Scripture Engagement

 And now for something completely different - a testimony!  Why did I join the Bible translation movement? I often get asked this question, and it's a good one. Of course, it was a matter of calling. But how did that calling manifest itself? It's a long story... Back in the 1980s we already knew that God had called us into mission work, but we didn't know what type of mission work he'd called us too. In my final year at university I visited Crosslinks in London, but they told me to go and get a secular job, and establish my profession, then I'd be able to use that in mission work. We got married, settled down, and became school teachers. But we were still exploring opportunities for mission - in fact we lived in a highly multicultural city, attending a church in the inner-city area where there were a mix of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. This enabled us to continue friendship making amongst those of other faiths, whilst attending the church and building rela...

When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” Mrk 11:15-17 (NLT) What made Jesus so angry when he saw people selling pigeons and such like in the court of the Gentile nations? It was because this was the part of the temple set aside for all nations (other than Jews), and they were turning into a Jewish market-place, so making it impossible for those from the nations to pray. 'This notice indicates that Jesus expelled the merchants from the Court of the Gentiles in order to safeguard rights and privileges sanctioned by God. The use of the forecourt as an open market effectually prevented...

The other day a colleague of mine heard her pastor preach a sermon saying something like, 'Mission isn't about going somewhere else, it's about reaching people here at home!' We have also heard the same from mission boards here in the UK. 'We want to focus more on local mission.' Why the switch from overseas mission to local mission? I think there are several factors we need to consider: Our God is too small, to paraphrase J. B. Phillips. We believe God can help us reach folk in our neighbourhood, but the idea of going somewhere completely different, with another culture and language, seems too far fetched. Also, deep down we may believe that, actually, they are OK with their beliefs and practices, and we have little to share with them. This is tantamount to believing that each region has its own god, and ours is only in charge of the local patch. We have believed the lie that short-term is better than long-term mission. This has turned mission service ...

Another point I made in my blog on syncretism in the Western church is this: 'A kind of intellectual belief in evolution that makes us want to believe any advance is good, not only in technology, but also in morality, world view, spirituality, and so on. There is no biblical basis for this. In fact the Bible tends to view many so-called 'advances' as moves away from God. For example, when the people of Israel asked for a king, so they could be like other nations, the prophet Samuel (in 1Sam 8 ) told them very clearly what that would mean for them, and it wasn't an upgrade!' At the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century there was enormous optimism in Western culture. We seemed to be making many discoveries, documenting all known life-forms, and progressing at a tremendous rate in terms of scientific progress. Underlying much of this optimism was a belief on evolution - not just evolution of species but evolution of civilisations. We believed th...

There is a growing trend in the UK church to equate mission with local evangelism. This worries me for several reasons: It seems to me that God's mission is much broader than evangelism, in that it includes liberating the poor i.e. the whole socio-economic side of mission is left out if we reduce it to evangelism. Exodus. On top of that it ignores the environmental side of God's mission - green ethics. Genesis 1-2. It forgets what is probably the main thing - God's mission is to the nations. That was the whole point of Abraham's calling (the beginning of God' redemptive story). Genesis 12. If we reduce mission to local evangelism we are back to the divide that used to exist between spiritual and physical dimensions (materialism), between one nation and another (nationalism), and between us and the rest of God's creation (anthropocentrism).  As Chris Wright has pointed out, it's not that God has a mission for the church in the world, it's tha...

Not much has been thought about Scripture Engagement research. There are two types: Research before starting S.E. work Research to find out how well existing published Scriptures (often print New Testaments) are being used I will focus on the former. It's very tempting to dive into making Scripture Engagement products without really thinking through what the needs are, what works and what doesn't, and what people are likely to respond to. Here are some ideas: Find out whether the culture is honour-shame, power-fear, or purity-pollution. This will help you know how to frame the good news in such a way that people will light up in understanding, assuming the Holy Spirit is at work in their lives. To do that one tool is the culture test , though it doesn't cover purity-pollution as a paradigm Read Wayne Dye's article on the Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement, then fill out a questionnaire based on that article. Give each condition a rating, then work...

You might have heard of Wayne Dye's Eight Conditions for Scripture Engagement . How can an analysis of a project be carried out? The simplest way is to use these online Google forms . Here are the steps: Get your team and partners together. Have someone teach Wayne Dye's Eight Conditions (or ask everyone to read it beforehand in the LWC) Fill in the first form. Give the condition an overall rating out of five. Five is high, one is low. Fill in the second to eighth forms and give them ratings. Work out which conditions have the lowest ratings. Start working to try and bring those conditions up. Work out a Scripture Engagement strategy for that people and adapt your project accordingly. For ease of use I've posted the links to the forms below, with some instructions: The Eight Conditions Questionnaire in Eight Parts The Eight Conditions questionnaire is now online in eight separate parts so you can answers short questionnaires on just one condition at a ti...