1. Pray for them and let them know that you are doing so frequently.

2. Send “real mail.”

3. Pray for the people the missionaries serve and not only for the missionaries and their families.

4. Recruit others to pray for the missionary’s area of service (city, people group, etc.) or for the missionaries themselves.

5. Go visit them with the purpose of serving and encouraging them in their work.

6. Send them updates and pictures of you and your family (by mail or email).

7. Ask questions about their work.

8. Continue to be a Christian friend and continue to minister to them.

9. Support them financially.

10. Seek to encourage them when they are on stateside assignment.

Remember that missions is not just about praying, giving, and going, but also about supporting those we have sent.

1. Fluency: The worker communicates the gospel in the peoples’ heart language (the language they speak at home), rather than their trade language.

2. Storying: The majority of Muslim peoples live in functionally oral societies, so the workers communicate biblical truth through culturally-appropriate storying methods.

3. Christ-like Character: The workers have a good reputation among the people. They are seen as respectful of the host culture. They are seen as spiritual people who love and serve others. They also are known for sharing meals and being hospitable.

4. Social Networks: They seek to reach “networks among whom trust-relationships already exist,” like families and other natural social groups, instead of just reaching individuals.

5. Scripture: They use the Bible as “their primary means of sharing the gospel, training new believers and developing leaders.”

6. Intentional Reproduction: From the very start they teach seekers and new believers to teach others what they are learning. They plant churches and train leaders who can spiritually reproduce.

7. Prayer: Workers are people of prayer, individually and corporately. They also take the time to establish extensive prayer networks in support of their work.

LDS:
1. The Latter-Day Saints (LDS) are less likely to home school or attend religious schools than the general public.
2. LDS (83%) and Hindus (90%) are the most likely to be married to someone of the same faith.
3. 90% of LDS are Anglo in the U.S.
4. LDS converts tend to be less educated and earn lower incomes than lifelong LDS.
5. 57% of LDS say that their faith is the one true faith while 39% of LDS disagree with this statement.

LDS and JW comparison:
1. LDS make up 1.7% of US population and JW make up .7% of the population.
2. 26% of LDS are converts while 67% of JW are converts.
3. 70% of those raised LDS remain in the church while only 37% of those raised JW remain in the faith.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries many Protestant missionaries failed to contextualize the Gospel. Missionaries, knowingly or unknowingly, often exported not only the Gospel message but also western culture. This often led to syncretism, theological confusion, and surface-level Christianity. Therefore, in many of these places Christianity remained a foreign religion.

Thankfully, since that time, missionaries have realized the need to contextualize the Gospel. The Gospel message stays the same, but the ways in which it is communicated should take different forms depending on the context. However, contextualizing how the Gospel is communicated is not enough.

The ways in which Christians live and worship must also be contextualized. This type of contextualization, although assisted at the start by a missionary, should ultimately be done by the local believers. Local believers, under the guidance of the Bible and the Holy Spirit, are able to best determine how the gospel and their churches are to look in their context. When local believers contextualize the Gospel and their churches, Christianity has a far greater chance of not being seen as a foreign religion. A great resource on Contextualization is David Hesselgrave’s Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally

1. Pre-existence of humanity:
LDS: All humans pre-existed in the spirit world before being born on earth.
Scientology: People were thetans in past lives + belief in reincarnation.

2. Unlimited potential for humans:
LDS: Heavenly Father (God) is an exalted man and LDS men may become gods with omnipotence and omniscience.
Scientology: People may become thetans again, regaining their freedom from matter, energy, space, and time (MEST).

3. “Salvation” only through their Church:
LDS: Exaltation and godhood only through the LDS Church.
Scientology: Recovering one’s thetanhood only possible through Church of Scientology.

Differences:

1. Religious terminology:
LDS: Use of biblical and Christian terminology.
Scientology: Develops own terminology; appealing to science, technology, eastern religions, and the New Age.

2. Knowledge of truth:
LDS: Divine revelation received by Joseph Smith and later LDS prophets.
Scientology: L. Ron Hubbard’s findings through his own studies.

3. God and gods:
LDS: Worship of Heavenly Father, but belief in the existence of multiple gods.
Scientology: Minimal reference to God; not the focus in Scientology.

4. Spirit and matter:
LDS: A physical body is necessary for exaltation to godhood. Heavenly Father has a body with flesh and bones.
Scientology: Being trapped in matter is the problem; the goal is to be set free from a physical body.

5. Attaining “salvation:”
LDS: Faith in Jesus Christ, baptism into the LDS Church, receive Holy Ghost, receive temple endowment, be married in a LDS temple, and follow LDS teachings.
Scientology: Through auditing sessions one’s engrams are erased, making one “clear,” and then by taking additional classes one can become an “Operating Thetan.”

6. The final goal:
LDS: Exaltation to godhood with wife and children.
Scientology: Returning to thetanhood as a disembodied powerful being.

When studying other religions it is important to understand how those within the tradition approach their sacred text(s).  Different religious traditions have different understandings of revelation.   Because of this, believers in the various traditions read their texts differently.  We cannot assume that Muslims approach the Qur’an the same way as we approach the Bible or that Hindus approach the Gita as we approach the Gospels.

