I want to tell you a little story about my life.
I grew up in the same house that my Grandma grew up in. By the time we lived there, Grandma and Grandpa were living in the house right next door, about 100 feet away.
Naturally, I was blessed to see my Grandma and Grandpa quite a lot. We always gathered there on Sunday evenings for family dinner, and on all major holidays. And because both my parents worked, dad and my sister and I ate dinner at grandma and grandpa’s a few times a week when mom worked late.
In the summers, during the days, oftentimes Grandma watched my sister and I. We knew Grandma and Grandpa’s house about as well as our own.
And so I saw a bar of soap like this one quite regularly.
Whenever I washed my hands at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, I picked up a bar of soap just like this one and lathered my hands real good and made them clean.
And there’s one other thing about a bar of soap. When it got really little, just to be a sliver, rather than throw it away, Grandma collected it into a coffee can. And when that can got full enough, she melted them down into a new bar.
See, Grandma was a child during the Great Depression. Grandma was a teen and young adult during the 2nd World War. Grandma was cond itioned to think and act in certain ways.
I literally grew up in the same house that my Grandma did.
And yet I grew up in a very different time, in a very different culture, being shaped and formed by very different events and influences.
When I walked into the bathroom at my house, which had been my Grandma’s 50 years earlier, I didn’t pick up a bar of soap to wash my hands. I pushed down on the lever of a liquid soap dispenser.
Now, there is nothing wrong with a bar of soap.
It is every bit as much soap as this container of liquid soap. The content is the same. It’s still soap. But the method of delivery of that soap is different.
Today in our house, you won’t find a bar of soap.
It’s true. We have one bar of soap, and I’m holding it in this picture below (and after this picture was taken, I don't know what became of it.).
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| Thanks, Angie Swonger, for the picture! |
Of course I know how to use a bar of soap, and they’re valuable. But I was raised in a very different era than my Grandma, and 10 out of 10 times I will opt for the liquid soap over a bar of soap.
***
I tell you that story as an attempt to illustrate how times change.
Even though my Grandma and I both literally grew up in the same house, we were conditioned culturally in very different ways.
Even though we both grew up in the same country, in the same state, in the same city, in the same neighborhood, on the same street, in the same HOUSE...over 50 years, the surrounding culture had changed in quite a few ways.
Serving in the diverse "fields" of Europe and the Middle East, we have to acknowledge the cultural diversity, even within the Church of God. This manifests itself in different ways. In a more common understanding of "culture," clearly the Dutch Church differs from the Bulgarian Church.
However, in a theological and philosophical way, there is great cultural diversity, too.
Hence, the need for Three Worlds as an overarching model for ministry within the region.
You can also read a blog post I wrote explaining this HERE.
Basically, Three Worlds recognizes that there are three different worlds within the Church. Some congregations could be described as operating within a Traditional world. Others live and work and have their being within a Post-Christendom or Post-Modern world. How they think and act is very different, and the types of people whom they minister to think and act quite differently than those whom the Traditional congregations serve. Also in Europe/the Middle East, there is also the Non-Western world--folks whose faith and understandings of theology and religion were formed quite differently still from those in "the West."
To do effective ministry in 2013, especially across cultural borders, we have to recognize the diversity that already exists, and tailor how we minister so that it increases the odds for seeds to be sown on fertile ground (Ref.: Mark 4:1-9).
***
If you would like to contribute to our ministry, please visit THIS LINK.
Even though we both grew up in the same country, in the same state, in the same city, in the same neighborhood, on the same street, in the same HOUSE...over 50 years, the surrounding culture had changed in quite a few ways.
Serving in the diverse "fields" of Europe and the Middle East, we have to acknowledge the cultural diversity, even within the Church of God. This manifests itself in different ways. In a more common understanding of "culture," clearly the Dutch Church differs from the Bulgarian Church.
However, in a theological and philosophical way, there is great cultural diversity, too.
Hence, the need for Three Worlds as an overarching model for ministry within the region.
You can also read a blog post I wrote explaining this HERE.
Basically, Three Worlds recognizes that there are three different worlds within the Church. Some congregations could be described as operating within a Traditional world. Others live and work and have their being within a Post-Christendom or Post-Modern world. How they think and act is very different, and the types of people whom they minister to think and act quite differently than those whom the Traditional congregations serve. Also in Europe/the Middle East, there is also the Non-Western world--folks whose faith and understandings of theology and religion were formed quite differently still from those in "the West."
To do effective ministry in 2013, especially across cultural borders, we have to recognize the diversity that already exists, and tailor how we minister so that it increases the odds for seeds to be sown on fertile ground (Ref.: Mark 4:1-9).
***
If you would like to contribute to our ministry, please visit THIS LINK.
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