Perspectives on the World Christian Movement - Final Review Questions and Answers

Perspectives on the World Christian Movement - Final Review Questions and Answers Differentiate between regular and frontier mission efforts. Regular mission: cross-cultural Christian work that spreads the gospel within people groups where churches have already been established (P0-P1). Frontier mission: cross-cultural Christian work that seeks to establish churches within people groups where it does not yet exist (P2-P3). (SG) Define and use the terms people bloc, people group, unimax people group, sociopeople and unreached people group. People bloc: a limited number of summary categories into which we can place peoples in order to analyze them. Two commonly used blocs are Major Cultural Blocs (Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Ethno-Religious, Non-Religious, Other) and Affinity Blocs (shared elements of language, history, culture, etc.) People group: for evangelistic purposes, a people group is the largest group within which the gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance. Unimax people group: the maximum sized group sufficiently unified to be the focus of a single people movement to Christ. Sociopeople group: a relatively small association of peers who have an affinity for one another based upon a shared interest, activity, or occupation. Unreached people group: an entire group who has not yet been effectively reached with the gospel, no church made up of people like themselves with whom they can fellowship. *Memorize the definition of a people group in reference to evangelization. For evangelistic purposes, a people group is the largest group within which the gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance. (SG) Explain the essential missionary task using and defining the term missiological breakthrough. The essential missionary task is to establish a viable indigenous church-planting movement that carries the potential to renew whole extended families and transform whole societies. A missiological breakthrough refers to the achievement of a viable (grows on its own) indigenous (not seen as foreign) church-planting movement that continues to reproduce intergenerational fellowships that are able to evangelize the rest of the people group. (SG) Describe the rough percentages of the world's population who live in unreached peoples and in reached peoples. Unreached: 40% Reached: 60% *Recall how many unimax groups are in the four major cultural blocs of unreached peoples. Muslims: 3,300 Hindus: 2,400 Ethno-Religious: 1,200 Buddhists: 700 (SG) Describe the imbalance of missionary allocation in today's world. Only about 10% of the global evangelical mission force is presently focusing on the 40% of the world's population that are currently beyond reach of the Church. Describe the importance of "mother-tongue ministry" and "mother-tongue Scriptures" for establishing churches that multiply and endure. Without Scriptures in the mother tongue, churches are not able to sustain spiritual depth into succeeding generations. They have difficulty answering false teaching, waging spiritual warfare, and avoiding syncretism. Describe the value of having culturally distinct churches. Ethnic churches are justified not only for pragmatic reasons (because they work) but also because they are rooted in the doctrine of creation. In God's image, expressing God-given creativity, people have developed different cultures. Ethnic churches allow for prayer in specific heart languages, with meaningful gestures, ululations, and prostrations. People specific churches, and their accompanying theologians, complement other cultures' understanding of the Bible. They are also a good place to begin global mission work, allowing a partnership to begin with international Christians living in our own cities. (SG) Explain the biblical grounds for and strategic value of urban ministry. Through urbanization, God is drawing people of every race, tribe, and language to places where they can be reached with the gospel. The migration to the cities is so large that it must have a divinely-ordained, redemptive purpose behind it. The movement of history throughout the Bible is from the garden of Eden, where the fall occurred, to the New Jerusalem, the city that God is preparing for us. In the Bible, urban mission began with Jonah. Christ's commission to "go and make disciples of all peoples" forbids neglecting cities with their multitudes from all tribes and races. (SG) Explain the importance of recognizing subtle social boundaries in order to plant churches among every people group. For evangelistic purposes, recognizing subtle social boundaries is critical. Those barriers often determine what a people group is. Initial small-group evangelism is most effective when directed at a specific social group or class. Once those individual groups are won to Christ, those social boundaries usually dissolve and can form a single church congregation. In the early stages of conversion, however, attention to issues like wealth, occupation, and status is crucial. Explain how good mission strategy express both faith and faithfulness while allowing for the Lordship of the Holy Spirit in mission decisions. Faithfulness involves planning and working together toward success with a consecrated pragmatism. We should never change our doctrine or our ethical principles in order to do something that "works," we should remain flexible regarding methods. Strategy does not eliminate the Holy Spirit. Good strategies present the Holy Spirit with plans that He can change. Good strategies also provide human co-workers a common vision around which they can unite. LESSON 10 LESSON 10 *Define culture using Kwast's four layer model. Worldview is the underlying framework for beliefs which inform values which in turn shape patterns of behavior. Worldview: what is real? Beliefs: what is true? Values: what is good or best? Behavior: what is