For example, in most Hindu and Buddhist traditions the historicity or authenticity of the stories about the Buddha or gods are not a matter of concern since the truths being taught is what matters.  Since Hindus and Buddhists believe that these truths are eternal, it does matter if the actual events described in the text ever happened or not. This would not be the case for the Bible or the Qur’an, which are understood to be historically rooted. If events recorded in the Bible or the Qur’an were shown to not have happened (if this were actually possible) this would be a problem for believers within the two traditions.

Moreover, in some traditions, like in Christianity and Islam, there is one authoritative text, but in other traditions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, there is not an authoritative text.  This is largely due to their understanding of revelation.  In Islam, God dictated the words of the Qur’an to Muhammad, albeit through the mediation of the angel Gabriel.  In Christianity, God inspired the biblical writers.  Thus, although the texts contain the personalities of the various writers, God directed what they wrote.  In contrast to the Muslim and Christian view, most Hindu and Buddhist traditions believe that their sacred texts were written by enlightened people who discovered the eternal truths of the cosmos.

Consequently, when studying other religions, especially their holy books, it is important to first investigate how insiders understand their own texts.

A few days ago I finished a study on the Gospel of Mark and realized just how many times Mark notes that Jesus was surrounded by a crowd of people (18 different times from what I saw). Although many rejected Jesus during his three-year ministry, he always attracted crowds because of his teachings, miracles, and lifestyle. I think we can learn from this as we seek to communicate the Gospel to those of other faiths.

One of the most important things we can do is to point others, especially those in other religious traditions, to the life of Jesus. This would include not only encouraging them to read the Gospels, but also for us to fill our thoughts and words with Christ. As we live out a Christ-like life and point others to see the beauty of Christ in the Gospels, others will be drawn to Him.

This past summer I heard the testimony of a sister in Christ who left Hinduism after seeing Jesus’ moral superiority over the Hindu gods she had been worshiping. In a similar way, many Buddhists have been drawn to Christ because of his compassion and selflessness. Many Muslims have been drawn to Christ as they see his love and experience his forgiveness. Also, many animists have been drawn to Christ because of his power to cast out evil spirits and heal the sick. As during his three-year ministry, Jesus continues to draw people to himself.

For example, in China there are now between 50-89 million Christians and some estimate that by 2010 there will be 119.5 million Christians.  Moreover, in 1900 there were only 8.7 million Christians in Africa (8% of the pop.); however, in 2000 there were 346.5 million Christians in Africa (44% of the pop.).

May Christ continue to build up his Church by drawing all the nations to himself!

*Stats come from Disciples of all Nations by Lamin Sanneh.

Last month I went to the annual meeting for the American Academy of Religion. The most interesting session I attended was titled “The Disobedient Prophet? Tensions between Qur’anic Verses and Prophetic Practice.”

The first presenter discussed the tension between minimalism and comprehensiveness in the development of Shariah law. He argued that the early Muslim community took a minimalist approach in which Muslims could choose to do as they wished as long as it was not required or forbidden in the Qur’an. He then argued that in time, the comprehensive position won out in which Shariah Law was understood to encompass all of life, based upon the teachings of the Qur’an and the Sunnah (the example set by Muhammad). He finished by arguing that the different schools of law in the Islamic world differ due to the way they have chosen to work out the teachings of Qur’an and the Sunnah.

The second presenter gave the example of how the Qur’an (9:5) teaches to “slay pagans wherever you find them,” yet Muhammad chose to ransom prisioners at the end of the battle of Badr.

The third presenter gave the example of the Qur’anic injunction to beat a disobedient wife (4:34), yet some hadiths recount how Muhammad discouraged men from doing so.

The fourth presenter gave the example of how the Qur’an teaches that those guilty of sexual immorality should receive 100 lashes (24:2), yet in a hadith Muhammad says that those guilty of sexual immorality should be stoned instead.

At the end of the session, the panelists came to the conclusion that these contradictions were only apparent. They went into detail describing how Muslims through the centuries have attempted to solve the tensions. Some of the “solutions” were more convincing than others.

In any case, I left the session reminded of the difficulty and complexity of studying other faiths. Those in the Christian tradition who have studied theology, church history, and biblical studies know how complex some issues can be. It is common place for those who have even graduated with an M.Div. to feel like they just began to scratch the surface on so many different areas of study.

Therefore, as Christians who are studying other religions, we should be humble and realize that the various religious traditions we are studying have their own complex history of practices and beliefs, and cannot be “figured out” any more than Christianity can be “figured out” by simply reading a few books.

I recently came across an intriguing concept while reading Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach (ed. Hexham, Rost, and Morehead II). According to the introduction, the various authors in this book intend to bridge the gap between apologetics and contextual missiology. As part of this project, they contend that Christians should approach those in New Religious Movements (NRM) in the same way as they would approach unreached people groups on the mission field.

On the one hand, this might not be a good idea because it might cause confusion. A “people group” is usually understood as an ethnolinguistic group with a shared identity, language, history, and culture. In missions, a people group is the largest group through which the gospel can flow without encountering significant barriers of understanding and acceptance.

On the other hand, seeing NRMs as unreached people groups might help in evangelism. Many Christians unfortunately tend to see those in NRMs (i.e. LDS, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc) as opponents that need to be proven wrong. As would be expected, this approach usually closes the door to evangelism. In contrast, Christians tend to approach unreached people groups around the world with a greater sense of understanding and compassion. Maybe by seeing those in NRMs like we see those in unreached people groups, we will be more likely to encounter them with love rather than with contention.