The future of Church strategy should be the same as that of the Apostle Paul. We should adopt no strategy but to go where we find an opportunity as individuals. We need to realize that our human ability to target the best approach fails in comparison to God’s knowledge of everything and His ability to do everything better than us.
One of the most devastating things to set the course over Christian history was the acceptance that we can interpret truths from Scripture primarily through reason and then augment this with faith when necessary. Jesus choose as the leaders of the church average men with conflicting political ideas and with volatile emotions. Even the writing of Scripture was never reserved exclusively for those entirely loyal and fully educated.
Sometimes I think that the entirety of Western Civilization is contrary to Scripture, but it wasn’t always this way even in the West. The general ideas of individuality, freedom and equality are from Scripture, but different in specifics. These basic concepts have always been true and may actually be a stumbling block or cause a misconception of Christianity in the rest of the world.
We are individuals because God treats us individually in terms of our salvation. We are equal because all have sinned and are far from God’s moral perfection. We are free because of God’s sacrifice if we accept it. We have freedom, individuality, and equality within the Church and within relation to and because of what God has done. Christ should be the center of everything, not people.
There are aspects of Gods relationship with us that make sense from an Eastern Civilization point of view. God wants us to be part of His family, live in peace, practice humility, and create a legacy for Him. Just as many in the the rest of the world need to learn from the West in terms of understanding Christ so also the rest of the world needs to learn from the East.
God wants us to be at peace with each other but to do so we must be at peace with Him and within ourselves. God wants us to be servant-leaders as Christ is in our communities and in our ministries. He wants to call us back home and become reconciled with Him so we can be part of His family again. God also wants us to take make use of the abilities He gives us and do good works as an evidence that we are saved.
There are aspects of Gods relationship with us that make sense from a Middle (East) Civilization point of view. God wants us to take Him seriously about the severity of sin, understand the significance of the spiritual world but not get involved by ourselves, commit to Him eternally, and identify with Him as our Lord and Savior.
Christ does not always talk about peace and joy. Christ had to suffer in hell Himself to save us. Christ was not happy about those selling in His place of worship. Christ disrupted the established religious groups of the time. He was rejected by His own people. He says when we take His message into the world we will get the same responses He did.
I am sure there are many other aspects of God that can be learned from different cultural areas of the world, but I do not feel I know enough to comment outside Eurasia. The concept I am sure follows through though.
In ancient times, people who thought they were wise rejected God. God has chosen leaders who had a giant flaw that made them unfit for leadership. They were often from poor backgrounds or in the case of the rich and educated Paul started out as an enemy of the Church and Moses had problems with public speaking. God wants us to do things only He could make happen so that we see the reality of who He is.
We don’t need more money and God certainly doesn’t. We don’t need to be smarter or less divided as God knows everything and can be everywhere at once. What we need is a willingness to make sacrifices to follow through with what we know God is asking of us personally.
God will give us any ability that we need. If we pray for spiritual things, God will always give them to us as it says in James or like when Solomon asked for wisdom.
We need to continue to be the feet and hands of God but not the brains. We did not design this theology or create this movement. We have chosen to follow God, not people and our ministry efforts should reflect that.
One of the biggest things that sets Christianity apart from Science is that we are not the ones leading the people. We can no longer accept a partial truth or share God with guesswork and tests. If we limit ourselves to being led by people, we are selling ourselves and God short.
Let us stop allowing Christianity to follow the lead of the world or try to synchronize it with the latest intellectual fads and human created beliefs. The way forward is to look back in history and see where things have been going and see patterns.
The societies most focused on Science historically ended up with more suffering than ever before. Societies committed to Science have also traditionally been the most hostile and effective at holding back the Gospel. Maybe this is because we give Science a free pass as being inevitable or unchallengeable.
Christian are afraid of the supernatural with good reason. It is not an area that should interest Christians too much. They definitely should only seek out connections to God Himself. And then only through Scriptural commanded means like prayer, fasting, reading the Bible, communion, speaking in tongues and the like.
The other side is we have no need to be afraid of spiritual things either. The best way to fight is to get rid of sin in our own lives and make public declarations of what side we are on. We need to continue to convince others that there is no other explanation for why we do what we do than that we are Christians.
The key reason for spiritual awareness is that pagan communities have been the easiest to convert historically. This is because they understand the reality and power of the spiritual world. The hardest obstacle today to bring people to Christ is convincing them that spiritual things are real. We have been given an opportunity in this area by both feminism and science fiction becoming mainstream.
One of the great opportunities for American Christians is they need not go anywhere to evangelize, as the biggest area needed to be evangelized is in our own country. There are several generations who have almost no knowledge of Christianity at all and might be very open to the idea. This evangelical field is wide open.