God often uses missions to expand our theological paradigms (pre-set notions on how we think things work). This can often scare us because we are afraid that a slight change could shake our faith or jeopardize our confidence of how we approach God and His Word. A couple suggestions to help you navigate this:
1) Be open to allowing God to broaden your theological horizons and paradigms.
2) Always look to scripture.
3) Protect the unity of the body.
4) Major on the majors and minor on the minors.
Defend the Majors - the gospel & the Deity of Christ.
Be flexible on the Minor (especially in a missionary context)
•Gender roles - can a female missionary (seminary trained) mentor house church pastors in China (the persecuted church)?
•Miracles/dreams - are Persians (Iranians) seeing visions of Christ and experiencing miraculous physical healings
•Poverty and persecution
•The spiritual (angelic and demonic) - how is it manifested?
•The spiritual gifts - how are they applied?
•The church (baptism & communion) - what does it look like? Is God stretching a paradigm for you?
Thought: spend time reading the book of Acts. Look for parallels to what you have been witnessing this week to the NT church in Acts.
Could God be working in similar ways
No comments:
Post a Comment