I want to go back to Turkey-- spiritually, that is! If you did not catch the earlier posts, you can find them here. We talked about Turkey as we visited the seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation.

As such, rather than writing about a theological issue or something to do strictly with churches or denominations, I'm going to post an interview that I recently did with a missionary in Central Asia. This person was, at one time, a pastor in the U. S., but is now a businessperson of sorts, looking for opportunities to share Christ far away from America.

Today's post, and three subsequent posts, will contain the interview in which we discuss his interactions in the host culture, their views on religion, use of the term "Allah," and more. We did this interview in the proximity of the Blue Mosque, pictured to the right.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you. Tell us a little about where you are located and where you "engage."

This is Central Asia. In all of Central Asia, there are about 340 million people with around 80,000 Christians. Now the exciting thing is that when I came to the field twenty years ago, as far as we could tell there were around 4,000 Christians. So we've gone from around 4,000 to around 80,000 in twenty years, all of Central Asia.

That is everywhere from Turkey to Northwest China and Southern Russia, and the Persian Gulf. It's all the Turkic and Persian language family/people groups.

And when you say Christian, are you talking about evangelicals?

Yes, evangelicals, but that's pretty much anything. It would include Charismatics, Presbyterians and more.

But, you aren't talking about the Eastern churches, is that correct?

That's right. There has been almost no gospel impact whatsoever from the Eastern churches. Those are cultural. As a matter of fact, particularly in the former Soviet Union, the presence of the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the liabilities to the work of the Gospel, because it creates an association between Christianity and Russian imperialism. I actually had people tell me that Communism was the Christian faith because "Christian" Russians ran the Communist Party! In the minds of Central Asians, all Russians are automatically Christian. In addition, the association between Russian culture and Christianity meant that "Christians," in their minds, worshiped pictures, drank like fish, watched pornography, and engaged in sexual immorality. That's what it means to be a Christian. In essence, then, any believer trying to bring the gospel here starts out with sort of a deficit.

Still, significantly less than 1/10th of one percent of the population across Central Asia is Christian. The area is overwhelmingly Muslim.

What about where we are in Turkey? Is this an area where Islam is practiced devoutly?

No. It is more cultural here. It's like living in the southern United States. You know, in the South everybody is a Christian, but not really.

It seems that in your area the older people take their religious practice more seriously. Is that the case?

Religious practice in the urban areas is more nominal, but if you get out into the villages everybody goes to mosque. If you go to villages less than an hour from here, you'll see every woman's head covered. Even here in the city I can take you to neighborhoods where every woman is in black from head to toe with just a slit over the eyes. There are whole sections of the city where that's the way all the women dress.

Here in my country [Turkey] there are about 3,000 Christians out of a population of 70 million. About one-tenth of one percent is Orthodox Christian, primarily Armenians. There is also a strong Assyrian population who are the old Nestorians. When I say strong I mean that half of the 3,000 evangelicals in this country are of Orthodox background. There only about 1,500 Muslim background believers (MBBs) in this country. The vast majority of the provinces of this country have no churches, no workers, no Christian witness of any sort.

So now, the half who are MBB's, obviously paid a lot to make that conversion.

Yes, everyone pays a price, but compared to the entirety of Central Asia this is one of the easier countries in which to live and minister. They pay less of a price here. It's easier for us to get in here than anywhere else. It's easier for us to share here than anywhere else. We actually can, for instance, put ads in newspapers for New Testaments.

Is that the influence of secularization in your country?

Yes. The further East you go in Central Asia, the stricter it gets - further East and further South.

Much of Islam was driven underground in the Communist era. How did that impact Islam?

The more folk style of Islam survived, where the formal Islam could not.

For instance, animism, which they identified as Islam, was intense. As a result, when first arrived in country, we were constantly being called on the carpet for doing awful, horrible things, like shaking hands across a threshold or leaning a broom against a wall.