done? Explain why understanding worldview is essential to effective cross-cultural communication. Gospel communicators need to achieve more than a surface-level understanding of the cultures they enter. Awareness of the four layers of culture (behavior, values, beliefs, worldview) is essential for the gospel to be effective in a cross-cultural setting. It is essential to connect on a worldview level. For the biblical story to be received and believed by a people, it must find a place and connection within their worldview. (SG) Describe what missionaries can do to communicate the gospel with sensitivity in cross-cultural settings. It is only by active, loving engagement with the local people, thinking in their thought patterns, understanding their worldview, listening to their questions, and feeling their burdens, that the whole believing community will be able to respond to their need. By common prayer, thought, and heart-searching, in dependence on the Holy Spirit, expatriate and local believers may learn together how to present Christ and contextualize the gospel with an equal degree of faithfulness and relevance. Explain how ethnocentrism shapes our perceptions and interactions with other cultures. Ethnocentrism is based on our natural tendency to judge the behavior of people in other cultures by the values and assumptions of our own. Explain what it means to contextualize the gospel. Contextualization refers to efforts to present the gospel within the context of cultural and social forms that are recognized by the respondent community. This can be by communicating the message itself in a local context, the messengers identifying with the people, or the movements of those who believe. Describe how a redemptive analogy works to help people hear the gospel. Redemptive analogies facilitate human understanding of redemption. Their God-ordained purpose is to precondition the mind in a culturally significant way to recognize Jesus as Messiah. Explain what can go wrong when surface-level behavior is not accompanied by conviction about deep-level meaning. God intends to bring about good changes in cultures by the power of the gospel. One common mistake occurs when missionaries bring a surface-level change and fail to recognize that an alternate deep-peep meaning has been applied to the change. The message of the gospel can be significantly warped. The better way to communicate the gospel is to bring understanding at the level of worldview assumptions. Missionaries can then work with local believers to find how God may be changing their surface-level culture of behavior. Describe the kinds of encounters that are needed to fully communicate the gospel. Truth encounters deal with understanding, using teaching as the vehicle of action. Allegiance encounters deal with relationships, using witness as the vehicle of action. Power encounters deal with freedom, using spiritual warfare as the vehicle of action. Explore the need to develop and utilize strategies for cultures that primarily consist of oral learners. It is estimated that two-thirds of people on earth today are primarily "oral learners," but an estimated 90% of the world's Christian workers presenting the gospel use highly literate communication styles. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for oral learners to hear and understand the message and communicate it to others. (SG) Describe the value of decoding the gospel message from its original cultural setting and encoding it in a respondent culture. The goal is to communicate as much as possible of the biblical message, with as minimal intrusion of influences from the missionary's own culture as possible. This supports the ultimate goal of raising up effective sources of the Christian message from within the target culture. Missionary communication that does not keep this goal in mind is myopic. Explain the value of communicating the gospel through storytelling. Storytelling can be one of the most effective ways to communicate the gospel on a worldview level. The story of what Christ has finished and will yet finish can be connected to the unfinished story of the hearers. It's powerful and practical for everyone. Storytelling not only conveys the message in a profound way, it makes it memorable and repeatable. LESSON 11 LESSON 11 Explain how the incarnation of Christ, both His renunciation and identification, serves as a primary model for communicating the gospel. Jesus renounced status, independence, and immunity. Wherever missionaries are they should not be in control or work alone, but always with (and preferably under) local Christians. Cross-cultural messengers, especially during their first years of service, need to learn dependence on others. Finally, missionaries should expect to become vulnerable to new temptations, dangers, and diseases. Jesus took on our full situation. His example challenges our lifestyles and attitudes. The incarnation teaches identification without loss of identity. (SG) Describe some different aspects of humility that are crucial to missionary work. First, there is the humility to acknowledge the problem which culture presents, and not to avoid or over-simplify it. Second, there is the humility to take the trouble to understand and appreciate the culture of those to whom we go. Third, there is the humility to begin our communication where people actually are and not where we would like them to be. Fourth, there is the humility to recognize that even the most gifted, dedicated, and experienced missionary can seldom communicate the gospel in another language or culture as effectively as a trained local Christian. Fifth, there is the humility to trust in the Holy Spirit of God, who is always the chief communicator, who alone opens the eyes of the blind and brings people to new birth. Describe how a missionary can begin to establish a sense of belonging in a new culture. Contrast the way the gospel flows in the different social structures found in