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You Don't Have to Cross the Ocean to Reach the World: The Power of Local Cross-Cultural Ministry
The key to reaching the nations with the gospel is to first reach the stranger who dwells among us. With this strategic principle, David Boyd set out to plant a church that focused on identifying and equipping bicultural people to share God's love across borders of race, culture, and language. The result is a way of doing church that honors Christ's call to reach every nation with his message of salvation while making connections between previously disconnected people. You Don't Have to Cross the Ocean to Reach the World shows readers in any country how to reach the world through building multicultural congregations. With a firm biblical foundation, compelling case studies, true stories, and practical suggestions for implementation, this is the ideal book for everyone who wants to reach the world for Christ by starting at their own front door.
208 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 17, 2014
Missions turned on its head
David Boyd argues persuasively for a new model of mission that is rooted in the local church. Rather than sending majority culture missionaries to a new culture overseas, a local multicultural church with deep and wide connections to immigrant communities or international students becomes a church with ready made networks to send bicultural Christians to their home communities, thus mitigating the need for massive financial support, and the challenge traditional, and typically mono cultural, missionaries face in adapting to a foreign culture. The strength of the book lies in the exposition of biblical texts, particularly from Acts, in which Boyd argues provocatively, and convincingly, that Paul was not a missionary as we typically think, because he didn't cross cultures to plant churches. He was a Greco-Roman and a Jew (who came to Christ) and as such, could freely plant new communities all over the Mediterranean world. At times Boyd overreaches to make his points, and has some outright missteps in his exegesis (denying, for instance, that Barnabas was an apostle); but these do not undermine his argument. A great read for mission leaders in churches and parachurch groups which will make them constructively uncomfortable.
David Boyd argues persuasively for a new model of mission that is rooted in the local church. Rather than sending majority culture missionaries to a new culture overseas, a local multicultural church with deep and wide connections to immigrant communities or international students becomes a church with ready made networks to send bicultural Christians to their home communities, thus mitigating the need for massive financial support, and the challenge traditional, and typically mono cultural, missionaries face in adapting to a foreign culture. The strength of the book lies in the exposition of biblical texts, particularly from Acts, in which Boyd argues provocatively, and convincingly, that Paul was not a missionary as we typically think, because he didn't cross cultures to plant churches. He was a Greco-Roman and a Jew (who came to Christ) and as such, could freely plant new communities all over the Mediterranean world. At times Boyd overreaches to make his points, and has some outright missteps in his exegesis (denying, for instance, that Barnabas was an apostle); but these do not undermine his argument. A great read for mission leaders in churches and parachurch groups which will make them constructively uncomfortable.
November 27, 2011
The most interesting book I've read on missions and connecting with different ethnic groups.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews