Mission

Jesus incarnated and engaged an oral culture. Centuries after Jesus’ resurrection humanity transitioned an oral culture to a print culture. Uniquely my generation has seen rapid transition from print to broadcast to digital. This rapidity has caused overlap between the eras and the predominant teaching methods of each era. Oral readily contributed to experience (and irrationality), print to rationality, broadcast gave us a global perspective and digital is shifting our way of knowing to an interactive, global, anytime, anywhere experience. This will continue to complicate methods of teaching—reaching far into the future. Even more interesting is how these changes are forcing God’s people to carry out mission in an environment similar to the time when the ecclesia was born. Michael Riddell says, “Mission is always in the direction of the other, and away from ourselves.”