urban, peasant, and tribal societies. Not every person within a society has the same potential for extending the gospel in effective ways. Some societies are structured in such a way that it becomes critically important that gospel communication be initiated by people with particular roles and status. Tribal societies: tribal decisions are made by a limited number of elders. Most people movements have flourished in these kinds of social structures. Peasant societies: leadership is exerted by a powerful elite. Caste groupings are common but not the only kind of societal group found in peasant societies. It is important to recognize that these kinds of societies abound in urban environments. People movements often take place in peasant societies. Urban/Metropolitan societies: individual decision-making patterns are dominant. Organizations are voluntary. Cities are marked by diversity and complexity, so gospel communicators must learn well the specific urban context in order to communicate appropriately. Explain the necessity of "bi-cultural" bridges for gospel communication. A "bi-cultural bridge" describes the critically important relationships between missionaries and their counterparts in the recipient culture. A bi-cultural bridge is formed when members of two different cultures learn to understand and adapt to each others' culture, thus enabling meaningful two-way communication between the cultures. Communication across cultures requires relationships that span the gap between cultures. (SG) Describe how a missionary can maintain a single core identity as they communicate with widely different audiences of the church, the unreached, and the secular world. An integrated identity worth living for means that we have an alignment between our motivation, our tent making role, our personal gifting, and our apostolic calling. In other words, moved by the love of Christ, we seek ways of living and serving that fit who God has made us and that allow us to carry out our apostolic calling with full integrity. (SG) Describe four basic principles that will help missionaries communicate effectively in any society. Personal friendship: relationships foster a connection with the entire community. Choose effective communicators for your initial approach: the most important of the four principles is to make the initial approach to those who are able to effectively pass on the communication. Allow time: group decision take time. Individuals who are perceived to have made a decision which threatens group solidarity often bring about a larger negative response. Address decision makers: if people are being challenged to make a decision which changes beliefs of social structure, it is imperative that such a message is conveyed to key people who are socially capable of making such a decision. Evaluate decisions regarding a missionary lifestyle in terms of effectiveness in influencing and identifying with people of the receiving culture. Regardless of how well missionaries may succeed in finding the best entry roles, they are eventually required to assume a long-term role in the society. Different societies have different views about how money is expected to work. Westerners are usually assigned roles by the receiving community, even if they are unaware of those roles and expectations. Missionaries should closely examine the local society, seeking to identify a local role that corresponds in some way with what is termed, the "righteous rich." Attempts must be made at adjusting lifestyles, decisions made about loaning money, and care should be given to recognize how money from Westerners compromises the testimony of local followers. LESSON 12 LESSON 12 Describe some of the most critical dimensions of global human need and comprehend the nature of poverty. Absolute poverty describes situations in which people have an absolute insufficiency to meet their basic needs. Relative poverty describes situations in which peoples are on the margins of society. A person's standard of living is compared in relation to others in the community or nation. Major causes of poverty are broken relationships, misused power, and fear. Poverty is essentially a spiritual issue. Only the gospel (all of it) contains the hope that the poor will be enabled to live in communities where relationships are restored (broken relationships), abusive power is broken (misused power), and fears are allayed. (SG) List and evaluate four approaches to meeting global human need. Economic growth: focuses on macro-statistics and issues of a country instead of micro-economic factors such as adequate food, fuel, and health for each family. This has not proven to bring lasting help to the poor. Political advocacy: often focuses upon oppressive regimes, violates of human rights, and exploitative commercial structures which widen the gap between haves and have-nots. Best done by and for insiders, rather than outsiders. Relief: aims at providing basic survival necessities for victims of war, natural disaster, and prolonged injustice. Aims at short-term survival. Community / Transformational development: focuses on both adequate assessment and the use of personal and community abilities and resources. The goal is to meet basic needs with local leadership and development. Aims at enabling a community to meet its own basic needs. All these approaches hold little promise without Christian Transformational Development. (SG) Compare and contrast Christian relief ministry with transformational development. Community developers aim to enable local people to mobilize local resources to meet basic needs in an enduring way throughout an entire community. Development workers seek to base the changes upon the values of the kingdom of God as revealed in Scripture. When Christian missionaries seek to do development work, they usually aim to plant new churches or renew existing churches as the basis for the crucial worldview and value shifts which are needed for lasting change.