CROSS-CULTURAL EVANGELISM

CROSS-CULTURAL EVANGELISM

Cross-culture Evangelism means communicating Christ across the culture. It means preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ across many culture Matt.28:19-20; Mk.16:15-16, Rom.1:16.

CULTURE

Culture can be defined as an integrated system of  beliefs, values, customs and pattered of  behaviours; feeling and reaction.

·         Culture means an integrated system of BELIEFS about God, or reality or ultimate meaning.

·         Culture means an integrated system of values about what is true, good, beautiful and normative.

·         Culture means an integrated system of customs – how to behave, relate to others, talk, pray, dress, work, pray, dress, work, play, trade, farm, and eat.

PEOPLE’S GROUPS

The group of people is significantly large in sociological grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common AFFINITY (Structural Resemblance of Languages) for one another, because of their shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class of taste, situation or combination of these.

CULTURAL DISTANCE IN EVANGELISM

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE

Evangelism and Missionaries have the responsibility of communicating the biblical messege of salvation in Christ Jesus across culture understanding and must initiate the process of contextualization.

Such Christian servants have to learn how to communicate Christ to the receivers in term, of their thought patterns, language expression, media response, decision making techniques, acting and reacting forms and world views.

The evangelist and missionaries’ responsibility is to pass the supra cultural truth of Bible to the CULTURE BOND MAN.

CULTURAL CHANNELS OF BIBLE TRUTH

1.       The gospel contain supracultural truth.

2.       It is brought to man in Hebrew & Greek cultures.

3.       Translated to us English culture.

4.       Received in our own culture.

5.       The filter would filter it to their culture.

NEED FOR CULTURAL FILTER

Before the gospel can be effectively presented to people of other culture and retain the cupracultura truth, it has pass through a filter to be filtered, so that all cultures is has passed through may not polute the truth (Cross Cultural Evangelism in Action).

NOTE:

1.       There is a mutual relationship between Peter and God.

2.       Peter was led to preach to Cornelius.

3.       Cornelius respond to God.

4.       Peter was convinced that cornelius has change through God.

THIS IS CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION (EVANGELISM)

THE SUPRACULTURAL TRUTHS MUST MOT BE COLOURED BY US.

NOTE: As a communicator, the missionary stand on the middle ground and looks in two directions:

A

1.       He first looks to the Scriptures.

2.       The messege is not really his own.

3.       He did not originate it.

4.       He was not there when it was first given.

5.       His own words are not inspired in the Biblical sense.

6.       He can not say as could the Apostle in John.1:1-2; Rev.22:18-19

7.       His responsibility is to study the scriptures, preferable in the original language, but always in respect to the Bible culture context.

8.       He must present the message to the respondent through faith.

B

1.       When the missionary lifts up his eyes and looks to the fields, he sees millions of people who need the gospel.

2.       That is who Jesus said in Matt.28:18-20

3.       But the missionary looks at his respondent culture.

4.       The missionary realises that he cannot be an indigenous source.

5.       The language of the respondent culture will always have an element of strangeness.

6.       That culture will be his adopted culture, not his native culture.

NOTE:

1.       The missionary message is the message of the Bible.

2.       It was given by God through the Apostles and Prophets in the language and cultural contexts of the Bible.

3.       The Bible culture includes all cultural contexts in which the message of the Bible was originally given.

4.       The missionary is a citizen of a quite different culture apart from the Bible culture.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

1.       Locust: John’s food (eatable for John)

Locust: (tree) that has a fruit.

Locust: In Yoruba culture is a crop destroying grasshopper(check Matt.3:4, Lev.11:2)

2.       Hand: In Yoruba culture is Owo.

Owo: In Ghana: it means snake (ejo)

3.       Amu: (Water pot) in Yoruba culture

Amu: In Ebira culture it means (cap)

CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Cross cultural communication is the process of communication of facts judgements, opinions of truth in the mind of a person or persons of one culture to one persons of different culture.

COMMUNICATION

Communication is an act of passing information across to another party. According to the Aristotole, one of the Greek philosophers, he has defined communication as a way by which the thought of the mind is expressed by the word of the speaker.

Communication is the art of passing a message, information, ideas or feelings across to another person in such a manner that adequate or correct understanding is created in the mind of the receiver. Until understanding close to the idea or thought of the speaker is aroused in the Receiver, communication has not taken place. Communication is two-way: Verbal/Non- Verbal.

THE SPEAKER: The speaker is the communicator who has an idea, thought, feeling or imagination he wants to pass across to another person. The speaker is faced with the problem of knowing the language which the Receiver understands; language is generally the means of communicating. It is therefore the duty of the speaker to know his/her audience before the commencement of the communication process.

