Ray Aldred, the gospel, and culture

This past winter I was privelaged to hear an amazing and powerful message from Ray Aldred. Although I was tempted to, I will not post the entire text of his message on this blog. Instead I will give you a breif exerpt, and a link to the entire message.

I want to talk about cross-cultural conversion. Why do we always try to mash these two ideas together, cross-cultural and conversion? We all understand the importance of conversion, of people receiving the Lord Jesus Christ, but why is it so important to communicate that across cultural lines? Because there are many who would argue that the missionary enterprise has been hijacked by colonialism and neo-colonialism and only serves to spread the influence of Westernization. So why do we continue to talk about this? Talk about the advancement of the kingdom of God has most often meant the advancement of some earthly kingdom. Inevitably whenever a nation try to bring heaven to earth, they end up bringing hell up instead.

I can testify to that reality. I come from a people group who has been the target of powers who have sought our eradication through cultural assimilation often carried out by the Church. Well-intentioned folks attempted to Christianize our people through the residential schools. These schools were thought to be able to create a kind of Christian training ground that would give children the skills for life. Instead these institutions brought death and destruction. To this day there is a basic mistrust among our people toward Christianity, because it is seen as the whiteman's gospel. In a society that is more and more prone to a pluralistic individualism that has everyone inventing their own religion, why continue to try and put together cross-cultural and conversion? Read the rest

~Ray Aldred Dec 29th, 2003

This message radically changed they way that I think about the point at which the Gospel and culture intersect. Please Read.