What is missions?
Missions-minded.
This is one of our VCF distinctives. Supposedly a distinctive reflects an ethos, a culture that once was there in the community of students. But honestly, is there an ethos of mission in VCF? What is an ethos of mission, how would it look like?
Had an interesting discussion on missions during council just now and many ideas were thrown up. None of them bad in themselves. But I want to add another point.
There is no missions ethos in VCF. I feel it in the halls, I feel it when I hear people talk. There is no burning for the world. When CF'ers talk of the 'world' or 'other cultures' they talk about it in abstract terms. It is as though these places don't really exist or are too far away for us to identify with. I'm sure they know that real people live in those places, but we don't feel it. We don't in a way saying feel the 'bite' of living in another culture.
Mind you, living with people of another culture for long doesn't neccessarily imply that we automatically become experts. More likely we become experts in avoiding conflict- we merely coexist. In a sense, we can never be truly a part of another race and this is what I mean by the 'bite' of living in another culture. We may coexist, but there is a homesickness, a sense in which we never truly belong because we are foreign.
Missions begins when we bring the gospel through this handicap. Consumed by the love for people foreign to us, we bring the good news to them. Instead of looking at them as an enemy (in the past), as uncouth( as in the age of imperialism), or as an instance of 'diversity' (today), we love them as fellow created beings who need forgiveness.
But the fact of sin, (and Babel) means that we will always labour under a handicap of being foreign. Yet the Incarnation is the true instance of mission, where God became man to minister to the poor and the sick, widowed and orphaned. The Incarnation is a driving force behind mission: the powerful basis which allows the particularity of the Gospel in a certain culture (Jewish) to become unto the world, the Good News.
Missions can also be viewed as the slow building steps, the means of grace, by which God calls out his church, a community of diverse race and culture to be his worshippers. The means by which this is accomplished is by the preaching of the Gospel.
We could not have minimized the 'bite' of being foreign by resorting to other methods, and then rationalize our action by claiming that is allows for easier access for the Gospel to penetrate. One such way is by redefining culture as a neutral expression of human diversity (globalized humanity). Another is by being essentialists i.e. looking past cultural differences until we get to the essentials of being human, one such essential being 'freedom' or 'inalienable rights' or 'relational beings'.
Instead of the Gospel which was the means which God would bridge cultural differences, we have substituted a man made philosophy to accomplish what God would instead do. Where lies the problem? If culture is merely a neutral expression of human diversity, we forget that culture is inextricably tied to what a community worships as a replacement for God. So in a sense culture can be idolatrous, and so the Gospel must confront that. By being essentialists, we run the danger of reducing the Gospel to a doctrine of 'political freedom' or 'human rights' or 'relationship restorer' when the Gospel is to confront man with his sin before God. Here the perspective we take is important, culture stands as a very barrier by which the power of God overcomes by the application of the Gospel. Taking any other perspective that sort of minimizes the 'bite' of being foreign degrades our fellow man and makes our understanding of our cultural
heritage so much more poorer.
I was talking about a lack of missionary ethos in VCF. Could it be that we have lost our sense of cultural exclusiveness that we fail to see the power of God's love overcoming this barrier created by this exclusiveness. I would think that without our experience of this power, we have yet to understand God's missionary heart.
This is one of our VCF distinctives. Supposedly a distinctive reflects an ethos, a culture that once was there in the community of students. But honestly, is there an ethos of mission in VCF? What is an ethos of mission, how would it look like?
Had an interesting discussion on missions during council just now and many ideas were thrown up. None of them bad in themselves. But I want to add another point.
There is no missions ethos in VCF. I feel it in the halls, I feel it when I hear people talk. There is no burning for the world. When CF'ers talk of the 'world' or 'other cultures' they talk about it in abstract terms. It is as though these places don't really exist or are too far away for us to identify with. I'm sure they know that real people live in those places, but we don't feel it. We don't in a way saying feel the 'bite' of living in another culture.
Mind you, living with people of another culture for long doesn't neccessarily imply that we automatically become experts. More likely we become experts in avoiding conflict- we merely coexist. In a sense, we can never be truly a part of another race and this is what I mean by the 'bite' of living in another culture. We may coexist, but there is a homesickness, a sense in which we never truly belong because we are foreign.
Missions begins when we bring the gospel through this handicap. Consumed by the love for people foreign to us, we bring the good news to them. Instead of looking at them as an enemy (in the past), as uncouth( as in the age of imperialism), or as an instance of 'diversity' (today), we love them as fellow created beings who need forgiveness.
But the fact of sin, (and Babel) means that we will always labour under a handicap of being foreign. Yet the Incarnation is the true instance of mission, where God became man to minister to the poor and the sick, widowed and orphaned. The Incarnation is a driving force behind mission: the powerful basis which allows the particularity of the Gospel in a certain culture (Jewish) to become unto the world, the Good News.
Missions can also be viewed as the slow building steps, the means of grace, by which God calls out his church, a community of diverse race and culture to be his worshippers. The means by which this is accomplished is by the preaching of the Gospel.
We could not have minimized the 'bite' of being foreign by resorting to other methods, and then rationalize our action by claiming that is allows for easier access for the Gospel to penetrate. One such way is by redefining culture as a neutral expression of human diversity (globalized humanity). Another is by being essentialists i.e. looking past cultural differences until we get to the essentials of being human, one such essential being 'freedom' or 'inalienable rights' or 'relational beings'.
Instead of the Gospel which was the means which God would bridge cultural differences, we have substituted a man made philosophy to accomplish what God would instead do. Where lies the problem? If culture is merely a neutral expression of human diversity, we forget that culture is inextricably tied to what a community worships as a replacement for God. So in a sense culture can be idolatrous, and so the Gospel must confront that. By being essentialists, we run the danger of reducing the Gospel to a doctrine of 'political freedom' or 'human rights' or 'relationship restorer' when the Gospel is to confront man with his sin before God. Here the perspective we take is important, culture stands as a very barrier by which the power of God overcomes by the application of the Gospel. Taking any other perspective that sort of minimizes the 'bite' of being foreign degrades our fellow man and makes our understanding of our cultural
heritage so much more poorer.
I was talking about a lack of missionary ethos in VCF. Could it be that we have lost our sense of cultural exclusiveness that we fail to see the power of God's love overcoming this barrier created by this exclusiveness. I would think that without our experience of this power, we have yet to understand God's missionary heart.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, March 17, 2005 at 10:01 PM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
» Post a Comment