‘Reaching other cultures’ - Each of the three
words conveys something of significance.
Firstly, ‘Reaching’
implies that we need to actively move towards the other, rather than sitting
where we are. All mission involves us
reaching from where we are to another.
We see such a movement throughout scripture as God reaches out again and
again to his people. We see it in the
words of Jesus to “Go and make disciples…”.
We see it again in the early church as the Spirit pushed disciples out
of the safety of a room to tell others about the transforming love of
Christ. We see it in the history of the
church people such as William Carey and Hudson Taylor reaching out from their
home lands to far off places. Mission
today involves a reach. In the UK church
there can be a tendency to operate on a solely attractional model of mission
that simply invites people to come to us and our gatherings. While this may still work for some,
increasingly we need to be people who reach out; people who make the presence
of Christ real in the places where we work and in the communities where we
live.
Secondly, ‘other’
implies that those to whom we reach are different to us. My own experience with BMS continues to
stress to me the importance of understanding the ‘other’, the differences of
those with whom we seek to share the gospel.
The way in which we present the Gospel to the Hindu villager in India,
to the family by the Amazon in Peru and to the Muslim in Central Asia needs to
take this ‘other-ness’ into account.
This idea of ‘other-ness ‘closely related to the
third word, ‘cultures’. I believe that all mission is
cross-cultural. You do not have to get
in a plane and fly to some exotic location to engage in the missionary task. The UK is as much a mission field as India or
Peru. This was impressed upon me sitting
in an Alpha course in an urban setting where the leader tried to convince a
young lady that she was a sinner needing to know forgiveness. The young lady continued to retort that she
considered herself to be a basically good person and so became increasingly
offended by the group leader’s accusations.
She sadly left never to return.
My question is this – What is the Gospel to this young woman? We need to stop to listen and try to
understand the culture within which we are sharing the gospel in order to do so
effectively. We need to learn from those
who engage in cross-cultural mission overseas and apply those lessons to our
own context.
Recently, on a trip to Central Asia, I spent
time talking with a young Muslim man about faith. Our conversation could start with an
assumption of God’s existence and we were able to share stories of
creation. A bridge was built and then we
were able to move from creation to Jesus, with the saying about the birds of
the air and lilies of the field. From
there we were able to move on to my own beliefs about Jesus. Reaching other cultures is an exciting
journey that calls for understanding, wisdom and action. I am convinced that the church in the UK needs to learn form the ongoing story of the church and mission around the world, if we are to effectively engage in mission in our own context.