Another factor was that under the surface the cell group structure was perfectly designed to thrive in a totalitarian environment. It's really funny, because it's actually older than Communism. But it's the way Islam has survived in various places. They had a secret cell group structure that survived intact to the point that many high-ranking Communist officials were members of one of the Sufi movements in the former Soviet Union. So it kept Islam going, through seventy years of oppression. It has reemerged, and has reemerged to the point now that the formal practice of Islam is thriving again in former-Soviet Central Asia in ways that it never had before. My colleagues who are working there are telling me that for the first time, they are dealing with people who have actually read the Koran. For the first time, they're dealing, for instance, with peoples who are saying that on the basis of Islam they need to stop venerating their ancestors. Islam is now challenging the ancient practices of ancestor veneration and of the various animistic practices that are commonplace. It really is quite interesting.

The big issue everywhere is that cultural identity and religious identity are synonymous. They can't conceive of it any other way.

Sojourn Community Church was launched in September 2000 in Louisville, Kentucky. Nine years later, they are making a great impact for the gospel in their city and beyond. I got to spend time with two of their pastors on the Upstream Collective's Jet Set Tour in Europe.

Daniel Montgomery is lead pastor and a friend for many years. In Paris, he took a few minutes to talk about his passion for carrying out the Great Commission:

Brian Howard oversees leadership development and church planting efforts for Sojourn. Here he talks about why we should get involved in church planting around the globe:

As we continue considering how we might involve all of God's people in all of God's mission, we should consider what it means to convey better understandings of the role of God's people on mission.

There are several components to consider here. We need to think like global Christians. We live in an era where media, especially video, has a common presence in church services. Consider this: When was the last time your media depicted those from unreached people groups rather than just man on the street interviews or movie clips? Have you used the powerful short video exploration of the glory of God over his creation in Willow Creek's, Ten Thousand Words? Have you explored the universal themes of love and redemption from an international perspective like those in the Academy award nominated Czech movie Most?

Have you taken a service to show Ee-Taow or a video of the Maasi worshiping? Until western Christians are exposed to what God is doing around the world, our people may remain wrongly convinced that we are the locus of God's work on earth.

Words have meaning. Well, unless you are into the verbal gymnastics of the postmodern extreme. Dirt does not mean water, chalk does not mean cheese, and alkaline battery does not mean maple tree. It is because words have meaning that we should take care in how we use them when speaking on the mission of God, and it is because words have meaning that we should use intentional language to involve all of God's people in all of God's mission.

Words build and words destroy. Words cast vision and words halt progress. And words have the ability to lead toward a preferred future.

In church life, some words have become so codified that they may as well form a second Decalogue. Come forward, Bow your heads and close your eyes and the like are pregnant with both intended and unintended meaning. If we are to involve all of God's people in all of God's mission, we need to ensure that our articulations match our intentions.

Yesterday, I posted information about involving all God's people in mission. If you don't mind, I would encourage you to read it as I will be writing more on the subject in the coming days. Yesterday was part one of my series and I will be posting more soon. I dropped in a video interview with the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London and focused on how the church has moved from a preaching point to more of a ministry center in increasingly secularized London.

The church has experienced many changes over the years. I preached through a text on Sunday (they value expository preaching). The worship service was a standard contemporary service to me (though the huge pipe organ was a great addition to the keyboard and drums). The church is now a charismatic Calvinist church, which surprises many who have not followed the changes there.

Most church leaders struggle with the ongoing issue of the people in the pews being passive spectators rather than active participants. Everyone wants to have "Every member in ministry," but our lack of success is seen by our ongoing purchasing of books and continuous attending of seminars designed to cure that very plague.

Before we can consider how to help the patient we need a proper diagnosis, and a proper diagnosis begins with the question: How much of the problem is my/our fault-- the very church leaders who are trying to solve it? Or, if not our fault, then the unintended side effect of our actions?

Yesterday, I wrote on the importance of global cities. I tweeted, "If you are not serious about cities, you are not really serious about missions."

Some seem to have taken offense to the statement. I was going to list some of the more bizarre responses, but decided that was not as helpful-- it might have been fun, but it is still not helpful. ;-)

I'm guessing that those who were offended personalized the statement in this way: if you (personally) are not involved in global cities, you are not a serious missionary or serious about missions.

Yet, missions is a discipline, not just a personal practice. Missionaries are people engaged in a certain culture. If we are serious about missions, we will be serious about global cities. But, missionS has to take global cities seriously; missionARIES are called and serve in all kinds of contexts.