THE RECEIVER: The receiver is the person who hears the message of the speaker. The receiver is said to have received the message when he understands the content of the message of information.

It is an interesting thing to note that communication goes on 24 hours of the day. As a matter of fact, the world exists on communication. Only the dead do not communicate. Communicate goes on everywhere.

VERBAL COMMUNICATION: Verbal communication involves the use of words of mouth to pass across a message or information. These words sometime may be put on papers. The speaker uses the language understood by the receiver to transmit his message.

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION: This involves passing a message or information across by signs or actions. E.g. when a vehicle trafficates, or a man who sleeps under the message of a preacher is saying the preacher is not communicating. Arrow in the signboard, banners and posters etc.

NOISE IN COMMUNICATION

Noise is anything which interferes with communication and inhibits understanding. There are two types of noise: Mechanical and Semantic noise.

MECHANICAL NOISE: Mechanical noise is that interference that comes either from a moving object, a working machinery, people discussing close to you, cry of a baby, distracting thoughts, and unnecessary shouts during the message and so on.

SEMANTIC NOISE: Semantic noise involves lack of understanding as a result of inappropriate or unfamiliar words to impress their audience, but in reality, they may end up confusing their Receivers.

THINGS TO AVOUD IN COMMUNICATIONS

1.       Unnecessary Shouts: Many communicators or preachers these says feel that the power of the message is in shouting. Shouts do not have anything to do with anointing.

2.       Unnecessary Movements: Movement could not be totally avoided especially when communicating verbally. But when it becomes too frequent, it leads to noise.

3.       Repetition of Words: Words like “Praise the Lord” “Haleluyah”, “Amen” could be used wisely but as fillers when one is short of words.

4.       Irrelevant/Unnecessary digression: Sometimes a communicator may have to digress a bit from what he has been discussing. But many times these digressions could lead to distraction. A man  who is  asked to speak in Water, and because fire interest him more than water ended up in speaking more about fire; is not a good communicator.

5.       Display of irrelevant Knowledge: It has been found over the years that people love to emphasise their past successes or exploits. They will be making references to the past messages that they preached somewhere that is irrelevant to the current message.

6.       Indiscipline in the use of time: Timing is part of communication. Make sure you are as brief as possible because the tendency is high that people may lose interest in the message.

7.       Personal Problem: When you are communicating, especially in the church, please avoid personal problems or grievances with anybody in  the congregation. Please address the people’s problem.

8.       Settling Conflict: Many ministers have come on the pulpit with a specially prepared message to attack somebody in the congregation. This is no communication. If you have problem with anybody , the pulpit is not the place to settle it. CHECK: JAMES.3:2-69(AMP).

COMMUNICATOR’S OBJECTIVE (ROM.10:11-15).

1.       To assure correct understanding of the gospel.

2.       To assure correct understanding, we must understand how people understand.

3.       Communicator must present the gospel as something worthy of knowing and accepting.

CONTEXTUALIZATION

Contextualization is making the message understandable and relevant in a particular culture. Each culture has its own idea about reality. It also has its own set of behaviour with their meanings. The same behaviour may mean different things in different culture. For example:

1.       Ideas of reality differ.

2.       Different behaviours may haves same meaning.

3.       The same behaviours may have different meanings.

4.       People like what is familiar to them. They respond to music, speach and organisation that is like what they are used to.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A CONTEXTUALIZED APPROACH

1.       It must communicate the message accurately.

2.       It must be convincing and relevant to the receivers. The problems they face must be addressed and the kind of argument they fell are convincing should be used.

3.       It should require the least possible amount of cultural change by the receivers. (Act 13&17). They should not be asked to change their culture in areas that the basic message itself does not require them to change.

STEPS TO REACHING AND UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUP

1.       DISCOVERY: The first step is to discover who the unreached people are and where they live. This is the work of missionary research. You can go to the Local or State government or traditional ruler (King or Baale) to ask them about their language and culture (Taraba and Adamawa= have 100 tribes). If you don’t make research, you cannot know those who are unreached. A local government in Ilorin has only16 churches. They publicly it and revival follows.

2.       GO TO THEM: Part of the great commission is God: Once we have discovered our target group, the next step is to go and sstay among them. This sometimes involves hardship.

3.       LEARN THEIR WORLD VIEW: Once you are among them, you start learning their world view. What do they think is real and what religious ideas do they already have? Learning their language willhelp you to understand them. This will help you to avoid making mistakes when the time comes to present the gospel.

