It has become popular to say that certain countries, regions, or cultures are today to be labeled "Post-Christian." The idea behind this is that in the past, the cultural norms, presumptive beliefs, and government allegiances were tied to Cultural Christianity. I believe I must add the key term "cultural to Christianity since a lot of …
Month: February 2022
Church and Missions Relationship
How one sees the relationship between the church and missions has ramifications on how one sees missions. Consider three perspectives as shown above. First let's consider OPTION A. With this perspective, the church consists of local churches only. Missions occurs only to the extent that local churches directly carry out missions. There are two groups …
Quote on “Weak” Missions
“Any mission that does not measure up to the Kingdom of God is not a true mission. Mission is solely for the Kingdom of God. Mission comes from the Kingdom of God, and is executed for his reign.Therefore, as Jesus did his mission from a position of weakness on the cross for the Kingdom of …
Is Kabunian Jesus? Part 2
I really think you will need to read Part 1 to make any sense of this post. You can CLICK HERE. I suppose I might summarize the first post in saying that one should reject naivety in presuming that a simple YES or NO suffices. Kabunian (a central mythological figure in Cordilleran traditional religion) is …
Is Kabunian Jesus? Part 1
We had an interesting, even if short, discussion in class on whether it is okay to say/believe that Jesus is Kabunian. For those not from a very specific part of the world, this question is meaningless or at least confusing. However, similar questions have come up in many settings. For example, "Must one use the …
Book Review: “Encountering Theology of Mission” (Ott, Strauss, Tennent)
The book, Encountering Theology of Mission: Biblical Foundations, Historical Developments, and Contemporary Issues by Craig Ott, Stephen J. Strauss, with Timothy C. Tennent, is the best Missiology book I have read in quite some time. I just finished reading it about 2 hours ago, so I don't think this will be a carefully crafted review... …
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Escaping the Labyrinth: A Parable
The story of Theseus and the Minotaur is well-known. In the story, Theseus volunteered to enter the Labyrinth--- a maze-like structure created by Daedalus, in the Minoan capital of Knossos. Doing so was considered a death sentence. Either Theseus would be killed by the Minotaur, a creature who is half-man and half-bull who roamed the …
In Support of an Incarnational Model of Missions
I have been reading the book by Ott, Strauss, and Tennent, Encountering Theology of Mission. Chapter 4 has a fairly large section that speaks about Incarnational Missions. This is missions that is understood via the metaphor (or model) of the Incarnation of Christ. It seems like the authors look at this understanding of missions positively. …
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