today was the first day teaching students doing a degree in oxford with the centre for youth ministry. the module i teach is on culture, society and mission. it involves six days of lecturing. i have taught it for a few years now, adapting and changing it each time. it has reminded me again how significant i think the simple insight is that insights from cross cultural mission have so much to offer us as we think about how to do youth ministry, emerging church or whatever in our own contexts. i was interested to see that that is precisely the conclusion that ryan bolger and eddie gibbs draw at the end of their intro to emerging churches where they suggest that leaders are :
hampered by the lack of available cross cultural training for missionaries within western culture. this arises from the fact that most of our training for ministry and mission still assumes a constantinian, christendom, and modernist cultural context…
and at the end of chapter 1:
ultimately christians who want to serve within western culture must be trained as missionaries
in fact that was why the main reason i joined a mission agency, cms, to be able to develop my thinking, insights, wisdom, experience in this whole area.
Technorati Tags: missiology
Right on, Jonny. I think that’s exactly why the U.S. could really use more Christ-followers coming in from outside to help the American church think of itself in cross-cultural ways, rather than assuming it still has a credible voice in the culture. I wonder if that kind of cultural exchange could be helpful both ways, between North America and Europe, etc. In many ways, it’s already being demonstrated as seen in the interchange of ideas between such people as yourself and Jordan Cooper (Canada), and Steve Taylor (New Zealand), and multiple other voices around the world.