Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships by Sherwood G. LingenfelterMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
It's been a long time since I enjoyed a read so thoroughly! This is an easy 6 star rating from me. The author (and editor) provided an exciting and extremely informative read. It is amazing how concise the material is - I did not feel that more ink was spilt than necessary, and also I did not feel that the substantives were insufficiently developed - the length of the book is just right. This feels like a distilled gift to us from a lifetime of cross-cultural work in the mission field. Novice and advanced readers alike will find it a worthwhile read and I appreciated how the fields of cultural anthropology and theology formed the backbone of the material.
Although written primarily to a North American audience, even as a Singaporean living in an Asian culture interacts with a western worldview, there was much to learn from Ligenfelter. I had not been aware of how different the eastern and western cultures (or individualistic and collectivist societies) are, and how the people in each perceive the world and interact with each other! Although the real-life illustrations in the book are slightly dated (most are pre-1986), the issues addressed and the principles discussed are timeless. Perhaps the ultimate compliment I could pay to the authors is to reveal that as a bible school student who is not very much interested in missions, I found that I started to develop an attraction toward the topic and felt the desire to read more titles on it!
I heartily recommend this masterpiece of a book! A great companion to be read alongside this title would be Elmer's Cross-Cultural Servanthood (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2477980169).
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment