India, John Stott, and more!

I have finally busted into the world of blogging. I have set this up to be able to post updates while I am on my trip in India, but also to share some of my thoughts about life! I don't know how valuable they are, but for anyone who wants to read this...I hope you enjoy.

Three weeks from now I will be on a plane heading to Delhi, India. It blows my mind and makes me nervous, anxious, and excited to see what the Lord is going to do in my life and the life of others while I am there. I ask that you would begin to pray for the planning process. I found out that I will be playing guitar some and am a little nervous. I haven't played guitar and a while, but I know the Lord will use it for His glory and His honor. You could also pray that I develop some good callouses. I ask not that you pray for safety and protection but that you pray that we be dangerous and a threat to the plans of the Devil. There will be days that we will be prayer walking through some of the strongholds of the Hindu belief. I pray that as light enters darkness, the darkness is scared and shudders. We come in the authority and power of the Creator of Heaven and Earth. At His name, every knee will bow and tongue confess. Wow! To truly understand that power is difficult.

India is heavy on my heart, but other things are heavy as well. As most of you know, I will be marrying the most amazing girl in the world (I might be biased) on December 8. I am so blessed to have such a beautiful and wonderful girl. The Lord is teaching me more and more about love, myself, and how stupid I was for thinking I know it all. He has grown me and shown me more of Himself through Molly. One of the big decisions in our life together will be the option to travel overseas and study abroad. I am looking into studying at Oxford, and I am extremely nervous. I had the opportunity to talk to a friend the other day about the opportunity, and he gave me some great suggestions. These suggestions and the thought it provoked is what leads me to write this article tonight.

I have been thinking about what I desire to study at Oxford. I am not sure how it all fleshes out, but I want to study Culture Theology. John Stott says is best in his phrase double listening (comes from his book The Contemporary Christian). He explains this as the task of listening "carefully both to the ancient Word and to the modern world, in order to relate the one to the other with a combination of fidelity and sensitivity." My heart is to teach students. The charge I believe is not only to get a student to confess Jesus as Lord and believe in Him, but also to go back into culture and transform it. Not remove themselves from culture, but plug oneself right back into it. Changing it and transforming it. The balance is guarding oneself from falling into sin that culture tempts them with and immersing oneself into it enough to impact it. Culture is a creation of the Lord, whether you want to admit it or not. "For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him" (Colossians 1:16). We cannot look at culture, adopt the attitude that it is evil, and remove ourselves from it. Why don't we do a better job of training and teaching students to take their faith with them as they rise to the top of their fields? I am not claiming that we need a theocracy, by no means am I claiming this, but we do need to charge people with what Stott has coined a second conversion: that conversion being one back into culture to transform it.
Something else that highly interests me is how an individual goes into a foreign country, assesses the culture, and then learns how to reach the people in a way that is contextual and applicable to that culture. What does one need to know about the culture? How do you go about addressing major social concerns? Do you even do this? What points of Christianity are paramount? Do you present Christ first and allow all else to fall in place? What do you do about a Muslim who comes to faith and has 6 wives? The Bible says God hates divorce and claims the command of one wife. But is this a greater "sin" than a man trapped in pornography married to a woman or a man caught in addiction? Some of these questions are those that cross-cultural missionaries must address. I believe Paul addresses the issue of what a culture needs to know about Christ when in Acts 17 he is in Athens. He assesses their culture and then makes a statement to the men of Athens in vs 24-31. I will have more on this later.
My desire is to teach students how to impact their culture. When culture is so greatly affected by those people who are between the ages of 12-25, why are we not training them to impact it? Not those who are older. It would be like me trying to change decisions that George Bush makes in the White House when I am not even close to the political spectrum. Lets begin to open students' eyes to the culture around them and incite them to transform it. But where do we begin? I think I smell a theses topic...eh?

As I sit here and write, so many thoughts come to my head. I don't believe I have said much. Don't worry, those that are reading this...I promise I will get better with the whole blogging thing! I believe I will close this post for tonight and start again when more ideas come. Until then, grace and peace be yours!