Think like a missionary…

“My appeal is that Biblical communication to a postmodern culture should be approached in the same way that a missionary goes into a foreign culture. No missionary worth his or her salt would enter a field without first doing an exhaustive study of the culture he or she seeks to reach. The time has come for today’s preachers to don the missionary garb. ‘The better seminaries have long included courses in the missions curriculum to help prospective missionaries “read” the culture they are about to enter,’ observes Don Carson. ‘But such courses are rarely required of students in the pastoral track. The assumption is that they are returning to their own culture, so they do not need such assistance. But the rising empirical pluralism and the pressures from globalisation ensure that the assumption is usually misplaced.

Apart from isolated pockets, Western culture is changing so quickly that the church now struggles to understand what is going on. Indeed, it is less and less easy to speak of ‘Western culture’ in such monolithic fashion: there is a plethora of competing cultures in most western nations , and many pastors will minister to several of them during their ministry. Indeed, in metropolitan areas, pastors may find themselves ministering to several of them at once.’

For many, any change is hard. ‘All innovation is open to question and different assessments,’ says author and theologian Os Guinness. ‘The darker side of this innovative genius is the church’s proneness to compromise with the spirit of its age. But from the adaptations of the early church – for example, Augustine’s translations of the language and ideas of Platoism, down to the innovation of eighteenth-century Methodism and nineteenth century revivalism – Christians have been tirelessly determined to innovate and adapt for the sake of the gospel…In sum innovation is not the problem.’

So resistance has its reason, Guinness concludes, because there can be danger when the focus on methodology comes at the expense of sound theology. His bottom line, ‘Critical discernment is essential.'”

– extract from, Preaching to a Postmodern World, Graham Johnston, Inter-Varsity Press, UK, 2001 Just reading the book and thought I’d zap out this extract to you guys for your “Critical Discernment” – the book may be worthy of your reading time.

Brad