Fernando Discipling in a Multicultural World

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6288-4
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

Our multicultural world needs countercultural disciplers. People from all over the world are coming to Christ from a variety of backgrounds. This requires more people who are willing to commit to the effort and sacrifice it takes to invest in new believers. Rooted in over four decades of multicultural discipleship experience, Ajith Fernando offers biblical principles for discipling and presents examples showing how they apply to daily life and ministry. He addresses key cultural challenges, such as the value of honor and shame, honoring family commitments, and dealing with persecution, and helps us think realistically about the cost and commitment required for productive cross-cultural ministry. This practical guide to discipleship will help us help others grow into mature and godly followers of Christ.

Ajith Fernando (ThM, Fuller Theological Seminary) is the teaching director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka after serving as the ministry's national director for thirty-five years. He and his wife, Nelun, are active in a church ministering primarily to the urban poor, and his ministry includes counseling and mentoring younger staff and pastors. He is the author of twenty-one books published in twenty-four languages. Ajith lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with his wife, and they have two adult children and four grandchildren.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fernando, Ajith

Leseproben

Preface

This book on discipling seeks to help nurture Christians to maturity and fruitfulness while taking into account an exciting challenge we face today. Many who come to Christ, even in the West, may have different cultural backgrounds from those who disciple them. They may be from other faiths or no faith. In the non-Western world the church is reaching people from other faiths. At the same time, there is a growing phenomenon in the West of religiously unaffiliated people who are called the “nones.”1 Recently the periodical Christian Century reported that 29 percent of Americans between the ages of 30 and 39 would classify themselves as religiously unaffiliated. The figure rises to 38 percent when it comes to the ages 18–29. Starting with 8 percent of those above 80 years old, the figure climbs steadily for each age group.2 This trend is more marked in Britain,3 and even more so in other Western countries.4 So disciplers in the Western or the non-Western worlds may be called upon to disciple people whose approach to life and religion has been quite distant from the Christian approach. I try to be alert to this challenge in this book.

My intention was not to write a “how to” manual on discipling. I hope to give biblical principles about discipling and to present examples about how they apply in daily life and ministry. The exact way in which a person disciples varies according to the personality of the discipler, the personality and maturity of the disciplee, and the context in which the discipling takes place.5 The diverse histories and cultures of churches or organizations can result in different ways in which they do interpersonal work. My hope is that people reading this book will become convinced of the biblical principles for discipling and find ways of putting those principles into practice in their situations.

Over the years I have been asked to write handbooks on how to do various aspects of ministry. Such books can be very helpful. But I believed that my calling was first to teach biblical principles of life and ministry with vibrant practical application and then to present that material in written form. I have left it to hearers and readers to apply the principles they have learned in their situations. Hopefully this has helped nurture many people who are continuing to serve God wherever they are.

There are many excellent, biblically based, practical books about discipling.6 The fact that so many of them have been written within the past ten years reflects a welcome trend to emphasize the importance of discipling in today’s church. Some of the books deal with some aspects of discipling more comprehensively than my book does. Two books written recently are from the missionary/missiological community: Making Disciples across Cultures, by Charles A. Davis7 and the more academic Intercultural Discipleship, by W. Jay Moon.8 Using different approaches, they contribute significantly to the literature on biblical and culturally sensitive discipling. I decided to focus on a few key areas that need special attention today and to reflect on them biblically and practically. My main concern has been on nurturing godly and fruitful disciples of Christ, and I have tried to address some challenges faced when doing this.

As an ardent advocate of discipling in my preaching and teaching for many years, I have come to realize that discipleship is not something that people take to naturally. Many Christian leaders in Sri Lanka and abroad have told me that, despite the wide-ranging discussions on discipling in books and seminars, few people are really doing it. There seems to be something about our culture that resists this activity. All of this has made me think a lot about the cultural, spiritual, ministerial, and personality issues that render Christian leaders all over the world so reluctant to give themselves to this ministry. I hope to address these issues in this book.

