Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

The nearest approach to a new Christendom
has come in some Pacific island communities
-- Samoa, Tonga, Fiji -- where entire
populations with their rulers moved towards
Christianity during the nineteenth century and
where until quite recently a single church
predominated in each state (Walls, 2002:44).
The missional enterprise was often conducted in cooperation with other Colonial
ventures, in an interesting and complicated relationship. Quite often Colonial
missionaries lived in separate camps and visited the local people. Not too many years
ago, the thought of living among the ‘natives’ was considered revolutionary. In recent
decades, a new humility has inculcated a sense of commonality between the messengers
and the receivers. Missionary vulnerability has in many ways replaced the errors of their
predecessors.
We have preached the gospel from the point of
view of the wealthy man who casts a mite into
the lap of a beggar, rather than from the point
of view of the husbandman who casts his seed
into the earth, knowing that his own life and
the lives of all connected with him depend
upon the crop which will result from his labor
(Ronald Allen, in Bevans, 1994:83).
Postmodernism is in part, of course, a reaction against the ingrained hubris within
Western civilization. Along with this, however, some postmoderns criticize the church
for embracing the same modernist arrogance. The church routinely defends itself against
postmodern attacks, yet seems unable to comprehend how deeply infected it has become
with modernist thought. Even the cautions of caring non-Western brethren are brushed
aside, because the pride of the Western church is so pervasive.
The postmodern challenge to Western Christian cultural hegemony has also helped to
uncover another ugly trait of Christendom, the determination to control, not influence.
Sharing Christ with the nations (ethnos, Greek) means being ‘influencers,’ not
‘controllers.’ If any one is to ‘control,’ it is God in His sovereignty, not us. We are to be
vessels in and through which God makes Himself known. We are witnesses, who
proactively seek to influence others, hence the concept of Missio Dei -- we participate in
what God is doing.
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa