Comments on: Transplanted Tradition, smoking or non-smoking

By: almost an M

almost an M — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:45:31 +0000

It’s so hard to get away from pre-conceived notions. Having the unchurched who have just placed their faith in Christ study the Scriptures for what church should look like will make it culturally relevant and faithful to the Bible. Probably going to lose some PowerPoint in some of these cases and possibly a bit more….

By: ron cole

ron cole — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:29:30 +0000

That has always bothered me. That might be one of the reasons church-ianity seems irrelevant to a lot of folks. Why do we not let the localities of where we plant churches shape them. Give it some context to it’s surroundings.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:07:35 +0000

I saw this all of the time in Japan. Essentially Christian missionaries in Japan (I’m sure a long time ago) simply translated everything to Japanese and had them do American church. All of the songs are our songs and the preaching style is our preaching style. This may not be totally the case in every single part of the country, but I have visited at least five churches in the country and they were essentially American churches.

I don’t know what a Japanese church would look like it it were Japanese, but I’m convinced that the outreach in Japan would be stronger if it were.

By: C. Holland

C. Holland — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:04:14 +0000

Great observation. The biggest lesson I’ve learned since being in the mission field is how much each of us (American or not) bring our culture into Christianity. One church near us counts 17 different nationalities represented and, though the church is lead by nationals of this field, each of the 17 groups have varying ideas about how church should be done, all unique to their cultures. I wrote about it in “When The World Comes to Your Field”.

What it’s forced me to consider is this: what aspects of church are Biblically informed, and what’s “supposed” to be in the service that I have assumed should be there due to tradition? I’m still working it all out.