by Pastor Patrick Cho
It has been a while since our last post since Pastor John is enjoying his sabbatical and I have been away in Argentina for the past couple of weeks. Hopefully I will be able to get back on track soon and put up new posts. It is good to be back in San Diego but it was definitely difficult to leave Argentina. What a wonderful experience it was! In the city of Tucuman we were able to focus on two neighborhoods in a five day door-to-door ministry sharing the gospel for almost six hours a day. I don’t think anyone on our team had ever had such concentrated evangelistic ministry before in their lives.
It was awesome being able to work with the members from Missionary Bible Church and the interpreters from Word of Life in Buenos Aires. By God’s plan, we also were able to work with some local unbelieving interpreters. We had the opportunity to share the gospel with them throughout the week and they also were able to translate it for us over and over during the evangelistic campaign. It was great that they were able to have so much exposure to the gospel message. Praise God also that He allowed us to see some of the fruit of our efforts as we witnessed a good handful of people from the neighborhoods and possibly even some of the interpreters respond in faith to the message of the gospel.
There is a lot of talk lately about what kinds of strategies the church should adopt to engage the culture around us. But in all the debate about cultural relevance, we must be careful not to miss the point that the Bible has given us exactly the strategy that we need: Preach the whole counsel of God and the true gospel and God will work through the message preached to save sinners. This is a principle that extends to all cultures and peoples. If we dumb down the gospel or start redefining it, we play with the God-given message of salvation. This is what is so great about the trips to the Czech Republic and Argentina (one a highly atheistic nation and the other a predominantly Roman Catholic nation). We have witnessed the trustworthiness of this principle to preach the Word in season and out of season (2 Tim. 4:2) and we have seen people saved as a result of the message preached.
I am very excited to hear of how this year’s Czech Republic summer mission went. The Czech team arrived the day before the Argentina team departed so there was not much opportunity to hear stories from them. I am definitely looking forward to the two missions report nights on September 10 (Czech Team) and 24 (Argentina Team). I cannot express how blessed we are to be able to work alongside like-minded churches in other countries reaching souls for Christ.
Hello Pastor Pat! So with all the current debate over cultural relevance, i dont think that it can be denied that it is an important factor, especially since our own culture affects so much how we interpret the Bible and how it is applied to our own lives. So what kind of balance needs to be found? Actually… how do we even find that balance?
Hey Nate, you bring up an important issue. I think I know what you mean to say in your comment but I want to clarify something just in case someone else reading this might get confused. Culture does not determine the way we interpret Scripture. Although the principles of the Bible are definitely applicable to today’s culture, we must also be aware that the Bible was not written directly to our culture. Certainly there are many timeless principles in God’s Word which are helpful for living today, but we must strive to objectively understand what the original author intended for the original audience in order to properly understand how it might be applicable to us today.
There are definitely differences in how we might apply the Bible today because of the changes that have taken place in culture since Jesus’ day. And it is appropriate for us to take into consideration the surrounding culture. My only objection is when we allow the surrounding culture, and not Scripture, to be the determining factor of how we conduct ministry or how we “reevaluate” church and evangelism. It is a bold and foolish endeavor to try to improve on the instructions in Scripture. I believe that if God has given us a clear strategy for preaching the gospel in His Word, we ought to abide by it. Certainly it helps to be aware of the surrounding culture in order to relate to the people around us, but changing culture does not demand a changing message. Otherwise the gospel would constantly be changing.