4.       LEARN THEIR FELT NEEDS: If Christ is the answer, what is the question\/ it the people do not feel any need for what Christ has to offer, he will not seem attractive to them. (e.g. They may be afraid of witches and evil spirit. Let them know that Jesus can meet this need).

5.       POWER AND PRAYER: No man is greater than his prayer life! Many times, although the gospel is presented to people in a way that they can understand, they do not respond. Check 2Cor.4:4, and compare with Matt.13:19) The only solution to this difficulty is prayer. The missionary needs consistent prayer ministry for the people to set their minds free so that they can understand and respond to the gospel.

6.       DIG OUT THE SCRIPTURE THAT THEY NEED: As the people from the group begging to respond to the gospel, the missionary needs to disciple them. But, what materials will you use? Sometimes, as a missionary you can find materials already prepared which works well in your situation. Other times,  you might have to prepare you own.

7.       DISCIPLE: The new believers need to be disciple and brought up to be a strong church that can send out its own missionaries. The missionary need to teach them and pray for the converts.

SITUATION IN AFRICA

Over 800 milllion people live in Africa. This is over 10% of the population of world, and Africa has the fastest growing population of any continent (3%per year). Africa’s people are divided into about 1,730 languages, which is one third of all the languages in the world. About half of these languages still need Bible translations.

Africa does not have as many large cities as some other continents. There are about 30 cities of over one million people, but many countries do not have any such large cities. Overall, the majority of the people in the continent are still rural dwellers.

If we include the island nations in the oceans around Africa, there are 54 African nations. But the population is not evenly distributed among them. Half of the population lives only 6 countries (Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Zaire, South Africa and Morocco). All the rest of the people live in the remaining 48 countries. 8 Africa nations have less than 1 million people.

Although there are so many Africa languages most African countries use a European language as their national language or one of their national languages. This please communication, especially in countries where there are many indigenous languages. English is used in 17 countries. French is used in 22 countries. Portuguese in 5 countries. The North African countries speaks Arabic. Only 10 African nations have a local language together with the European language as alternate official language. Ethiopia and Eritrea are the only countries that use only their own African language. This shows us the communication difficulties in the continent.

When it comes to religion in Africa, there has been great growth in Christianity in the last 100 years. In 1900, there were 8 million Christians (of all types) in Africa, but today there are over 330 million there are also over 300 million Muslims. About half of these were in countries of the Sahara desert.  Muslims are in the majority Comoros, Dgibouti, Erotrea, Gambia, Gunuiea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Somalia as well as Mauritian, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Sudan. African traditional religious are growing smaller in numbers adherent, but perhaps 15% of African south of the Sahara still follow them, which is about 97 million people. the traditionalist have the highest percentage in the countries of Benin, Genuiea –Bissau, Mozambique and Sierra Leone. There also alot of Christians and muslims who secretly  still  follow the old ways.

Most of the countries in the Southern half of the  continent are majority Christian. Half of the evangelical Christians live in only three countries: Nigeria, Congo (Zaire)) and Kenya. Another quarter of the evangelicals live in South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Almost half of the foreign missionaries of Africa work in these six countries.

Some of the countries where the church is small are that way because the government in the past has not been friendly to mission and did not let them in.

 In Nigeria there are still quite a number of people groups who have poor access to the gospel. There are also groups where only part of the tribe has churches but the rest are without some tribes are “Christian” but few of them have less changed by Christ. Information about all the tribes in the Northern states is being collected so that a complete list can be made of the spiritual condition of them all. A lot of them need pioneer Missionaries but it is hard for foreigner to get visas to do church planting.

Missionaries from others part of Nigeria are desperately needed.

SOME HELPFUL HINTS ON THE SOUL WINNER

1.       Be filled with the Holy Spirit,

 (a) Because as you witness against their gods, they may attack you spiritually.

 (b) They may try charms on you spiritually.

2.       Preach Christ and let the Holy Ghost move.

a.       Let faith grow as you preach to them.

b.      Avoid unnecessary arguments

c.       Public show may not stand the test of this age but faith in the Holy Ghost can stand any test.

3.       We need the power of God.

a.       It is the authority of the believers

b.      It brings signs and wonders as one preaches (Mark 16:15-18).

4.       There is need for an effective prayer (LK.18:1; Psm.102:17; James 5:16-20).

5.       There is need for a correct and holy life (Heb.6:14).

6.       He must secure the word of God (Heb.4:12; Ps.119:11; Ps.119:105, 130)

7.       He must have passion for lost soul (Matt.14:14, Matt.9:38)

8.       He must love the Lord Jesus Christ (John.14:12, 15, 21).

9.