Task Of Evangelization Research Articles

Catholic and Tamil Divine Mothers

Abstract The cult of the Virgin Mary in southern India and especially in Tamil Nadu is very popular, and she certainly incarnates the emblematic figure of contemporary Indian Catholicism. After the arrival of the Portuguese in India, the task of evangelization was in the hands of the missionary orders who worked under Portuguese rule. In the seventeenth century, the centre of interest in Christian missions in India moved southwards to the Tamil country. It was the Jesuits who ruled and administered over the area for the next century or so. They contributed to the assimilation of the Virgin Mary into the Tamil villagers’ pantheon, trying to translate the Catholic conception of the divine into Tamil and locating the Catholic faith at “home” in the Tamil world. This study will try to explain how missionaries succeeded in spreading the cult of a new Catholic female deity among devotees of the grama-devatas.

Apologetics and Mission: Western European Hope and Values

Summary This article aims to help Christians in Western Europe with the task of evangelism and apologetics by presenting the results of various surveys regarding the values held in this part of the world. The values concern the meaning of life, identity and belonging. Once we know what our neighbours find important, we can show them that the Gospel addresses these desires. The surveys show, among other things, that non-religious people are still very much open to the transcendental. The article continues by arguing that the Church should be an attractive, counter-cultural community and that evangelism should not only focus on the grandeur but also on the misery of the people: the futility of much of what people undertake. It concludes by highlighting four qualities of our apologetics in the twenty-first century.

Authority and Participation in the Mission of the Church in the 21st Century

The dynamics of pastoral work, ministry and relationship hinges on the practical aspects of collaboration, leadership and service. The research uses the constructive and experiential method. By it, we shall explore the exercise of authority ranging from the Christian Holy Scriptures. We shall further espouse the position of the Magisterium of the Church, to locate how she exercises authority by service-love-effective leadership. Jesus Christ, in His human life exercised kenotic-servant-leadership with humility-love-power. Thus, from Him, the Church by Apostolic Mandate (cf. Matt. 28: 19ff) draws her power to exercise, live and execute authority leading people to salvation. In the Catholic Church, authority is exercise by the power of the Trinity, through the charism of sacramental ordination and the bestowal of baptismal character – a reform Pope Francis – affirms most be at the very root of ecclesial life in the 21st century. This must be the motivation by which all members of the Church need to exercise to evangelise with vigor and determination guided by love and service in order to participate fully in the life and mission of the Church to make disciples of all nations in the 21st century. The act or task of evangelization as ever before, most be the mission of the Church that ought to be propel by Christocentric mandate.

Experiences of Being Evangelized by the School's Evangelizing Mission: The Case of Employees in a Philippine Catholic University

One unique function of a Catholic school is developing a campus-based Christian community and nurturing the Christian life of the members of the academe. The Church stresses its importance in the task of evangelization. Hence, this phenomenological study intended to explore the lived experiences of the permanent employees on the evangelizing mission of a Catholic university. Through a purposive sampling method, the data were gathered from five participants through a semi-structured in-depth interview. The data were analyzed using recursive textual analysis adopting the framework of Lichtman's 3C's. The findings of the study revealed that the evangelizing mission of the university through its religious and outreach activities helped the employees have a more meaningful life, enriched and deepened their faith, and strengthened their relationship with God, the Church, and the members of the institution. They also considered their work as part of the evangelizing mission of the school. In addition, the witnessing of the religious administrators and the visible community life in the university inspired and encouraged them to share in the task of evangelization. Generally, the findings suggest a semblance in the employees' experience and the true identity and mission of Catholic schools highlighted by the Church. This charge is a lifelong challenge for all Catholic institutions to carry out.

Makna Injil Berdasarkan Roma 1: 16-17 Dan Implementasinya Bagi Gereja Masa Kini

The fall of the first man (Adam) into sin caused the man to lose the glory of God, man died and was separated from God. The gospel is glad tidings of Jesus Christ who died, rose again to save everyone who believes. To believe the gospel means to believe in the redemptive work of Christ, to reject the gospel is to reject salvation. In the Gospel God's truth is revealed to everyone who believes in Him. This truth is related to the absolute truth of God that no one has. The truth of God revealed in the Gospels is related to the truth that God has done through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus to save sinners. Salvation can only be received through faith. Faith is a gift from God given to humans so that they believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The gospel gives hope and sets people free from death. To get salvation everyone must listen to the gospel. The task of evangelism is the responsibility of the Church (believers) to preach the message of salvation in the power of the Holy Spirit to sinners so that they repent and have faith in Jesus and become disciples who obey the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus.

