Basic Missions
“Cultural Gap”
- The difference between the culture of the missionary and the recipient.
- Different living conditions, finances, term of residence, goals, resources
- Different generations - different worldview?
Notes:
It is also important to review some of the basic principles of missions to better understand the task at hand.
One way to define missions is to evaluate the cultural “distance” between the person presenting the gospel and the person receiving it.
We need to determine how far away culturally we are from the people to whom we are trying to minister. Is this normal evangelism - what we would do to introduce a co-worker to Christ? Or is this more - do we have more distance to take the message?
One of the first tasks is defining our distance form the recipient, as well as the the cultural distance between the recipient and a church with members of their own culture.
Bringing someone from Argentine to College church (or possibly even Shawnee?) may be a big socio-economic shock - or maybe even a cultural one.
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(Ralph Winter and Bruce Koch E-Scale is the measure of relation between the Evangelist’s culture and the recipient’s culture. E1 in same culture - E2 similar culture. P-scale - availability of cultural church - P1 same people group, P2, similar culture. P1/E1 - Evangelism)