Video: Missions in the 21st Century
October 28, 2009Bob Roberts at the Missions One21 Conference. A lot of challenging stuff here:
A few quotes:
“We get first century, but we can’t get past William Carey: Instead of standing on his shoulders we keep trying to dig him up!”
“The Great Commission is “wherever you are you are going, in every single direction”
“When the Great Commission is accomplished it will not be because of a superstar, but because the whole body of Christ gets up off her feet.”
“The Church is merely a reflexion of the disciples we are making.”
“There is no such thing as a closed country.”
“You don’t have to have a platform or lie about what you’re doing there, sneak in & sneak out. You just need to be willing to die. And that’s all right, ’cause you’re going to die anyhow!”
“We spend all kinds of time taking missionaries & trying to turn them into businessmen. Why not take businessmen and turn them into disciples?”
I found this over at Guy Muse’s M Blog
I cannot see what is biblical in this speach…. Truly is sad… Mocking the old testament.
Interesting quote ( to a muslim)”…What if we built this relationship and we serve people together and lets’talk about our faith and what we believe and let’s get on this journey together…”
Together with muslims?…WOW… This IS sad…
”From competition of faith to collaboration of faith…”
Not biblical at all….
Sorry I had entered my old e-mail address… I am no longer using it…
I thought it was pretty interesting that in partnering with Muslims (which, in Palestine, who would you work with if you don’t work with Muslims?), he states openly that his desire is to convert them. I think his point was that he wanted to show Muslims that Christians love them… Christians are not an enemy (or should not be). Christians are ready to love Muslims, and the ultimate form of love is introducing them to God the Son, Jesus.
There were a couple of other things that I wasn’t necessarily in agreement with him on, but not that. Here in Quebec we work with all kinds of non-christians as we love our community, and we are simultaneously very frank about the centrality of Jesus and our desire that everyone put their faith in Jesus.
But he is not talking to people in Palestine… He is basically saying we should embrace their faith and engage in a dialogue with them…
Of course, we love muslims and others, we ought to love our neighbours, I understand that, but that is not what we’re talking about here…
We are the keep the truth of the Gospel, pure…
And again, there are no biblical foundation for his claims…
Of course, we are TO keep the truth of the Gospel pure… sorry for the typo…
God bless you.
I’m not sure which claims you are referring to.
I don’t think he was insinuating leaving or even polluting the Gospel, I think he was encouraging Christians to engage in active, sincere relationships with muslims, with real, active, and sincere communication, without defaulting to some kind of “attack mode”.
If a non-christian (muslim, mormon, atheist, whatever), is active in a good thing such as serving others, I would simultaneously affirm both the goodness of the action (“good” though the action does nothing to ameliorate my standing with a holy God,), and the lostness of any “good” person without Christ.
But the main points that I found fascinating was his desire to move missionary methods from the 19th to the 21st century. We live in a global economy with information today being instantaneous, global, and permanent.
How do we embrace these radical changes in communication for the furthering of the gospel? How do we embrace the facts of global immigration and the internet in the same way that the printing press was embraced and used for the movement and expansion of the gospel centuries ago?
I will say though that I don’t really know Bob Roberts and do not embrace everything he says or believes. We do need, however, people who are willing to question our methods with the positive intention of the more effective expansion and communication of the gospel to the world.
Hi,
I think we understand each other on this one, we have to find ways to reach non-believer… We need to take any opportunity we might get to share the Gospel! That is our mandate…our responsibility… We don’t accept their beliefs, we confront them with the truth of the Word of God.
Of course, in 2009, there are new tools we can use to share the Gospel… I love to share the Gospel on ICQ or MSN. We can certainly reach a whole lot of people with these tools!
We need to proclaim the truth, even if it might not please unbelievers. We have the truth, we have the Word of God, we know what truth is… Our duty is to proclaim that truth.
I am glad to know that you don’t embrace everything Bob Roberts says, I think this is a wise. Always go back to Scripture to see if things are so… (Acts 17:11)
I think what you are doing is great and I pray that the Word of God will always be the foundation of your ministry.
God bless you.
Mike
Thank you for praying for us Mike