe" or culture.  One of THE most effective ways to find our weaknesses created by cultural norms is going cross culture.  It can be as short a move as talking with someone who is poor (while we are rich) or the other way around, or someone from the south and we are from the north, etc.  We can more easily see our own cultural flaws (considering the gospel) by seeing an element in another culture that is closer to the real thing - affected by the gospel.  AND, we can enter someone else's culture and point to their blindedness as well.
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January 10, 2009 | 0 Comments | View or add comments
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