Re-thinking a ‘worldviews’ approach to evangelism
Thank God he uses us in our ignorance. I’ve been thinking about worldview and I now consider my former approach to betray a cultural arrogance.
Two sides of contextualisation
Red Twin and I have been talking about contextualisation: the necessity and complication of putting off your own culture to live in another. It’s always a compromise. Everyone draws the line somewhere different. But it’s more complex than simply working out what you’re comfortable with. What do those in your current country think? For […]
A postcolonial reflection on church in Tanzania
Let me paint two pictures of Tanzanian church services. The first is a Good Friday service. It’s long and the ministers are dressed up in their robes. It’s an Anglican service. And there’s something familiar about the way the congregation responds: the mumbled words after the Bible reading, the faces […]
Evangelicals and the fundamentalist tendency
I recently wrote a review of Michael Jensen’s book, Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology (Wipf & Stock, 2012). The questions being asked of Sydney Anglicanism are good questions for any evangelical Christian, and the book prompted some further reflections for me. The nature of evangelicalism is something that Tamie and I have been […]
Crossing cultures with attitudes to money
Cross Cultural Partnerships by Mary Lederleitner is quickly moving up my ‘to read’ list. It will be a valuable resource as we think about sustainability in student ministry but we are already faced with considerable ethical issues around money. Apart from beggars, sellers hassling us in town, and bargaining at […]
10 lessons from a problem at the bank
Banks in Tanzania feel familiar. They’re clean, sterile and quiet. The lady behind the counter wears a blue blouse. She types numbers into a keyboard. There are posters about customer service on the walls. They have that counter with all the different forms that you fill out before you see […]
A lesson about humility from making the ‘wrong’ bread
Tolerate ambiguity. Reserve judgement. It’s not wrong, it’s just different. These are the phrases we repeat over and over to ourselves as we navigate culture adjustment. We’re working hard to ask questions rather than pronounce on things. Our default is to assume that things aren’t the way they seem to […]
Meet Jesus at uni 