The major problem world mission is facing today is that of the outdated church structures which no longer accommodate new peoples from other ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. The wineskin got old over time and new one is needed for cross-cultural mission in our time.
The lesson that can be learned is that any church that neglects the role of history of mission and ignores reviewing relevant structures for expansion will definitely become irrelevant in cross cultural mission as was the case of Churches affiliated to WCC that saw a serious decline in their role in world mission, due to theological and structural deficiencies. Today and in our own time, it is our responsibility to review those structures so that they can fit the fresh wine (Mark 2: 22). M. Warren asserts that, “we need structures specifically focused on cross-cultural evangelism”. Cisse
Usually Muslim Background Believers (mbbs) face psychological challenges of being extracted from the culture and community they are familiar with. Their post conversion experiences from Christians frustrate and make them feel returning back to the culture they feel at home. This is because they only mimic what they have learned, from those who converted them, to a Western version of Christianity thus imbibing Greco-Roman cultural concepts totally foreign and irrelevant to their cultural contexts and expressions.
“If however, they discover Christ, not of American, Indian, Roman, or Greek roads but
of the Islamic route, the Sirat al-Mustaqim, then they can be Christ centric (Isa’iyya)
rather than Ecclesio-centric. They can stay as insiders in their communities, love
God, obey Christ and transform their Islamic culture and relevant structures into what
God originally intended for the Muslim peoples. Muhammad moved people along
the continuum from the worship of many gods to the worship of only one God”.
Therefore, perpetuating the extraction of the mbbs out of their culture and isolating them from their communities makes them both irrelevant to their people, ineffective and incapacitated to evangelize their own folks.
“If the holy Spirit is moving and speaking to people outside the Church, We must
listen, learn and re-evaluate what we are doing lest in our enthusiasm to preach
the gospel, preach our own worldview and what is appropriate in our own culture
and damage other peoples”.
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