Regrettably, that's what we often do-- see the exhortation to do something to mean a devaluing of other things. Too often, we overreact to what should be an obvious statement.

Of course, part of the reality is that Twitter statements are limited in their capacity to convey the full story. So, the fault may be my inability to communicate in short bursts. Maybe I should have said, "If Christians are not serious about cities, then we are not really serious about missions."

As I mentioned yesterday, I am in London right now and will be for several days. We are learning about the city, encouraging partnerships, and meeting with other Great Commission Christian groups. Yesterday, Steve Timmis, Terry Virgo, and I presented keynote sessions at the Dwell Conference in London (audio coming soon). During that conference I was able to talk to Terry Virgo, founder of a network of churches called Newfrontiers.

New Frontiers is a network of churches that was founded in England and now has churches around the world. They have planted 700 churches since 1975-- and were planting churches before church planting, let alone church planting networks, were trendy.

I asked Terry to tell us a bit about how the network and he did so in this video:
.

He mentions how they meet often to build community and common mission. Matt Chandler was here just last week to speak at one of these events. Some of my readers will also know of Adrian Warnock, uberblogger and church leader. He interviewed Matt at his blog.

I should also mention that Terry's message on prayer is well known in the U.K. I remember John Piper tweeting about it and I watched it at that time. You can find it here.

They are a church planting focused organization that calls itself both Reformed and charismatic. I am intrigued by how they have kept the movement focused on church planting and evangelism for such a protracted period of time.

Please pray that they (and others) will continue to plant churches in London to make the name and fame of Jesus more widely known.

BTW, here is a Flickr stream for Dwell and other events on Saturday.

I'm in London with more than 20 pastors and church leaders from the United States. Daniel Montgomery and I discuss "why" it in this four-minute video (and we also explain the head cloth):

You can also view our Flickr stream here.

More soon...

Here are two interviews with some Western workers serving the church in Taiwan and other nearby settings.

Phil Nicolson, with OMF, describes "Shopkeeper Churches" and their ministry among the underclass. Few of us have to worry about doing ministry among people who are not available at normal respectable church times. Listen to how they work through these issues:

"Garth," who works with my "company," explains his work and why he is there. The video is intentionally dark and "Garth" is filmed from behind because he goes to some other areas in the region.

"Garth" and I have known each other for a long time. He has planted in more than one place and his story is worth hearing.

If you or your church wanted to partner in planing churches in the area, "Garth" is the person who can help make the connections.

I was humbled and burdened to talk to these men-- and it made me wonder, am I doing enough?

I will have one more post on Taiwan... so stay tuned.

I am writing this post from Taiwan. As I have been working with both local leaders and American pastors, I have been struck by a few things and thought I would share them with you.

First, I have traveled to Taiwan as a part of the Upstream Collective. The reason is to accompany American pastors with a desire to be missional on a cross-cultural, international encounter. (You can scroll down the last few posts to learn what we are doing in Taiwan.)

Each person on the trip has the missional impulse as part of their DNA, and they are here to consider how they might join God on his mission globally. While I admire the faithfulness of these men, I must admit my surprise to see that there is not a bigger interest in such global concerns among American pastors in general. My fellow travelers seem to be rare of a breed in ministry.

Second, when I blogged about this on Sunday, two readers contacted my hosts-- one working with the Presbyterian Church in America and one from the Oversee Missionary Fellowship (OMF). Why? Well, according to one email, the author explained, "I'm particularly interested in attracting young missional church planters here."

Third, I was recently told by a pastor who called himself "missional" that his church needed to pull back on their global mission support to help their people "be missionaries right here."

All this provokes me to ask, "Why are so many missional Christians uninvolved in God's global mission?" As the missional conversation continues and deepens, what has occurred that has led to our blindness to the lost world around us?

There are five reasons I think this has happened:

1) In rediscovering God's mission, many have only discovered its personal dimensions.

I don't mean they have somehow localized mission into their interior, "private" life-- that would make little sense. Rather, the encouragement for each person to be on mission (to be "missional") has trended toward a personal obligation to personal settings, rather than toward a global obligation to advance God's kingdom among all the nations.

