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Inside Out: Probing Presuppositions Among Insider Movements

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Inside Out: Probing Presuppositions Among Insider Movements On Religious Identity Inside Out Probing Presuppositions among Insider Movements by Dick Brogden Dick Brogden has ventured a response to Rebecca Lewis’ article on Insider Movements from aLewis: This statement implies IJFM 26:1 (available online at ijfm.org). He’s done us all a great service by allowing Lewis missiologists invented “insider movements” and to make a running commentary on his article so that this journal can help surface the assump- are promoting them as a new technique. In fact, these type of movements started to happen and we tions lurking beneath this continuing debate for or against the “insider” phenomenon. While are being forced to evaluate if they are biblically contention seems to surround the inappropriate validation of Islamic religion, finer nuances legitimate. When Paul and Peter stood before the Jerusalem council, they were reacting to events, and complexities emerge in this exchange. Rebecca Lewis then formulates a more comprehen- not introducing a new “creative missiological” sive biblical apologetic in the article that follows. This journal hopes this approach will encour- approach to the Gentiles. They were asking “If age genuine dialogue and reasoned exchange between what are increasingly divided camps. God is accepting these people by giving them the Holy Spirit, what should our response be?” We are forced by events to ask similar questions today. nsider movements are the current creative missiological rage.a According to I Rebecca Lewis, Insider movements can be defined as movements to obedient faith in Christ that bLewis: No communities are value neutral remain integrated with or inside their natural community. In any insider movement (Islamic, American, or otherwise). All families there are two distinct elements: and individuals are also fallen. History has 1. The gospel takes root within pre-existing communities or social networks, which shown that all new movements to Christ are become the main expression of ‘church’ in that context. Believers are not equally prone to syncretism, whether they remain gathered from diverse social networks to create a ‘church.’ New parallel social inside their own culture or adopt a foreign cul- ture. Believers who continue to study God’s word structures are not invented or introduced. eventually become less syncretistic. 2. Believers retain their identity as members of their socio-religious community while living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible.1 It behooves us to probe one basic presupposition of this ‘Insider Movement’ missiology, for if it is misguided, there is a danger of syncretism. We need to cLewis: I should clarify that I was not the inventor of the kingdom circles, but merely probe the assumption that pre-existing communities are value neutral and that represented them this way. God intends Muslims to remain in the socio-religious community into which they were born.b Evangelical missionaries broadly agree on some aspects of Insider Movement Dick Brogden was raised in Africa as a c missionary kid, and has worked among missiology. There is general consensus, for example, that Muslims (Jews, Muslims in Mauritania, Kenya and Hindus, et al.) do not have to take on another cultural form of Christianity in Sudan since 1992. He is leader of Muslim order to become followers of Jesus. The ‘Kingdom Circles’ per Rebecca Lewis Ministries for the Assemblies of God in c Sudan, and is presently a Ph.D. candidate are sound, fair and accepted. The agreed-upon aspects of Insider Movement in intercultural studies. missiology are not new; they are indigenous principles repackaged. cInternational Journal of Frontier Missiology 27:1 Spring 2010•33 34 Inside Out: Probing Presuppositions among Insider Movements Principle of God-Given Identity God to remain in such socio-religious dLewis: What is being presupposed is that networks. I would contend that there Jesus movements within any culture or religious and Community structure, no matter how fallen, will be able to The presupposition in question is are antithetical and mutually exclusive ideas, networks and religions.g transform it. That the gospel is the power of salva- simply this: Pre-existing communi- tion not just to the Jew and to the Greek but also to ties, such as Islam, are value neutral Biblical history is replete with exam- the Muslim continues to be an amazing revelation and God created Muslims to continue ples of men and women born into to us all! d within Islamic community. The religious communities from which eLewis: Neither the quote selected nor the Insider Movement can be broad; one God willed their escape: article referred to assume that “religions with proponent, Rebecca Lewis, states: • The Acts 15 passage is quoted their excesses and errors are God-endorsed.” The Scriptures seem to indicate that this rightly in defense of Insider only thing stated as God-given is the