Back into the blogging world...

Dear family and friends,

I haven’t written in ages, so here it goes. This is actually something I wrote and e-mailed out lat week. Yep, I'm cheating. Well, I’m 3 weeks into the SOSM (School of Strategic Missions) now, and with the change of season, the physical season has changed as well. It’s well into fall, approaching winter. It’s strange to think about it being summer time back home. The winter here is pretty mild (lows in the low 40’s), but there is no insulation in the buildings and no heating! Brrr!!! Thankfully, I have a small heater for my room that is keeping me cozy!

Well, I am loving the SOSM so far. It’s amazing training for missions. So far we've talked about how the primary transforming agent on the planet is meant to be the church, and everything must happen in partnership with the church. We've talked about contextualization and the need we have to boil down our message to its core. What is the gospel and what is added tradition from the West? How can we partner with the culture and traditions of other contexts and bring our message in a way that will have more power to the hearer? Last week we talked a lot about the globalized world we live in. Everything is so much more connected, and a lot is possible. Missions today looks different than it did even 20 years ago. So, all very interesting stuff. I'm loving diving more into it.

This week in particular is on the spheres or domains of society- government, economics, science, communication, family, church, arts. and education. We’ve talked about how we need to disciple nations in a way that touches all of these spheres, not just the sphere of the church. We’ve done very well in the church sphere, but God gives us the model in the Old Testament in discipling Israel, His people, in all the spheres. We need to have a holistic approach in thinking about discipling nations in the kingdom of God. It's been a good and insightful week so far.

That’s a very small glimpse into some of the concepts I’m wrestling with in a team of 7 “students” and 6 staff. It’s challenging, but very important, and I think God is really building key principles that if used with wisdom could have powerful implications in the nations.

All for now.

Love, Christy