Is It Insensitive To Share Our Faith? Hard Questions About Christian Mission In A Plural World

1.THE PROBLEM:It's time to call a squirrel, a squirrel The story is told of a Sunday school teacher who was trying to get a conversation started in her class. She held up a large photo of a squirrel and asked the students, "Now, boys and girls, what do you see in this picture?" Her question was greeted with total silence. And so she asked it again, "Well, what is this? What do you see here in this picture?" Finally, a little boy in the back row raised his hand and, squirming and sputtering, blurted out, "Well . . . I think y-y-you probably want us to say Jesus, but it looks an awful lot like a squirrel to me!" Sometimes it is important to simply stop fidgeting in our seats and call a squirrel, a squirrel. There are certainly many areas in our personal lives and within our communities and the church where this is not only necessary, but long overdue. Many questions are being asked about mission today One of these areas is in our feelings and understandings about mission. I hear, on one hand, a great deal of enthusiasm for increased commitment and involvement in mission as I travel to various Christian communities across North America. Many churches are being totally revitalized as they learn to think beyond themselves to the bigger picture of what God is doing in the world. The possibility of local believers seeing their congregation as a "center of mission," or perhaps, even better, as a faith community wholly "centered on mission," brings fresh energy, purpose, and hope. On the other hand, there is a degree of discomfort and a pestering uncertainty about the whole mission enterprise-uncertainty about where and with whom to engage in mission, about how such mission should be carried out, and ultimately, about whether mission is even appropriate at all in this diverse, multicultural 21st century. One Christian writer, expressing his feelings in an "alternative" newsletter (which has ceased publication), likely speaks for many others when he asserts: I am a Christian because it is a part of the Western tradition of religion, and I am also from that tradition. But the longer I live, the more convinced I am that different religions are the different socio-cultural manifestations of the same Creative Spirit at work. After all, why would a loving, all-powerful and jealous deity reveal itself only to a small group of wandering tribespeople, expecting them to spread a rather imperialistic message around the world? And where is the justice in dooming persons to eternal torment simply because they had the misfortune of being born in an area not yet "penetrated" by this "good news"? Thus, the idea of "converting" to another religion has lost its importance for me. More important is "converting" to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of one's own religious heritage. The questions raised here are by no means the only ones people are asking. Several years ago I taught a spring semester course at Goshen College, a small Mennonite liberal arts college in northern Indiana. The course, entitled, "Missions-New Millennium," treated many of the issues one might anticipate in such an offering: biblical and theological foundations, religious worldviews, history of missions, cross-cultural communication principles, current strategies for mission, case studies of particular significance, and so on. What interested me more than what "the scholars" thought about these matters was what the students thought. And so, during the very first class period, the 37 participants in the course were divided into small groups to reflect on what questions they wanted to have addressed throughout the semester. It took no longer than 20 minutes of discussion to produce 144 questions needing attention. Some of these, of course, appeared multiple times in various group reports. But at least 63 distinct questions were identified by this process, and, of that number, 10 in particular seemed to be most on students' mindsKrabill, James R. is the author of 'Is It Insensitive To Share Our Faith? Hard Questions About Christian Mission In A Plural World', published 2005 under ISBN 9781561484843 and ISBN 1561484849.