family and relationships identity, and the community a person Movements to show that community God sets a person into by their birth, no matter how fallen they are. God’s is born into, were determined in Gentiles (Muslims) do not stated intention (through Abraham) is to bless all advance by God. For example, Paul have to become Jews (Cultural these “families of the earth.” Families are blessed declares to the Athenians that God Christians) to follow Jesus. An attending truth, however, that is and redeemed when the gospel leads to relation- “made every nation of men…and ships being restored between father and son, determined the times set for them mother and daughter, not replaced by family-like and the exact places they should live” relationships with a new church community. (Acts 17:26). When we encourage fLewis: I agree with this statement com- believers to remain in their families pletely. NO culture or identity should be uncriti- and networks, and to retain their cally retained. They should be critically retained. birth identities, we honor these God- This Acts passage does Paul saw the faults of both Greek and Jewish reli- 2 given relationships. not teach that the birth gious systems (see Romans 1-3). Yet he admonished This is an unfortunate twist of herme- Greek believers not to adopt the Jewish cultural/ religious forms, but to remain in their own context neutics on the part of Lewis. This identity of Islam be and vice versa. His point was that God has the Acts passage does not forbid changing uncritically retained. power to save within both fallen systems. nationalities, socio-economic rise and gLewis: Paul argued that the Gospel had fall, or geographic change, nor does it the power to save the Greeks even if they kept stratify or blithely endorse culture. It eating food offered to idols,making it an issue affirms a sovereign God who created for their own conscience, not the conscience of the culture and language. It makes no often overlooked is that religious Jewish believers (Romans 14, I Cor. 8). Only those assumed leap that religions with all change was directly asked for. brothers who were “weak” still feared the power their excesses and errors are God- “Abstaining from things offered of idols if they ate food sacrificed to them. A person can remain within a socio-religious context while endorsed.e This Acts passage does not to idols, blood, things strangled looking only to God through Christ for salvation. teach that the birth identity of Islam and from sexual immorality…” So the Greek believers did not have to leave their (Acts 15:29) were all direct be uncritically retained; it teaches idolatrous socio-religious context (similar to Hin- socio-religious practices of the God’s sovereignty regarding birth duism today) and become Jewish-style believers in Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and geographically and the rise and wane order to put their faith in Jesus Christ and receive Cilicia. There had to be a turn- of earthly kingdoms.3f freedom from demons, sin, death and hell. What ing, a ceasing from these socio- 4h they did have to leave was worshipping idols The problematic area is not the geo- religious elements. and practicing immorality. Likewise, American graphic or social (family) community • Jesus expressly told Peter that believers continue to have material things while but the religious identification. The call meat was permissible to eat putting off the futile thinking that money will fix “God-Given Identity and Community” in a direct breach of his socio- our own or anyone else’s true problems. religious heritage (Acts 10). principle is applied across all socio- hLewis: Note that before the end of the It can be argued that all the New Testament era, all of these restrictions except religious contexts. If the principle is Apostles, even Paul, steadily sexual immorality had been lifted on the basis of sound, then God must want every- moved away from their socio- idols being nothing and a person being responsible one to remain in the socio-religious religious heritage of Judaism to before God to abide by their own conscience. contexts into which they were born. an inclusive identity centered Lewis’ point refers to monotheists on Christ. Temple visits faded, iLewis: While I agree that Christ-identity but it leaves room to apply this same Jewish socio-cultural practices became primary (and does in insider movements principle to other belief systems, such became marginal, and Christ as well, if we acknowledge that Christ-identity i as Canaanites remaining Baal worship- identity became primary. and Christian-identity are not the same), there is ers, American hedonists continuing in • Some religious practices are no biblical reason to believe that the Jewish believ- abominable to God. God does devotion to mammon, or a young girl ers gave up their kosher law-keeping ways except not want his people to con- when they were in cross-cultural contexts (e.g., born to a Satanist family, all willed by tinue in the religious contexts eating with Gentile believers).
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