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The issue of evangelizing non-Christian peoples has become one of the most controversial practices in our pluralistic world today. Is it appropriate to engage in evangelism in this diverse, multicultural twenty-first century? Is it insensitive?
Good Books, PO Box 419, Intercourse, PA 17534, 2005, 154 pages, $9.99.
—Reviewed by Edwin Y. Bernard, professor, distance learning, Moody Bible Institute, and pastor Heartsong Community Church, an ethnic house church, Downers Grove, Illinois.
The issue of evangelizing non-Christian peoples has become one of the most controversial practices in our pluralistic world today. Is it appropriate to engage in evangelism in this diverse, multicultural twenty-first century? Is it insensitive?
Krabill believes Western Christians have felt a very strong “discomfort” about sharing their faith in recent years for several reasons. First, the number of cultural blunders in our missions history has become quite embarrassing. Second, because matters of faith in our worldview cannot be scientifically proven, they are relegated to the realm of private and personal beliefs. Third, we often become uneasy when we encounter other faiths whose worldview differs greatly from our own.
The author helps us overcome those deep and unanswered questions about how we ought to live and talk about our faith. He invites us to consider Jesus who offers himself as the way, the truth and the life, as “God’s primary shalom-maker in the world.”
Krabill says the concept of offering shalom to a hurting world is what is missing in all other world religions. Shalom is the all-encompassing term which describes the relationship between people and God. It covers human welfare, health and well-being in both the spiritual and material aspects.
The Church needs to showcase Christ to the world as God’s primary “shalom-maker,” that is, to portray the holistic ministry of Christ teaching, preaching and healing. The Church needs to pay close attention to what Jesus actually said and did during his life on earth. It is then that believers can share God’s justice, righteousness, peace and salvation—God’s shalom—to a needy world.
Missionaries do not “coerce” people to come to Christ, nor “clone” nationals to be Christianized like us. Rather, missionaries need to do the only thing they can do: “commend Jesus” to the lost to either embrace or reject God’s shalom.
Once Christian missionaries recognize their own ongoing, desperate need for God’s grace, they discover they have some good news worthy of a “conversation.” This is not a sermon or speech; rather, it is a friendly exchange of ideas and opinions between two partners in dialogue. In this way, Krabill states, the Church can serve as the model and the messenger in explaining what God is up to in the world, and thus showcase his shalom.
This book is a delightful and easy read, sprinkled with a few cross-cultural illustrations. When the liberating message of the gospel encounters people within a given culture, it frees them to become everything God intended them to be, and to experience his shalom.
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