Barnabas File

My friend, Mike Smith, says, “Don’t say Baptists have never done a certain thing.     Baptists have done a lot of things.”     This is not only true for the Baptist tribe, but the Christian Church historically.     As we study the history of the Church, we observe a continuing evolution of thought and practice.    This is especially true in relation to what we call the mission of the church. Mission has been continually reconceptualized down through the last two thousand years. Missiologist David Bosch and theologian Han Kung suggested that the church has gone through several “paradigm shifts” in relation to its mission.  We might consider the changes in this way: The apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity was based on the expectation of the imminent or impending return of Christ. The Hellenistic paradigm of the patristic period addressed this situation: “What do you do when Christ does not return as expected?” T...

What do you see? The first time I learned about paradigms and paradigm shifting was through Joel Barker’s book on the topic. Barker helped us to see that if we can shift the way that we look at something, we can change our entire perspective on the subject.  He used optical illusions as an illustration of this concept.  If you look at something once, you see it in one particular way, but if you concentrate, you may see something new. Barker also pointed out that this idea applies to business.  Those who started laying tracks and placing locomotives on them thought they were in the railroad business when actually they were in the transportation business.  One approach led to a dead end; the other opened up new possibilities. The same is true of the church.  Hans Kung and David Bosch applied this to the work of the church through two millennia. Building on their work, we can identify seven  major subdivisions ...

In his classic work, Transforming Mission:   Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, David Bosch writes: “The Christian faith is intrinsically incarnational; therefore, unless the church chooses to remain a foreign entity, it will always enter into the context in which it happens to find itself.” What is culture?  Culture is the way of life for an entire society. As such, it includes "codes of manners , dress , language , religion , rituals , norms of behavior such as law and morality , and systems of belief." Usually when “culture” is discussed in religious literature, it is considered as an opponent to be overcome.  Culture often carries a negative connotation.  Reggie McNeal in A Work of the Heart points out that culture also serves God’s purposes.  We are not born into a vacuum; we depend on culture to give us a beginning point in understanding ourselves. As a result, we are both products of culture and interpreters of culture....