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What are we going to do?
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·
We are going to
discuss the following:
o
What do we know
about the person of peace?
o
How did Jesus
engage the person of peace?
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What are we going to do?
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What do we know about the
person of peace?
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For communal societies where
families are tightly knit, Luke 10:1-7 provides the missionary’s entry strategy
for making disciples of a community of an unreached
people that is widely adopted by Disciple-Making Movements (DMM) and
Church-Planting Movements (CPM).
Luke 10:1-7 (NASB)
1Now after this the Lord
appointed seventy-two others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city
and place where He Himself was going to come.
2And He was saying to them,
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore plead with the
Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.
3Go; behold, I am sending you
out like lambs in the midst of wolves.
4Carry no money belt, no bag,
no sandals, and greet no one along the way.
5And
whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house (G3624).’
6And if a man of peace is
there, your peace will rest upon him; but if not, it will return to you.
7Stay in that house, eating
and drinking what they provide; for the laborer is deserving of his wages. Do
not move from house to house.
Please note that the word ‘house’
in verse 5 has Strong’s Concordance number G3624. We are going to have a discussion of the word
later.
Let’s find out what Jesus
intended for the seventy-two to do when he sent them out. Verse 1 states that
they were to go in pairs ahead of him to every city and place where he himself
was going to come. Once they entered a
city or place, they were to find a person of peace and to stay in the person’s
house. They were to address the whole
house, saying, “Peace be to this house.” That was to be the first thing they said upon
entering the house. So their target
audience was the entire household. If a
person of peace was there, the person would be receptive to the good news of
Jesus and the good news would reside in the person. They were not to move from house to house.
Apparently Jesus intended for
the seventy-two to facilitate the work he was going to do later when he himself
came. On the other hand the instruction
for them to stay in one house only seems to minimize the effectiveness of their
effort. How many people could they
possibly reach with the good news of Jesus if they were to stay in one house only
and had contact with only people in that house?
Well, they could actually reach more people by staying in one house if
they followed Paul’s principle of spreading the good news as laid out in 2
Timothy 2:2.
2 Timothy 2:2
2And the things you have
heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who
will also be qualified to teach others.
Using the mobilization
mechanics of 2 Timothy 2:2, the seventy-two would be more effective in reaching
people in the community with the good news of Jesus if they mobilized members
of the household of the person of peace to reach other households instead of
trying to reach those households on their own.
As outsiders they would have difficulties reaching people in the
community because no one trusts strangers.
But through mobilization of members of the household of the person of
peace, further spreading of the good news within the community is from insiders
to insiders, i.e., through trusted relational networks that will present less
hindrance.
Therefore it was essential for
the seventy-two to identify the person of peace and to operate within the
person’s household when they arrived in a city or place. This means that the entire household and not
just the person of peace would receive the good news of Jesus. This strategy for reaching a community with the
good news is far superior to doing extractional
evangelism that focuses on individuals.
When an individual believes the good news through extractional
evangelism, the individual joins the believer’s community and becomes estranged
from the community he/she has lived his/her entire life. Quite often in Islamic and Hindu cultures
such an individual is persecuted by the community, with the worst persecution
manifested as members of the individual’s household seeking his/her life as a
result of shame having been brought on the family. That type of situation was what prompted Jesus
to say that he was sending the seventy-two out like lambs in the midst of
wolves.
But when an entire household receives
the good news, no conflict results within that household. There is no tear and damage done to family
relationship. With relationship intact
the good news can spread to other households through the relational networks
afforded by the believing household. And
so the household within the community and not individuals is the preferred unit
of reception of the good news for its effective spreading through the community
where families are tightly knit.
If we search for words in the
bible with Strong’s Concordance number G3624 (for the word ‘house’ in Luke
10:5) that, as in Luke 10:1-7, have an
associated person of peace to whom the good news comes and who then becomes the
conduit for the good news to come to his/her household, we encounter the
following passages:
Mark 5:18-20
18As Jesus was getting into
the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. 19Jesus
did not let him, but said, “Go home (G3624) to your own people and tell them
how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”
20So the man went away and
began to tell in the
Acts 10:23-11:14
10:23Then Peter invited the
men into the house to be his guests. The next day Peter started out with them,
and some of the believers from Joppa went along.
10:24The following day he
arrived in
…
11:13He (Cornelius) told us
how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon
who is called Peter.
11:14He will bring you a
message through which you and all your household (G3624) will be saved.’
Acts 16:14-15
14One of those listening was
a woman from the city of
15When she and the members of
her (G3624) household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you
consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And
she persuaded us.
Acts 16:25-33
25About midnight Paul and
Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were
listening to them.