"Missional" has merged with privatized Christianity to serve as the reason for personal projects carried out in personal spheres. This is not bad, necessarily. But when the missional impulse is not expanded to include God's global mission, it results in believers moved only to minister in their own Jerusalems with no mind toward their Judeas, Samarias, and uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 1:8).

2) In responding to God's mission, many have wanted to be more mission-shaped and have therefore made everything "mission."

Missions historian Stephen Neil, responding to a similar surge in mission interest (the missio dei movement of the 1950s and following), explained it this way: "If everything is mission then nothing is mission." Neil's fear was that the focus would shift from global evangelization (often called "missions") to societal transformation (often called "mission"). He was right.

Recently John Piper echoed these same concerns, differentiating between evangelism and missions. He reminded us that when "Every Christian is a missionary" equals "missional," then we have diluted the need for and specialness of missionaries to foreign lands. (Although I would want to nuance John's language a bit, I agree with his point.)

One American church's website recently identified their ministry as missional, which they proceeded to define as "reaching out to the community to invite them to come" see what is happening in the church. Another's young adult community service project consisted of landscaping the church grounds. Inviting people to church and cleaning up the church are noble endeavors, but passing them for "missional" and "service" is ministerial naïveté at best. It demonstrates the fuzziness that creeps in when labels become catch-alls. And as the outer edges of the missional label gets fuzzy so does mission to the outer edges of the world.

3) In relating God's mission, the message increasingly includes the hurting but less frequently includes the global lost.

One only needs to watch the videos to see the emphases: global orphan projects, eradicating AIDS, Christmas shoeboxes, etc. All of these causes now have advocacy groups, and rightly so, as they are important. However, their vocabulary and frames of reference do not frequently make room for evangelizing the very people they touch. The message of world evangelism, actually, seems more common in legacy/traditional churches than in missional churches. Missional churches seem to speak more of unserved peoples rather than unreached peoples. As we engage to deliver justice, we must also deliver the gospel regardless of anyone's status in a culture.

4) In refocusing on God's mission, many are focusing on being good news rather than telling good news.

St. Francis allegedly said,"Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words." Interestingly enough, Francis never actually said this, nor would he have done so due to his membership in a preaching order. But it is a pithy quote tossed into mission statements and vision sermons in missional churches all around my country. Why? It seems that many in the missional conversation place a higher value on serving the global hurting rather than evangelizing the global lost. Or perhaps it is just easier.

I am not urging a dichotomy here, only noting that one already exists. It is ironic, though, that as many missional Christians have sought to "embody" the gospel, they have chosen to forsake one member of Christ's body; the mouth.

5) In reiterating God's mission, many lose the context of the church's global mission and needed global presence.

For whatever reason-- the admirable one of commitment to the local church or the ignoble one of commitment to personalized consumeristic Christianity-- we have lost the grand scope of the entire family of God. While Christ calls people from all tongues, tribes, and nations, we have become content with our own tongue, tribe, and nation. Many churches are wonderfully embracing the missional imperative, but as they seek to "own" the mission by adapting their church into a missional movement in their local community, some inadvertently localize God's mission itself and lose the vital connection all believers share together. A hyper-focus on our own community results in a, have lost vision for the communion of the saints.

So how do we fully embrace missional without losing the mission? The Mission Exchange (formerly the Evangelical Foreign Mission Society) asked me to talk to their global leaders on the topic "How to Put 'Missions' Back into Missional." In my talk, I proposed four principles we needed to consider:

First, recognize it is God's mission, and we need to be passionate about the mission as He describes it. We don't own mission and it is not ours to define. A church vision statement is fine, but God's mission is better and bigger. Our first task is to submit to God's mission.

Secondly, evangelicals have understated the call to serve the poor and the hurting and need a stronger engagement in social justice. This sounds counterintuitive if we are seeking to remedy the loss of concern for articulated evangelism. But social engagement entails relational engagement, and relational engagement entails opportunities to share the gospel. The successes and experiences in our communities should awaken hearts and minds to global needs. We just need to maintain the reason for social justice: the glory of God in the worship of Jesus.

Third, share God's deep concern about His mission to the nations-- that His name be praised from the lips of men and women from every corner of the globe. Feel the Great Commission in your bones. Ask God to turn your heart to those you cannot see. As Paul did, develop ways to "struggle personally" (Colossians 2:1) for those far away.

