Another paper that grabbed my attention and actually intrigued me to read a book that had previously been suggested to me raised the question of whether we can apply a cross cultural approach to evangelism used in East Africa to reach the students of America today. The paper “Mission Impossible? Applying insights from Africa to evangelism with Western youth” by Russell Haitch, Bethany Theological Seminary looks at three aspects of the evangelistic work of Vincent Donovan as found in his book Christianity Rediscovered. He then questions whether these principles would work with our students.
The first aspect of Vincent’s strategy he examines is the idea of a totally gospel focused approach. Vincent apparently did not set out to build relationships first, nor hand out food, medicine or money as any sort of aid. He was not seeking to plant churches even. He simply traveled about sharing the gospel. From the paper I gather that it was hard for Vincent to stick to the totally gospel focused approach but he did for the most part. He did not want to establish western culture churches nor attract attention by hand outs. The second aspect drawn out in the paper was Donovan’s dialogue approach. Rather than walk into a Masai community and study the culture or engage in preaching, he asked the people what they believed and then shared his faith. He learned their culture along the way but that was not his goal. He found that they already believed in a creator and understood the concept of sin and was therefore able to use general revelation as a starting point for engaging a dialogue on the good news of redemption, etc. Apparently Donovan learned much about the gospel in the process. It was his goal to share the gospel without bringing any cultural baggage. The third aspect of Donavan’s approach was to be entirely communal. He did not seek to convert individuals nor ask them to make a decision. Rather, discovering how communal their culture was, he allowed the local clans to respond to the gospel and decide together whether or not they would believe.
The paper goes on to point out that this approach is not perfect (and he identifies issues with it) but generally speaking it serves as a reminder to us that we need a stronger focus on the gospel. This is especially true in light of the state of American teenage spirituality (see Christian Smith’s book Soul Searching in particular). We perhaps don’t need to become experts of youth culture, though understanding it will help us over time. We do need to engage with students in the context of their community or at least be aware that their community (and I would say family as well) plays a vital role in how they will understand and eventually live out the gospel. One further thought in relating this article to you is that often we think of the gospel simply in terms of how one becomes a Christian. We seek to get a kid to make a commitment. If we think about the gospel in terms of the transformation of a life rather than just a decision, we realize that we always need to proclaim the gospel and share it in every way possible – even to Christian students!
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