http://gospeltranslations.org/w/index.php?title=Shining_Like_Stars:_The_Power_of_the_Gospel_in_the_World%E2%80%99s_Universities/Foreword&feed=atom&action=historyShining Like Stars: The Power of the Gospel in the World’s Universities/Foreword - Revision history2024-03-29T06:53:56ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.16alphahttp://gospeltranslations.org/w/index.php?title=Shining_Like_Stars:_The_Power_of_the_Gospel_in_the_World%E2%80%99s_Universities/Foreword&diff=19206&oldid=prevJoyaTeemer: Created page with '{{info}} '''Indigenous mission in a digital age''' A quarter of a century ago, specialists in theology and mission endlessly talked and wrote about contextualization. A century...'2010-02-12T14:26:51Z<p>Created page with '{{info}} '''Indigenous mission in a digital age''' A quarter of a century ago, specialists in theology and mission endlessly talked and wrote about contextualization. A century...'</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{info}}<br />
<br />
'''Indigenous mission in a digital age'''<br />
<br />
A quarter of a century ago, specialists in theology and mission<br />
endlessly talked and wrote about contextualization. A century<br />
before that the buzzword was 'indigeneity': the aim of mission,<br />
we were told, was to plant churches that were 'indigenous',<br />
that is self-governing, self-financing and self-propagating. What<br />
'contextualization' added to this mix was (to coin a word) selftheolOgizing.<br />
In other words, Christians needed to think. through<br />
the Bible for themselves, within their own language and culture,<br />
within their own contexts.<br />
<br />
Inevitably, the call for contextualization resulted in both good<br />
things and bad things. Where the local context becomes the final<br />
control, historical rootedness - and even the Bible itself - may<br />
become domesticated. In the name of Christianity, some forms of<br />
contextualized theology became mere excuses for an array of<br />
current social agendas with only marginal connection to the gospel<br />
of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, to have Rwandans and<br />
Singaporeans and Japanese and Bolivians thinking through the<br />
Bible for themselves, learning from the history of the church, while<br />
nevertheless learning to be faithful and learning to read the Bible in<br />
their own contexts, was surely a good thing.<br />
<br />
The work of contextualization must go on, of course; the need<br />
is perennial. Yet there is a sense in which the word itself sounds<br />
vaguely old-fashioned today. A lot of observers and theorists<br />
now speak of the ''globalizing'' of mission and of the ''globalizing'' of<br />
theology. In this world of rapid travel and digital communication,<br />
ideas, eye-witness accounts, stories, pictures and other bits of data<br />
travel faster than ever before. So as soon as it becomes digitally<br />
connected, no community is any longer an isolated community in<br />
which everything must be ''contextualized''. For it has become part<br />
of the global community: here we learn from each other, we<br />
influence one another. Contextualization cannot be ignored, but it<br />
now lives in tension with globalization.<br />
<br />
There are both advantages and dangers to these developments.<br />
Those who always conceive of the glass as half empty see only the<br />
dangers; those who prefer to think. of the glass as half full trumpet<br />
the opportunities. <br />
<br />
Those of us who love to remember that around the throne of<br />
God on the last day will be men and women from every language<br />
and tribe and people and nation cannot help but rejoice that world<br />
mission is less and less about westerners going elsewhere to serve<br />
Christ, but about believers from everywhere going everywhere.<br />
Even in the realm of theology, while we must never, not even for a<br />
second, side-step the unique role of Scripture as the 'norming<br />
norm' for Christians, we are learning from one another, and<br />
teaching one another.<br />
<br />
The book you hold in your hand does not address these topics<br />
in a theoretical way. It does something more foundational: it<br />
introduces you to the stories of Christians in one remarkably<br />
worldwide movement. The International Fellowship of Evangelical<br />
Students (IFES), made up of many national bodies, works in<br />
one of the most strategic populations in the world. University and<br />
college students become not only the next generation ofleaders in<br />
most countries of the world, but the next generation of Christian<br />
leaders. In these accounts, Lindsay Brown opens our eyes to what<br />
is going on in the world: he helps us become 'global Christians'.<br />
<br />
Read these chapters, and you will wonder, you will reflect, you<br />
will laugh, you will weep. Above all, you will be reminded that the<br />
Lord Christ has not yet finished calling people to himself, that we<br />
Christians have brothers and sisters in many, many places, all of<br />
them with their own stories; that faithfulness to the gospel and to<br />
the Lord, issuing in perseverance, courage and sometimes martyrdom,<br />
is still a distinguishing mark of blood-bought human beings;<br />
that all of us, not least those of us in the West, have many lessons<br />
to learn from the global church. This book is not written to address<br />
all the theological and strategic questions that might be raised, but<br />
it introduces us to real brothers and sisters in Christ, and that is<br />
important, for neither Christian truth nor Christian love can long<br />
survive if we forget there are people out there. Please, read it, and<br />
pass it on.<br />
<br />
D.A. Carson<br />
<br />
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School<br />
<br />
Trinity International University</div>JoyaTeemer