World Missions 101: Gandhi &The Power of the Scriptures

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Gandhi &The Power of the Scriptures

"You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more
than a piece of good literature."

(Mohandas Gandhi)

Rwanda - There Is a Devil- There Is God

Jonathan Bonk Writes

3rd World Churches send missionaries

"The Christian "center of gravity" is no longer the comfortable West, whose Christian confidence has been steadily leavened by the subliminal agnosticism that almost always accompanies prosperity (Rev. 3:14-20).

The vitality that marks the most dynamically missionary churches is today most readily observed in the great continents of Africa, Asia, and South America. That this should be so is not surprising, since Christianity has seldom, if ever, remained healthy and vigorous within rich, dominant societies. "

Jonathan bonk wrote this in his forward for (Stan Guthrie, Missions in The Third Millennium, pg xii. 2000, paternoster Press, )

J. R.R. Tolkien

"………….. and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it." J. R.R. Tolkien "The Fellowship of the Ring" , 1985, George & Allen & Urwin Pub LTD(Page 22-23 prologue)

Bi-cultural People Should Understand This!

“We can get out and learn to live in the new culture, and, in time, we will feel as at home in it as our own, possibly even more so. Something Happens to us when we adapt to a new culture, we become bicultural people. Our parochialism based on our unquestioned feeling that there is really only one way to live, and our way is it, is shattered. We must deal with cultural variety, with the fact that people build cultures in different ways, and that they believe their cultures are better than ours. Aside from some curiosity at our foreignness, they are not interested in learning our ways.

But to the extent we identify with the people and become bicultural, to that extent we find ourselves alienated from our kinsmen and old friends in our homeland. This is not reverse culture shock, although we will experience that when we return home after a long stay abroad. It is a basic difference in how we now look at things. We have moved from a philosophy that assumes uniformity to one that has had to cope with variety, and our old friends often don’t understand us. In time we may find our closest associates among other bicultural people.

In one sense, bicultural people never fully adjust to one culture, their own or their adopted one. Within themselves they are part of both. When Americans are abroad, they dream of America, and need little rituals that re affirm this part of themselves—a food package form home, a letter, an American visitor from whom they can learn the latest news from `home’. When in America, they dream of their adopted country, and need little rituals that reaffirm this part of themselves—a visitor from that country, a meal with its food. Bicultural people seem happiest when they are flying from one of these countries to the other.
(“Crucial Dimensions in World Evangelization”, Paul Hiebert, 1976, 4^th printing, William Carey Library, Pasadenia California pg 51,52)

World Missions 101

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Gandhi &The Power of the Scriptures

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