26Suddenly there was such a
violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all
the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.
27The jailer woke up, and
when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself
because he thought the prisoners had escaped.
28But Paul shouted, “Don’t
harm yourself! We are all here!”
29The jailer called for
lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas.
30He then brought them out
and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
31They replied, “Believe in
the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household (G3624).”
32Then they spoke the word of
the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.
33At that hour of the night
the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized.
The above four passages of
the bible carry words with Strong’s Concordance number G3624 that, as in Luke
10:1-7, have an associated person of peace to whom the good news comes and who then
becomes the conduit for the good news to come to his/her household. Please note that in those days families were
tightly knit in any cultural contexts.
Whether it was Jesus, Peter
or Paul, the same pattern holds true for the spreading of the good news in
these four passages. Jesus specifically
told the former demoniac to return to his household to tell them the good news
he had received. Paul and Silas sought
an audience of the jailer’s household and did not speak the word of the Lord to
him until he had gathered all the others in his house together. Cornelius called together his relatives and
close friends that constituted all his household for
meeting with Peter.
Extractional evangelism strains familial ties, hinders further
spreading of the good news beyond the evangelized person and is not biblical in
communal societies where families are tightly knit. It goes against the grain of contextualizing
the gospel.
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An article entitled
‘Are We Accelerating or
Inhibiting Movements to Christ?’
by Bob Goodmann
was carried in the September-October 2020 issue of
Mission Frontiers. It states:
‘Contextualization is
insufficient on its own to lead to movements, because two other factors need to
be taken into account—identity and community. While the gospel may be
introduced in a highly contextualized manner, the identity that new believers
choose and the way they interact with their community will have a great effect
on whether others from their culture will make a similar choice to follow
Jesus.
...
For many, the practice of
contextualizing the gospel has been primarily cultural: the attempt to present
the gospel consistently with local cultural forms, using local language, wearing
local dress, using contextualized translations of the Bible, etc. However, these attempts to culturally contextualize
the gospel are often practiced along with behaviors that are at odds with full
contextualization.
A culturally-contextualized
gospel can be presented in a way that leads new believers 1) to adopt a new
identity that other locals perceive as foreign, and 2) to associate with other
new believers that other locals perceive as extracted communities. Thus, a new
fellowship of believers may express a culturally contextualized gospel, yet
have a foreign identity and be considered an extracted community.
To the extent that new believers
are perceived by others as having chosen foreign identities and joined a
foreign religious community, the opportunity for the gospel to spread in that
people group is dramatically diminished. This will be true even if they are
highly contextualized culturally; their foreign religious identity and
membership in a foreign community counteracts the benefits of their cultural
contextualization.
...
Spreading the gospel in a
communal culture should be done in a way that is more likely to lead to
movements to Christ. It should lead to communities of believers that are not
seen as “foreign,” but as “still part of our community,” so that the gospel can
spread more easily.’
========================
The above article points out
the importance of fully and not just culturally contextualizing the gospel that
would more likely lead to movements to Christ. New disciples not giving the impression of
having taken on a foreign identity and not forming an extracted community is
essential for others in the community to make a similar choice to become Jesus’
disciples. The entire household and not
just an individual believing the good news to a significant extent diminishes
the feel of a foreign identity of the disciples and puts to rest the perception
of an extracted community.
Another benefit of the entire
household believing the good news is that the bible study group and the
subsequent church that is formed has an existing strong relational bond binding
it together and a leader already in place who is the head of the household.
Please note that Jesus told
the seventy-two to greet no one along the way and to enter a house when they came to a city or place. A house
implies a household of related people while a person along the way portrays an
uncertain picture of relationship. Jesus
was instructing the seventy-two to intentionally seek a person of peace that
has a clear potential for the opening up of a relational network.
Please also note that the
definition of house does not necessarily include only relatives of the person
of peace but also his/her broader relational network as seen in the case of Cornelius. He had called together not only his relatives
but also close friends in response to the angel’s notice that Peter would bring
a message through which he and all his household would
be saved.
That the household of the
person of peace includes friends is important for societies where people are
more individualistic and believing the good news is inevitably an individual
decision. Friends as a generic term can
cover affinity groups formed around
shared interests or common goals, for instance, students/young adults, trade
groups that employ large proportions of the population, etc. In individualistic societies people detach
themselves from their nuclear family and look for community among their peers. For such societies it requires iterations of CDMCPM through multiple segments of
society with each segment corresponding to an affinity group for the unreached people to become reached.
The idea of staying in the
house of the person of peace does not mean that the missionary only works with
the person and the person’s household and nobody else. Rather the person of peace in communal societies
where families are tightly knit is considered the gateway to a household and
the household the gateway to the community.