Fourthly, churches that are serious about joining God on his mission will obey his commands to disciple the nations. The end product of missional endeavors should be a thriving Christian ready to produce more thriving Christians.

It appears to me that many missional churches are missing the Great Commission in the name of being missional. That makes zero sense. It is a huge (but historically common) mistake.

If we are truly interested in being missional-- in joining God on His mission-- our efforts should actually reflect His stated mission. We are bound to the Great Commandment as the fullest human expression of God's love. But the Commandment is not hermetically sealed off from the Great Commission. Rather, the Great Commission provides the what of mission, while the Great Commandment provides part of the how. Answering the age-old question of "Who is my neighbor?" should result in the desire to "make disciples of all nations."

Video number 4 from the Jet Set Vision Trip in Taiwan all goes down during a cab ride through Taipei as Ray Chang and I talk about how second generation immigrant churches in America can be involved in God's global mission. Ray is the pastor of Ambassador Church (an Evangelical Free congregation) in Brea, CA.

Watch and listen as a second generation Asian American leader talks about his vision for the nations. It's worth your time!

If you missed the earlier videos, they are listed below.

Taiwan Video 1: Meeting and Learning from Pastor Chen
Taiwan Video 2: Ancestor Worship and Taiwanese Christians
Taiwan Video 3: Knowing Taiwan

We have been here in Taiwan for about half the week and we have seen some remarkable settings, fruitful ministry, and spiritually hungry people.

Be sure to check out the posts thus far:

Taiwan Video 1: Meeting and Learning from Pastor Chen

Taiwan Video 2: Ancestor Worship and Taiwanese Christians

As we talk to pastors, local leaders, and just everyday people, we regularly hear two things:

1. Taiwan is a difficult field. Operation World explains:

Taiwan remains the only major Han Chinese population in the world where the spiritual breakthrough has yet to come. During the 1990s the influence of Buddhism grew markedly with a large increase in adherents (800,000 in 1983 to 4.9m in 1995). Many of their outreach techniques have been adapted from Christians. Ancestor worship is one of the major barriers to faith in Christ. Added to this is the materialism stimulated by the rapid rise of living standards. Pray that every obstacle to the reception of the gospel may be broken down.

2. The heart religion is primarily animism and ancestor worship.

Take a look at this video to better understand the situation in Taiwan.

Please pray for the people of Taiwan so that the name and fame of Jesus might be more widely known here.

One of the fundamental challenges with evangelistic cultural engagement is how far to go to engage culture. It is always easy for unengaged people to sit on the sidelines and throw rocks at people who seek to engage cultures. I see it every day. But, people who care about God's mission also care about engaging culture.

The fact of the matter is this: in every missional cultural engagement, some go too far and some don't go far enough. It is the nature of contextualization. It is hard. It takes a commitment to biblical principles. It takes wisdom. It takes listening to each other. And, those outside the culture need to listen to those inside. And, those inside the culture need to learn from those that have gone before them.

In this video, Robert Young, a local Taiwanese believer who trains visiting personnel, explains to us how he has worked through issues of contextualization in regards to the veneration of ancestors. As you will see in tomorrow's post, animism and ancestor worship is much more significant in this culture than Buddhism and Taoism.

Listen as Robert Young (his anglicized name) explains in this video shot by our team member, Ray Chang. Listen as he explains the issues and how his family has addressed them:

Why does this matter? Well, at the Madras missionary conference, way back in 1938, they explained that churches had to be "indigenous," or be rooted and related to their own cultural context:

An indigenous church, young or old, in the East or in the West, is a church which, rooted in obedience to Christ, spontaneously uses forms of thought and modes of action natural and familiar in its own environment. Such a church arises in response to Christ's own call. The younger churches will not be unmindful of the experiences and teachings which the older churches have recorded in their confessions and liturgy. But every younger church will seek further to bear witness to the same Gospel with new tongues" (International Missionary Council, "The Growing Church: The Madras Series," Papers Based upon the Meeting of the International Missionary Council, at Tambaram, Madras, India, December 12-29, 1938. Vol. 2, (New York, International Missionary Council), 276.)