'KING-CHRISTOLOGY': THE RESULT OF A CRITICAL STUDY OF MATT 28:16-20 AS AN EXAMPLE OF CONTEXTUAL EXEGESIS IN AFRICA

Matt 28:16-20 is a narrative epilogue, and indeed, one which lets us in on one of the most hidden expressions of Christology. The African rituals of royal kingship can help us come to a better understanding of its implications for reflecting on the Lordship of Jesus in our own context. However, the structure, literary form and content of the periscope has, over the years, intrigued exegetes, commentators and interpreters alike. Its universalistic importance cannot be underestimated as scholars agree that the text preserves, in spite of some insignificant textual variants, Matthew’s understanding of the status of the exalted and enthroned Christ who sends his disciples to evangelize the world the oikoumene. The importance of the periscope as a Schlussabschnitt in the Gospel of Matthew is predicated on its Sitz im leben in the Matthean Hellenist Jewish Christian community, who saw it her responsibility to execute the Lord’s commission. From a contextual exegete’s point of view I am being challenged to offer a perspectival reading of the text in order to negotiate the meaning of Jesus’ injunction in the context of the emerging Small Christian Communities (SCCs) in the period of the New Era of Evangelization in modern Africa. Such a reading becomes necessary in view of the urgent need for the African Churches to evolve an adequate image of Jesus, quite suitable for their task of evangelization in the year 2000.

White Evangelicals as a “People”: The Church Growth Movement from India to the United States

ABSTRACTThis article begins with a simple question: How did white evangelicals respond to the civil rights movement? Traditional answers are overwhelmingly political. As the story goes, white evangelicals became Republicans. In contrast, this article finds racial meaning in the places white evangelicals, themselves, insisted were most important: their churches. The task of evangelization did not stop for a racial revolution. What white evangelicals did with race as they tried to grow their churches is the subject of this article. Using the archives of the leading evangelical church growth theorists, this article traces the emergence and transformation of the Church Growth Movement (CGM). It shows how evangelistic strategies created in caste-conscious India in the 1930s came to be deployed in American metropolitan areas decades later. After first resisting efforts to bring these missionary approaches to the United States, CGM founder Donald McGavran embraced their use in the wake of the civil rights movement. During the 1970s, the CGM defined white Americans as “a people” akin to castes or tribes in the Global South. Drawing on the revival of white ethnic identities in American culture, church growth leaders imagined whiteness as pluralism rather than hierarchy. Embracing a culture of consumption, they sought to sell an appealing brand of evangelicalism to the white American middle class. The CGM story illuminates the transnational movement of people and ideas in evangelicalism, the often-creative tension between evangelical practices and American culture, and the ways in which racism inflected white evangelicals’ most basic theological commitments.

The Depopulation of Upper Amazonia in Colonial Times

In Upper Amazonia, after an initial disastrous penetration of Spanish colonists, the Jesuits began the task of evangelization in 1638. A network of Missions covered the territory and some statistics were collected. The indigenous demographic system was characterized by high mobility and high fragmentation of the various communities, as well as rapid turnover of the missions’ population. The Iberian intrusion increased the fragmentation, and many nations migrated away from the riverine areas (varzea) into the rainforest, with less favorable living conditions. This process may have pushed a number of communities under the threshold of minimum size for viability, thus accelerating the demographic collapse.

„Praeparatio evangelica”, czyli o propedeutyce wiary we współczesnych czasach

The task of evangelization must take into consideration the circumstances of the message recipients. Currently, in the West there is a lack of a unitary cultural fibre capable of sustaining a religious attitude. Thus the crisis of faith is linked to the dissolution of certain preambles that used to serve as pillars of the Christian faith, among them: the openness of the human being to God; authentic rationality; the possibility of grasping truths; the primacy of the notions of good and evil over social consensus; the meaning of human life; and the existence of God. It is necessary to recover these preambles to faith. The new evangelization therefore requires a “praeparatio evangelii” which is mindful of these cultural circumstances.