One can say that the household of the person of peace is the unit of
work that the missionary needs to pursue in its entirety and not in parts for
the sake of spreading the good news. Jesus’
instruction for the seventy-two to not move from house to house was for them to
not leave a unit of work that has been started uncompleted.
In fact the seventy-two were to be so vested
with the household of the person of peace that Jesus told them that they were
to carry no money belt, no bag, no sandals and that they were to eat and drink
what the household provided because they as the laborers were deserving of their
wages. With such a reciprocal
relationship they would not move from house to house and it would help drive
the unit of work to its completion.
Carrying no money belt, no
bag, no sandals also conveys the idea that the
seventy-two had the bare minimal tool available to them, nothing extravagant at
all, to do their work. They were to use
the simplest kind of tool they could lay their hands on in their extremely
light travel arrangement. In that travel
arrangement they were close to being destitute and yet they were to spread the
good news with what they had, and it was supposed to suffice. For the missionary it would mean using
something like CDMCPM that has been pared down to the bare minimum such that if
you take just one single bit out of its structure, it will collapse. It is the poor man’s (woman’s) tool for
catalyzing a movement to Christ. It is
the principle of minimalism that makes everything in CDMCPM reproducible thus
making a movement to Christ possible.
The seventy-two went ahead of
Jesus to every city and place where he was going to come to make advanced
preparation for his coming through working with the person of peace using the
little they had on hand. When Jesus
came, many would flock to him in every city and place. The missionary too goes ahead of Jesus among
an unreached people to make advanced preparation for
his coming through working with the person of peace using CDMCPM as the tool. When Jesus comes, many among the unreached people would flock to him in a movement to
Christ. The missionary does what is
humanly possible using CDMCPM as the tool and Jesus would do what is humanly
impossible.
At the other end of the
spectrum the person of peace in individualistic societies where people detach
themselves from their nuclear family and look for community among their peers is
considered not just an individual to be evangelized but also the gateway to a
network of relationship that the person of peace can spread the good news along. The missionary could and should work with as
many persons of peace as possible without losing sight of the fact that each person
of peace is a gateway person to a network of relationship that needs to be
harvested. Jesus’ instruction for the
seventy-two to plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his
harvest is also for persons of peace to be sent out to harvest their personal
relational networks.
When we examine the
afore-mentioned persons of peace in their circumstances, we would notice that
they had been miraculously prepared by God to serve their role. The Gerasene demoniac
was delivered from demon possession; Cornelius saw a vision of an angel for him
to send for Peter; the Lord opened Lydia’s heart to respond to Paul’s message; the
jailer saw the prison doors fly open and everyone’s chains come loose as a
result of an earthquake, with the greater miracle being that Paul and Silas did
not run away for the sake of saving him from killing himself.
These persons of peace were
eager to respond to the good news and become the conduit of the good news to
their household. So the Gerasene demoniac went home to his own people and told in
the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; Cornelius
called together his relatives and close friends to hear the good news from Peter;
Lydia and members of her household were baptized and invited Paul and his team
to stay at her house; the jailer asked Paul and Silas what he must do to be
saved and had them speak the word of the Lord to all the others in his house.
========================
What do we know about the
person of peace?
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========================
How did Jesus engage the
person of peace?
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Since the person of peace is
miraculously prepared by God to respond to the good news, the missionary who
looks for the person of peace and who has a fleeting chance encounter with the
person needs to be engaging, direct and forthright in proclaiming the good news
to the person. Jesus’ fleeting chance
encounter and conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well provides an
example for the missionary in engaging the person of peace. While he told the seventy-two the need to
identify and engage the person of peace in Luke 10:1-7, Jesus showed how he
actually did it in John 4:5-26.
John 4:5-26
5So he came to a town in
6Jacob’s well was there, and
Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about
noon.
7When a Samaritan woman came
to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
8(His disciples had gone into
the town to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman said to
him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a
drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
10Jesus answered her, “If you
knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have
asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11“Sir,” the woman said, “you
have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living
water?
12Are you
greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself,
as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13Jesus answered, “Everyone
who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
14but whoever drinks the
water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become
in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15The woman said to him,
“Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming
here to draw water.”
16He told her, “Go, call your
husband and come back.”
17“I have no husband,” she
replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.
18The fact is, you have had
five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just
said is quite true.”
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I
can see that you are a prophet.
20Our ancestors worshiped on
this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in
21“Woman,” Jesus replied,
“believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in
22You Samaritans worship what
you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23Yet a time is coming and
has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and
in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
24God is spirit, and his
worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25The woman said, “I know
that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain
everything to us.”
26Then Jesus declared, “I,
the one speaking to you—I am he.”
