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Rethinking the Term Missionary: Is Every Christian a Missionary?
Get PDFIn order to emphasize the missionary nature of the local church, a new expression has emerged in recent years: “Every Christian a missionary.” Is this valid? Should local churches be instructing and claiming that their church members are all missionaries? Although many mission leaders and writers claim that the Bible never uses the word missionary, an examination of fifty-two different English versions of the Bible shows otherwise. In order to respond to the main question, a number of avenues are explored in this paper—the identity, definitions, and origin of the term missionary, including old and new paradigms and their analyses. In light of the research, a third or new paradigm is proposed, that of commissionary. Lastly, the answer to the question in the title, “Should the local church be teaching that every Christian is a missionary?” will be offered
Eight Steps to Transitioning to One of Five Models of a Multicultural Church
Get PDFTheories of change and theories of changing1 are insufficiently studied, hence often inadequately understood by the ecclesial academy. The few theories that are available are based on an author’s experience with singular process model developed from similar homogeneous contexts. However, the present author, reflecting on case studies over a ten-year window, strengthens the argument for a holistic, eight-step model as first developed by John P. Kotter at Harvard University. Whitesel argues that the eight-step process model is resident and visible in ecclesiological change. He then suggests that the requisite change objective for many churches will be a heterogeneous, multicultural model, which will intentionally or unintentionally follow one or more of the five classifications