GOSPELING THE GOSPEL IN ACTS

The task of evangelism ('gospeling') is no less demanding and difficult today than it was in the time of Peter and Stephen and Paul. It is also in no less need of creative adaptations to audience. Perhaps what we need more of is the boldness (Acts 2:29; 4:13, 29, 31; 28:31) that came upon them through a fresh blowing of the Spirit. Perhaps the absence of resurrection theology in much of gospeling today is to blame for the lack of boldness. We need to recover more of the early Christian resurrection gospel and we need less of the theodicy-like focus Anselm and the Reformers gave to atonement theories.

PARTNERSHIP IN MISSION: TO SEND OR TO SHARE?

Partnership in is a key term for churches and mission agencies who seek to share resources between different regions of world. The term represents a concerted attempt within missionary movement to break free from dominance and dependency that marked relationships between old and new churches, as they were once called, in colonial era of mid-20th century. It also marks a move towards mutual and reciprocal sharing between churches, regardless of historical and economic status, and a shift away from one-directional sending of resources from churches in Europe to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Informal conversation with people engaged in frequently provides anecdotal evidence that colonial influences still pervade mission relationships, despite many resolute efforts to contrary. Why is this case? Why is difficult to implement? Can paternalism be overcome in organization of mission? This article attempts to answer these questions by discussing influence of in mission on mission programmes and administrative structures of United Society for Propagation of Gospel (USPG). (1) The discussion is based on research which examined policy of this Anglican mission agency in relation to its mission training based at College of Ascension, Selly Oak, Birmingham, between 1965 and 1996. (2) By adopting sharing and sending as motifs for two different concepts of mission, article argues that concept of one-directional sending, rooted in Western missionary movement of 19th and 20th centuries, and allied to European colonialism of same period, continues to contest and constrain implementation of partnership, as a concept of reciprocal sharing in mission. The emergence of partnership: sharing in Missio Dei The language of came to fore after meeting of International Missionary Council (IMC) in Whitby, Canada in 1947. In seeking to overcome dependency between older churches of Europe and America (the West) and younger churches of Asia, Africa and Latin America (the South), Council recognized that all churches, whether in West or South, were worthy in task of evangelism. In this task, distinction between older and younger was rendered obsolete. Churches were recognized as Partners in Obedience to the command of Christ to preach Gospel to every creature. (3) The phrase partnership in began to replace partners in obedience after IMC meeting of Willingen, Germany in 1952. This was due to emergence of Missio Dei which defined subject of mission in terms of God rather than church: The missionary movement of which we are part has its source in Triune God himself. Out of depths of His love for us, Father has sent forth His own Son to reconcile all things to Himself, that we and all men might, through Spirit, be made one in Him with Father in that perfect love which is very nature of God ... ... There is no participation in Christ without participation in His mission to world. That by which Church receives its existence is that by which it is also given its world-mission. As Father hath sent me, even so I send you. (4) Missio Dei, placing of God at heart of missionary activity, was result of a reappraisal of place of church in missionary theology. It reflected unease concerning a missionary ecclesiology in which church had become primary focus of mission, with result that missionary activity concentrated on expanding and developing churches rather than proclaiming trinitarian Christian God. Missio Dei theology sought to reconstruct mission as ah activity of Trinity in world, with churches participating together in God's mission (Missio Dei) as partners. …

Witnessing Christians from Karl Barth’s Perspective

Why does God call people to be Christians? After considering the different answers that people give to this question, Karl Barth offers his own view of what it means to be a Christian. In refuting many of the common assumptions about this, including views that God calls people to live moral lives or to evangelise, Barth looks back to a more ‘New Testament’ approach to the matter, one that regards the task of evangelism to be at the very heart of being a Christian and not just something they do.

Anyone for Economics?

The significant role of mundane economics in carrying out the task of evangelization is often overlooked by missiologists. Here Dr. Corwin stresses that economics is a factor that cannot be ignored by mission strategists.