Jesus was sitting by the well
when a Samaritan woman who was the person of peace for the Samaritan community came
to draw water. It shows that the paths
of the missionary and the person of peace inevitably converge in the natural
course of event or through divine appointment in a manner however fleeting. It holds true for the afore-mentioned persons
of peace in the Gerasene demoniac,
Jesus humbled himself in
asking the Samaritan woman for a drink as the ice breaker for starting a
conversation. He did so in defiance of
social norms, for which the Samaritan woman confronted him. He immediately avoided the confrontation by
steering the conversation away from the physical realm that brewed confrontation
to the spiritual realm focusing on his identity and his being able to give her
living water. Regardless she kept up her
confrontation in questioning what identity he could hold that could be greater
than that of Jacob who was the patriarch of the Jews and the Samaritans and who
gave them the well that Jesus as his descendant needed to drink from but was
unable to. Jesus avoided the
confrontation by again tapping into the spiritual realm in pointing out the
superiority of the water he gave over the water of the well.
When she finally recognized
her own need, the Samaritan woman did a 180, defied social norms the way Jesus
did and asked him to meet her need for water that would forever quench her
thirst. Just as the Samaritan woman was
hard on Jesus for asking her for a drink, Jesus made brutally honest and
embarrassing remarks about her marital situation that revealed her futile serial
quests for fulfillment. He made it clear
to her that the living water he gave could indeed leave her thirsting no more.
As the conversation
progressed, the Samaritan woman was convinced that Jesus was a prophet because
he had an intimate understanding of her private life that could not be
accounted for otherwise. This time she went
along with Jesus’ steering the conversation into the spiritual realm by
injecting yet another confrontation into the conversation that was about the
disagreement between the Jews and the Samaritans concerning the place of worship. Again Jesus avoided the confrontation by
focusing on something more important than the place of worship, which is the
attitude of the true worshipers in worshipping God in spirit and in truth that
God seeks. Jesus was essentially telling
her to quit arguing about non-essential matters.
Finally the Samaritan woman
had a hunch that Jesus might just be the Christ and so made a remark about the
Christ to see how he would respond. Jesus
forthrightly declared that he is the Christ, whereupon she believed and hurried
into town and invited other Samaritans in the community to come out to meet Jesus. She did what the person of peace is wired to
do.
We can draw some object
lessons for how the missionary could interact with the person of peace in a
fleeting chance encounter judging from Jesus’ fleeting chance encounter with
the Samaritan woman at the well:
·
It is the
missionary’s responsibility to strike up a conversation with the person of
peace.
·
The missionary
must do everything to avoid confrontation.
·
The missionary
should persist in steering the conversation from the physical realm to the
spiritual realm focusing on Jesus.
·
The missionary
should not hesitate to be honest and forthright with the condition of the
person of peace so that he/she recognizes the reality about himself/herself.
·
If the missionary
would stay focused on Jesus and the right attitude of a worshipper in relating
to Jesus throughout the conversation, the person of peace would become
favorably disposed toward wanting to know more about Jesus and eventually
helping others get to know Jesus.
Jesus was an outsider to the Samaritan
community, even an adversarial outsider from their perspective judging from the
Samaritan woman’s confrontational attitude toward him. Had he spoken to Samaritans in town, Jesus
would have been downright rejected. The Samaritan
woman who was an insider of the Samaritan community and who was in a fleeting
chance encounter with Jesus was the only conduit for the good news to enter
into the community, hence Jesus’ engaging, direct and forthright approach in interacting
with her as the person of peace.
The goal of the missionary is
to invite the person of peace to a catechized bible study of the gospel of Mark
for him/her to get to know Jesus and then mobilize the person of peace to start
his/her own bible study group and to invite other people in his/her relational
network to the group. The missionary
needs to have the conviction that the person of peace has been miraculously
prepared by God to respond to the good news and therefore should persist in
steering the conversation to the spiritual realm focusing on Jesus. The person of peace would be missed if he/she
is left without being told anything about Jesus. It is therefore necessary for the missionary
to adopt Jesus’ engaging, direct and forthright approach in identifying and
engaging the person of peace in a fleeting chance encounter.
The outsider’s approach of identifying
and engaging the person of peace in a fleeting chance encounter in order to invite
him/her to a catechized bible study of the gospel of Mark is not suited for the
situation where the person of peace as an insider seeks to invite another
insider to a bible study. These are two
very different scenarios. The outsider
is a stranger to the person of peace as an insider and is in a fleeting chance
encounter with the person but the person of peace has a personal relationship
with another insider he/she is inviting to the bible study.
========================
How did Jesus engage the
person of peace?
========================