I must pay tribute to those who have discipled me. First and foremost is my mother, who taught her children the Bible from the time we were little. It was she who led me to experience personal salvation when I was in my early teens and who taught me the basics of the Christian life. Around that time, we were blessed with a wonderful pastor, Irish missionary George Good, whose influence helped me decide on vocational Christian work and convinced me of the glory of the Christian life, of preaching, and of worship. My father was a model of hard work and commitment to excellence in all he did. In my later teens, I became a volunteer in Youth for Christ and had the privilege of being discipled by our leader Dr. Sam Sherrard. He taught me many of the practical principles that undergird my ministry today.

As a student at Asbury Theological Seminary I had the amazing privilege of coming under the influence of Dr. Robert E. Coleman, who had written the classic book on discipling The Master Plan of Evangelism. I fear that, though much of what I have written in this book has been influenced by Dr. Coleman’s book, I am not able to give sufficient documentation of that fact. His teaching has become part of my life and thinking. He was firmly committed both to theology and evangelism, and he helped me develop the theological convictions that have undergirded my ministry. I did graduate studies in New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary and had Dr. Daniel Fuller as my mentor. He mentored me in the fullest sense of the term, spending unhurried time alone with me, giving me godly counsel, and teaching me how to study and argue for truth. Dr. Fuller’s influence is seen in all the study and writing I do today.

Shortly after returning to Sri Lanka following my studies in the United States, I married Nelun and had the privilege of living close to one who practiced what I preached better than I did.

To these personal influences I would add my three brothers—Kumar, Duleep, and Priyan—and my sister, Anusha; my seminary teachers; my colleagues in Youth for Christ; my friends and accountability partners; the many pastors and other Christian workers I have befriended; and the biographies I have read. All of these have deeply influenced me in my walk with God. I have tried to footnote the sources of my ideas, but I am painfully aware that the influence of many people has not been acknowledged.

Since I have been so blessed by the discipling of others, it should be no surprise that discipling is very much a part of my ministry too. It has been one of the primary tasks I’ve engaged in while serving in Youth for Christ, first as a volunteer beginning in 1966 and then as a staff worker beginning in 1976. For the past thirty-five years, this ministry has primarily (not exclusively) been with first-generation Christians from other faiths. My grassroots ministry is in a church we have been involved in for over thirty-five years. Most of the members there are converts from other faiths. Since stepping down from the national directorship of Youth for Christ in 2011, I am giving more time to discipling and mentoring than ever before. Because I see this as an urgent need in Sri Lanka, I have had to reduce my preaching to devote more time to personal work. From disciplees and my own children, Nirmali and Asiri, I have learned a lot about Christian nurture and living. A day’s meeting with those I disciple and mentor shortly before I left on sabbatical gave me many helpful ideas about discipling.

Many lessons that I have learned have come through failure. Some of those I have discipled have not turned out as I wished they would, and with everyone I have discipled I have made many mistakes. They have also suffered from the disadvantages that come from my own weaknesses. I will generally not mention the failures, as I would like to protect the privacy of individuals involved. Sometimes I use an example having changed the details of the story to guard the identity of the persons concerned. My failures and weaknesses have convinced me that those I disciple should be exposed to the influence of others who will compensate for my limitations.

This book was written on the campus of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, in the United States, which offered me an unbelievably generous six-month sabbatical package. The kindness that my wife and I experienced from the Trinity community is a wonderful example of God’s unmerited favor on us. We were blessed not only by the material facilities they gave us but also through interaction with some of God’s choice scholars who teach there. We were also warmly welcomed and enriched by the Arlington Heights Orchard Evangelical Free Church family of which we were a part during our time in the United States. My friends Brian and Ellen Relph kindly gave me a book grant to purchase books for this sabbatical. I also wish to thank my friends who supported us financially during the sabbatical and prayed for the writing of this book.

I am grateful to be working with Crossway once again, and with Thom Notaro, whose meticulous editorial work greatly improved this book.

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