Great book!

I met Dr. Nabeel Jabbour at a Perspectives class we hosted on our campus. He gave me a copy of his book because of my interest in the shame/fear paradigm. Roland Muller has written the classic work on paradigms. I personally feel we (in missions) need to give these paradigms some serious consideration. We tend to do all of our evangelistic work from the standpoint of Justice/Guilt and diminish or ignore our shame and fear. Christ's death restores us to a secure place of innocence where we are no longer guilty, shamed or have anything to fear before God. Great truths to move our hearts in worship...but I digress!

Dr. Jabbour has about 4 chapters in the book that deal with the paradigms but the heartbeat of the book is to help us see the common Muslim world-view. How does the western value system, separation of church and state, view of violence and terrorism, etc. look, sound and feel to the Muslim. If we can better understand this than maybe we would do a much better job of genuinely divesting ourselves of superiority mindsets. When we tie cultural issues to our evangelism then we hinder not only the conversion of individuals but we also hinder any impact a conversion may have on the community the individual was a part of. It is time we help people live the truth of 1 Cor 7:17-24 - "each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to them and to which God has called them." Transformation that reaches out and cleanses the links an evangelized person has within the community they currently exist in. Transformation that helps the evangelized person "live" the "love" of Christ to his community and open the door to community evangelization.

Dr. Jabbour did a great job using a story line to help me internalize the viewpoints and then does a great job further developing his answers from Scripture.

I highly recommend this book for those working with Muslims but I also feel it would be a great book for anyone desiring to think more cross-culturally about evangelism.