HOME

  WRITE TO ME NEIL'S WEBSITE AJIT'S WEB SITE
 
 

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY FOR MISSIONS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

"And Jesus said to them: go ye into all the world and proclaim the gospel...''

Mark 16:15

This is what We usually call the GREAT COMMISSION.

It has two parts:

1. Go into all the world.

This implies that the missionary has to go personally. A personal presence is required for the transmission of the gospel. It is not just a message which can be transmitted by words alone; it needs a person as whole. The world in the original implies tribe.

2. Preach the gospel. This implies the communication whose content is the good news of Jesus Christ.

 Thus by the great commission. Jesus has commissioned us to go and preach the gospel personally to all the tribes. Each tribe has its own culture. lf we want to communicate the good news effectively we need to understand these cultures.

 "As the father has sent me, even so I send you" John 20:21

God the father sent his son Jesus Christ as the good news. He could not have made it known in any other way. Jesus himself entered the world and revealed the good news. Thus the INCARNATION was the first cross cultural evangelism.

 

 

Since Earthians had more than one culture God prepared a particular nation, prepared them to receive the Word and then sent his Son into it. This nation happens to be the Jewish nation.

Thus Jesus entered the Jewish culture, identified himself with the Jews, lived their life and delivered the good news to them which was he himself. There fore the gospel is revealed and embedded in the matrix of the Hebrew culture. But the gospel itself is supra-cultural. It is important for us to distinguish between the cultural aspects of the message from the message itself. Failure to do this has been the cause of much discord in the church right from the inception. Early in the life of the church Paul had to fight the Judaisers who insisted on gentiles to follow the Jewish cultural practices in order to be Christians.

 

 

Disciples were sent to all over the worlds . They did not preach Judaism. They preached the gospel and embedded them into the culture of the tribes wherever they vent. We have different churches all over the world with different forms of worship, rituals, ceremonies, dressing ups, clergy structures, architectural styles etc. But the content is the same the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

We do not have the details of their methods, except for one culture. This is given in great detail in the book of the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of the early fathers. Thus the first four books of the New Testament may be considered as the embedding of the good news in the Jewish culture while the remaining books tells us of the embedding of the gospel in the Greco-Roman culture. The central figure in this process has been Paul or Saul of Tarsus. He was eminently suited for the job because:

*   He was a Jew, well versed in the Hebrew traditions and scriptures;
*   He was a scholar in Greek and Roman philosophies and culture;

*   He was a citizen of the Roman Empire by birth - a very rare privilege.

So our model for cross-cultural evangelism is first

* Jesus then

* the Apostles especially Paul.

 Especially Paul only because we have a complete picture of his methodology in the Holy Bible.

Look at what Paul  says in 1 cor 9:19-23

''For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more.  To the Jews I became a Jew, in order that I might win the Jews; to those under the law I bcame as one under the law – though not being under the law – that I might win those under the law.  To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law ……… that I might win those out side the law. To the weak, 1 became weak, that I might win the weak. 1 have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some.”

Based on these biblical principles, the great commission to us is to go into every tribe in the Sudan and preach the gospel.

What Jesus did in bringing the good news to the Hebrews, and what Paul and the other Apostles did in embedding the good news from the Hebrew to the Greco-Roman culture, it is your duty to do in the cultures of the Sudan.

                                

 Since we are basing our gospel on the Bible, we need to know the cultures of 

  • Hebrews,
  • Greece
  • Roman, and
  • the culture into which we are entering.

 

Questions

 

1. That is the great commission?

2. Mention the two components in it and what they imply in practice.

3. lf we put bibles in a balloon and sent them to an inaccessible place will it be counted as evangelism and why?

4.  Explain why we consider the incarnation as the first cross- cultural evangelism?

5. Why did God sent Jesus to the Hebrews and not to the Sudan?

6. That vas the qualification of Jevs to be selected for the entry of Jesus?

7. Why did God chose Paul as the apostle for the Gentiles i.e. Greek and Romans.

8. That cultures should a missionary study before he can enter into a culture as a missionary?