Such a value is not easy to uphold and there are dangers on both sides.

Dean Gilliland explains:

Contextualization [is] a delicate enterprise if ever there was one... the evangelist and mission strategist stand on a razor's edge, aware that to fall off on either side has terrible consequences... Fall to the right and you end in obscurantism, so attached to your conventional ways of practicing and teaching the faith that you veil its truth and power from those who are trying to see it through very different eyes. Slip to the left and you tumble into syncretism, so vulnerable to the impact of paganism in its multiplicity of forms that you compromise the uniqueness of Christ and concoct "another gospel which is not a gospel." (Dean S. Gilliland, ed., The Word Among Us (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1989), vii.)

An organization I serve recently put out some helpful guidelines on contextualization that are worth your time and consideration:

PRINCIPLES OF CONTEXTUALIZATION

1. We affirm that the Bible is the only infallible text that exists. It is appropriate to evaluate all other books by the Bible. We encourage our personnel to search the Scriptures daily to see whether the principles presented by any text or teacher are true (Acts 17:11). Content that is in accord with biblical truth should be embraced. What is contrary to sound doctrine should be rejected.

2. We affirm that there is a biblical precedent for using "bridges" to reach out to others with the Gospel (Acts 17:22-23). The fact that Paul mentioned an aspect of the Athenians' idolatrous worship was not a tacit approval of their entire religious system. He was merely utilizing a religious element of their setting (an altar to an unknown god) to connect with his hearers and bridge to the truth. Similarly, our personnel may use elements of their host culture's worldview to bridge to the Gospel. This need not be construed as an embracing of that worldview. It should be noted that Paul not only used their system to connect, he also contrasted elements of it with the truth. Our evangelism must go beyond bridges to present the whole unvarnished truth of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

3. We affirm an incarnational approach to missions that is bound by biblical parameters. Following the example of Him who became flesh (John 1:14), it is appropriate that our personnel continue to tailor their ministry to their setting. The apostle Paul likewise embraced this approach, "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22b). We advocate the learning and appropriate utilization of language and culture. Constant vigilance is required lest contextualization degenerate into syncretism. Where linguistic categories and cultural mores are deficient, these must be challenged and corrected with biblical truth.

4. We affirm both the sufficiency and unique nature of biblical revelation (2 Timothy 3:14-17). We deny that any other purported sacred writing is on a par with the Bible. While reference to a target people group's religious writings can be made as a part of bridge building, care should be exercised not to imply a wholesale acceptance of such.

5. We affirm the need to be ethically sound in our evangelistic methodology (2 Corinthians 4:2). Becoming all things to all men in an incarnational approach does not necessitate an ethical breach. Jesus instructed His disciples to be as "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16). We are to be wise in our bridge building. We are to be harmless in our integrity as we hold forth the truth.
(Footnotes specific to another religious tradition were dropped from the guidelines as I posted them here.)

More on this over the next couple of days... but please weigh in below, specifically on Robert's comments and missions in this culture-- where not worshiping one's ancestors to be both dishonoring and spiritually dangerous.

One of the funny elements in my video interview with Pastor Chen included a reference to a Bluegrass concert (he calls it Greengrass in the video).

Phil Johnson (of Grace to You and John MacArthur fame) made a comment about it. Phil and I have traded tweets twice, both in regards to contextualization, so he is enthusiastic about the subject. ;-) Anyway, Phil tweeted:

OK, Ed Stetzer seems excited by this, but but I don't get how bluegrass helps contextualize the gospel for Taiwan: http://bit.ly/25TivB

I don't remember being excited or saying it "helps contextualize the gospel," but Phil and I like to tweet about contextualization, so I responded:

@Phil_Johnson_ LOL. I was a bit surprised, but he said it was a great outreach. Bluegrass in Taiwan-- who knew? ;-)

Well, here is the rest of the story.

People in Taiwan have no context for bluegrass music (there's not a term in Mandarin for bluegrass), but they love music and American culture. So, it led to an interesting outreach event.

A team of "young missional Calvinists" (thought Phil would like that) from Southern Seminary has been sent to Taiwan for five months to proclaim the Gospel alongside career missionaries. In America, they are known as "The Long Run Players" here their Chinese name translates as "Mighty River Music Group."

