BULLETIN ARTICLE – 29 July 2018
SAVED BY GOD’S GRACE
In his book, The Next Christendom, Philip Jenkins talks about how Christianity is declining in traditional Western “Christian” nations. However, all is not lost. Jenkins asserts that Christianity is growing elsewhere in other lands that the Church had written off previously – continents such as Asia, Africa and South America are beginning to see a rise in the Christian movement. I might not agree with all of the things Jenkins writes in his book, but it did however stir me to think. It reminded me of how the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations before the end will come. It challenged me to rethink about missions – how does the church look like in a village in China, or in a tribe in Papua New Guinea? How do they worship? What songs do they sing?
Missionaries from the west have been importing the Western church tradition to different lands in the east. No doubt some of these are wonderful and should be continued but we must be careful not to mix culture with the core Christian truths. There are some core Christian truths we need to defend and yet we should not be overtly dogmatic about some other traditions.
The early Church faced this cultural problem when the gospel first started spreading to the ends of the earth. With the inclusion of Gentiles to the Christian faith, they had to address the Gentile culture. For one, circumcision which was expected of every Jewish male was not practiced by the Gentiles. The insistence of the Jewish believers in Jesus that the Gentiles who want to believe in Jesus must be circumcised according to the customs of Moses threatened to cause a division in the church. It was after much debate and consideration of this matter that Apostle Peter resolved before the Jerusalem Church Council that they should not put God to the test “by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear”.
At a recent Christian teaching workshop I attended, the speaker mentioned that in Singapore we have made Christianity only accessible to a particular demographic – mainly those who are educated. In doing so, we have begun to embrace a culture that cuts off other segments of society. How will we preserve the essentials of the gospel message and yet be relevant to a world that needs to know of Jesus’ love? Interestingly, the speaker also shared how a “Singapore heartland auntie” was able to come to faith in Jesus because someone walked closely with her through her struggles. Some years later she was able to even become a church cell group leader and do the same for others. Her cell group even multiplied! Of course this came about through much encouragement and even creative ways of teaching her the Bible – she relied on an audio Bible because she could not read!
Ultimately, God will save and enable us through his grace as he did for the believers in the early church. We also see that the early church grew and were strengthened not because of legalistic traditions but because of love and encouragement. We must be led by love and be an encouragement to form bridges to new believers today as we share with them about Jesus and his free gift of salvation for us.
