Ministry Across Cultures

Hayward is a Christian anthropologist who lectures at Biola University. This is a very helpful presentation explaining how anthropologists view religion and how a Christian anthropologist adds to this. Hayward has some excellent things to say which are relevant to evangelism and ministry across cultures. His wide-sweeping lecture also concerns the relationship between the science [...]

1. Biblical Perspectives 2. Hot Issue: Multi-Ethnic Congregations/Church Communities OR HUP (Homogeneous Unit Principle) Churches? 3. General 4. Videos 5. Websites ____ 1. Biblical Perspectives The Bible as Authority as an Antidote to Cultural Imperialism Bible Translation in Historical Context. The Changing Role of Cross-Cultural Workers (International Journal of Frontier Missiology) A Brief Investigation of [...]

Nicole Starling reflected on the way she and her husband found themselves accommodating their behaviour to that of the next-door neighbours they had round for a meal. Her sane approach to 1 Corinthians 9 provides a healthy counter-balance to the typical over-reading and over-application of this passage: Maybe the array of terms that Paul uses [...]

Rhodes finds that the story of Babel helps us to understand the modern state of America, though: …now, instead of just one walled city and one tower, there are many. Human beings are once again afraid of being scattered, so we are busily erecting our cities, our towers, our walls to prevent this scattering. To [...]

This is my summary of Stephen Rhodes’ very helpful book, packed full of illustrations often drawn from the lives of members of his multicultural church. Rhodes Where Nations Meet

In his book on Cross-Cultural Conflict Duane Elmer observes that in most cultures people specialise in indirect speech in contrast to the direct forms of communication favoured by Westerners. He comments: Although at first it seems mystifying and frustrating to be constantly decoding people’s speech, it soon becomes second nature, and eventually one finds enjoyment [...]

I’ve had recently read Lamin Sanneh’s thought-provoking book Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. One of the points that came through for me was that the very stress of missionaries on the authority of the Bible means that for indigenous Christians who come to share this belief, the missionaries cease to be their [...]

This is my summary of Livermore’s helpful book. Livermore Cultural Intelligence www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au

Welcome to one of the classics in missiology. This book extends to 445 pages and is so dense that my summary runs for 65 pages. Although this book was first written in 1938 it is not dated. Even Kraemer’s portrait of where the Church currently stands is very much “on the money.” Speaking from an [...]

Stephen Rhodes observes how, during the civil rights struggle, the church in the US essentially said to its culture: “Do as we say, not as we do.” He explains: We said to culture that it was a moral imperative to integrate our schools, workplaces and neighbourhoods while simultaneously preserving the segregation that we practice in [...]