Thursday, January 31, 2008

Mission in the Arab World

This blog will focus on the Church and its mission in the Arab World. The Church comes first, mission second, and Islam last. Many missionaries that I meet have another sequence. They begin with their own mission, and focus on Islam, hoping to maybe create a Church.

My belief, and I think that this is Biblical, is that our missiology can never take precedence over our ecclesiology. Since ancient times, our Lord Jesus had his flock in the Middle East. The Churches of the Arab World are His body, his people. How dare we do mission in the Arab World without being deeply attached to the existent Church, and as if we have the freedom to create new 'methods' apart from the existent Church.

How we suffer from our own Western individualism. How we distort the Gospel of Jesus Christ by making ourselves the center of mission, as if we have the right to ignore the Church of Christ that has been present in Arab lands since the inception of Christian history.