(Download) "Missionary Theology and Wartburg Theological Seminary." by Currents in Theology and Mission " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Missionary Theology and Wartburg Theological Seminary.
- Author : Currents in Theology and Mission
- Release Date : January 01, 2004
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 265 KB
Description
The word "missionary" is out. Due to manifest abuses in confusing Christian evangelism with Western cultural imperialism and denominationalism, particularly through the missionary efforts by European and North American churches in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this is not without good reason. (1) Attitudes of cultural superiority, ethnocentrism, claiming the "right" to impose Western views, and convictions about the inferiority and depravity of other cultures were normal. Negative examples of failing to carefully examine and identify the cultural assumptions on the part of missionaries are plentiful. This is not to discredit the faithful service of those who have served as missionaries in foreign lands. It is only to acknowledge that in the recent past, the church regularly failed to operate with a methodology that respected the need to incarnate the Christian message within the cultural matrix of other peoples. On several occasions I have recently proposed the word "missionary" to describe the nature of the theological education needed for the church in the present historical moment. If we are indeed dwelling in a post-Christian era that can no longer take for granted even the most rudimentary familiarity with basic biblical and Christian teachings among the general population (to leave unmentioned church members), then we are living in an explicitly missionary situation like unto the first centuries of Christian history. (2) While the word "mission" is trendy (every organization seems to have a "mission statement") and the neologism "missional" is being employed more frequently, to utter the word "missionary" invites immediate misunderstanding, if not resistance.