Star Wars, Forrest Gump and Perspectives

I went to Perspectives last night [yeah again, but probably the last time this semester.] There were two speakers and both were exceptional again. The topic was Pioneer Church Planting, and I was reminded of a few important topics including:
- indigenous [originating in and typical of a region or country]
- contextualization [presenting the Gospel in ways which consider the world view of the respondent culture]
- redemptive analogy [a story, legend, etc. embedded in a culture that can be used to demonstrated the Gospel]

I was also reminded that not only are these concepts vital for cross cultural ministry, they are just as important to grow people in our own culture that live on mission and purpose. Students should own the ministry. Let them do whatever they can themselves. Listen and learn from them about their culture.

I dragged LB with me to class. I was pretty sure she was going to like it, but not totally confident. That changed when first, I realized that she had been typing notes into her laptop for just about the whole duration of the class and secondly, when she got out her 'laptop pen' and drew the graphic the speaker had on the board into her high-tech touch screen/notetaking software thingy.

One of my favorite redemptive analogies from our culture is the movie The Shawshank Redemption. The main character Andy lives with such a hope that all around him are curious and intrigued. Last night, the speaker mentioned Star Wars and then asked for more examples from our culture. One of the students mentioned Forrest Gump. Hmm, I'm going to have to think about that second one a little bit.

Technorati tags:: student+missions, redemptive+analogy