Foundations for Christian Mission, Mentor's Guide, MG04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

going to those who have not heard the word of God’s great love in Jesus of Nazareth and telling the story in a way that is both clear and compelling to them. Taking into account their language, culture, and norms of communication, we seek to make the Gospel of God’s grace plain in the context of their culture and society. Mission has always been about telling the story of God’s glory in Christ again and again and again. The goal is that we take this story to the ends of the earth in order that every people may hear, and that those who repent and believe the truth of the story may inherit eternal life. In direct and clear terms, this represents one of the great foundations of Christian mission: telling the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Unfortunately in a number of Christian circles today, many have abandoned the story-ordered world of the Bible, the Gospel of Jesus, and the story-oriented methodology of mission for more scientifically inclined ways. Many Christians have abandoned the power of story for more rationalistic methods. As a matter of fact, in some of our churches we have lost the wonder and compelling nature that story-telling provides. Story lays out the concrete, bare bones quality of the truth in a way that a philosophical text or a scientific essay never could or can. With an emphasis on expository sermons based on scientifically credible exegetical methods that pass the bar of historical criticism, many Bible believers have simply abandoned their native language for a more dry, rationalistic, and less gritty apology of the Gospel. Although these have chosen the method of the world to communicate to it, the results have been less than convincing. By refusing to tell the story, and to tell it well, we are neither convincing to the world nor true to the “native tongue” of the Gospel, which is to lay out the historical facts of the truth in the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Leland Ryken, like a handful of evangelical scholars today, notices the Bible’s habit of speaking in terms of images and story over against technical language. He talks of our proneness to error, to slip into seeing the message of Jesus as merely a theological outline with proofs attached: Because of the predominantly theological and devotional purposes to which Christians put the Bible, it is almost impossible not to slip into the error of looking upon the Bible as a theological outline with proof texts attached. Yet the Bible is much more a book of images and motifs than of abstractions and propositions. This is obscured by the way in which preachers and theologians gravitate so naturally to the epistles. A biblical scholar has correctly said that the Bible speaks largely in images. . . . The stories, the parables, the sermons of the prophets, the reflections of the wise men,

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