Sarah Morrison, Matt Shirley, Cameron Beckerdite, Paul Martin, and Jeff Gayhart are learning Mandarin, engaging the Taiwanese culture, meeting people, building relationships, and sharing the Gospel--all through the use of guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and upright bass. Jeff says, "People always asked us before we came, 'Do they like bluegrass in Taiwan?' I would say, 'Not yet.'"

The ultimate goal is to make something much greater than bluegrass music fans; they want to lead people to Christ and make disciples. So, not really contextualization, but a neat opportunity for connection. (Though a bit surprising to me!)

Now, in regards to contextualization, you won't want to miss my next post. It will deal with contextualization and ancestor worship-- and it will be fascinating.

I am in Taiwan right now and will be blogging the trip all week. Other bloggers will also be weighing in over the next few days. See my last post for a list. (The guys at the Upstream Collective made a nifty little graphic that our "official commentators" will use a bit later, but you can see it at the top of this post.)

During the week, we will talk to local leaders, workers living here permanently helping local churches, and also some of those who came with me. You will meet leaders from different cultures, denomination, and ages.

For our first video, I talk with Pastor Chen. He pastors a traditional Baptist church and tells a bit about the context and ministry here.

Take a moment to listen and begin to hear about ancestor worship, the growth of the church on the mainland compared to the slower growth in Taiwan, and a bluegrass concert.

I will be posting more in the days to come, but enjoy:

Please feel free to comment below, but if you have friends working over here, be sure they would want their name mentioned before you do so.

I am blogging from Taiwan. You can't get much farther away from Nashville.

While here I will be working with the Upstream Collective and another organization. For some contextual reasons, I won't be saying the name of that organization in my blog posts.

And, as you can tell we will be avoiding some other terms as well. Many of our M friends move between different regions in the area and they have asked us to be careful.

I am bringing several pastors with me on the trip and we will be post video content here are on several other blogs. Our hope is that we might give some global focus on the missional conservation.

Here are some of my friends who will be posting content in the next week.

Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi)
J.D. Greear
Matt Chandler
Ed Stetzer
David Phillips (Integrating Missionally)
Almost an M
Michael Carpenter (Dining with Sinners)
Derek Webster (re:frame)
Grady Bauer (Missional Space)
C. Holland (Missionary Confidential)
Kevin Mullins (Life.Outpoured)
Guy Muse (The M Blog)
Ray Short (Cultural Dichotomy)
Todd Littleton (The Edge of the Inside)
Paul Chambers Cox (OMS International)
Tim Patterson (Travel Light)
Justin Powell (Urban Idealist)
David Jackson (Moving at the Speed of God)
Ernest Goodman (Missions Misunderstood)
David Putman (DavidPutmanLive)

Lots of good info and discussion in yesterday's post (you can still join in the discussion there).

From a missionary serving in Taiwan:

I have been asked to speak a little about Taiwan and Taipei. Taiwan is a Tobacco Leaf shaped island 60 kilometers off the coast of China. 22 million people call the island home. There are over 6 million people who make the city of Taipei home. The city of Taipei is a safe and comfortable city where people of all ages can move about and be involved in all sorts of activities to share the gospel. Though there have been missionaries and churches here for many years many people have never heard the gospel in a way that is easy for them to accept.

Continue reading Taiwan Recap.

As many of you know, I have a "shared" role at the International Mission Board. I am particularly focused on helping pastors and churches in my sphere of influence to become involved in global missions and church planting. Regrettably, many new and innovative churches are less involved in global work than more traditional churches. We have a team at the International Mission Board that is working to change that.

I want to tell you about a mission / vision trip that I am putting together with the Upstream Collective and the International Mission Board to Taiwan this Fall. We will depart from the states on September 19, arrive the next day on the 20th, and will complete the trip on September 26th.

Each day we will be taking a look at various ministry venues for church planting in that part of the world. I will be leading a session each morning with the group. We will also hear from some of the leaders of the Upstream Collective network each day as we talk about missional living in an urban and cross cultural context. We have some slots left for this trip. If you have an interest in going you need to fill out an application on theupstreamcollective.org and they will be in touch with you.

Hope to see you in Taiwan.