We live in a world that constantly presents new challenges as society perpetually
transitions from one global community to another. Societies change
when bombarded with new information. And we live in the information
century. No longer is the world citizen confined to ignorance. With the
click of a mouse on a computer, even the most remote villager is launched
into this new world order. The world has suddenly become a neighborhood
that transcends national borders. With these changing times, come tremendous
opportunities for those who can flow with the current of ever changing
civilizations. As disciples of Jesus, it is incumbent upon us to seek for new
and better opportunities to preach the gospel. Change, therefore, must not
be seen as the loss of something, but the emergence of new possibilities to
reach the souls of men. Because of our spirit of adventure for the future, we
do not wail over the past, but seek with vision ways to take the gospel into a
world that is destined to end. In our quest for opportunity, we are thus not
enslaved to relics of the past that have run their course. On the contrary, we
are excited about taking the fundamentals of the faith to a new world that
has presented to us new and exciting open doors for world evangelism. If
we would be productive servants of our Lord, therefore, we must continually
bring ourselves in tune with the changing world in which we live. Only
by doing this will we be able to produce the most fruit possible to the glory
of God.
(This series of blogs compose a book that carry the title, “Making Disciples In A Global Community.” This
first installment will cover the prologue and chapter 1.)

Prologue
When Jesus said to go into all the world in Matthew 28:19, He actually used the
Greek word ta ethne, the word from which we derive the English word “ethnic.” He did
not use the Greek word cosmos (world). Because He did not use the word cosmos, His
meaning was specific. He wanted His disciples to go to every ethnic group of all the
world. His mandate was to go to people (ta ethne), not simply cross national borders in
order to enter nations.
In the first century, the disciples lived in a world where no visas were required. It
was a global world produced by the expansion of the Roman Empire. Going was not
complicated by national borders, and thus the going was not beset by endless lines
(queues) at an immigration office. Though the world evangelist is burdened today with
such legalities, and often rejected from entry into a particular country, our world today
is again becoming a global community. Borders still exist on maps, but they are becoming
dim as the world is struggling to unite in trade and communication. It is as if God is
doing in this century what He accomplished through the Roman Empire in the first
century. He is laying the foundation upon which the mandate of Matthew 28:19 can
once again reach a zenith in fulfillment.
Even in Africa a new U.S.A. is developing. Several years ago I joked with some
Malawian preachers about the letters U.S.A. that I saw on the hat of one of the preachers.
I asked everyone what the letters meant. They responded, “United States of
America.” I said, “No.” Of course they were puzzled at my response. I said the letters
stood for “United States of Africa.” They laughed. Not long ago, however, the government
leaders of Africa started talking about the possibility of a United States of Africa.
The European Union has given them a concept for the future. Though it will be many
decades in the future, there is the desire among young African government leaders to
work toward a United States of Africa. Regardless of how long it will take, they have
the dream because they see the sense in such unions as the European Union. Will God
move this continent faster to this U.S.A. than we think in order to freely move evangelists
from one area to another on a continent that is as diverse as Africa?
The rapid expansion of Christianity in the first century happened because of easy
travel and immigration from one end of the Roman Empire to the other. Today, however,
there is a vast difference between the world in which we live and the world that
was the background upon which the early church was born and grew. The church was
born out of “the Jew first,” and then the Gentiles. There was a common historical
culture that was the religious foundational culture upon which early evangelist moved
from one synagogue to another throughout the Roman Empire. Add to this the fact that
the Gentile culture of the Roman Empire offered some continuity for the travel and work
of the evangelists. At least Paul on more than one occasion resorted to his Roman
citizenship rights that were common throughout an Empire that reached from western
India in the east, to Spain in the west, to England in the north, and to north Africa in the
south. Luke’s recorded history of the expansion of the church in the first century
explains that the growth of the church was based regionally on Jewish culture. But
eventually it was into Gentile culture “into all the world” within the limits of the Roman
Empire.
Today, it is somewhat different, but times are changing. There is no longer any
common religion as Judaism was to use as a springboard for world evangelism. There is
no “whole world” government to maintain common legal rights for world citizens and
traveling evangelists. We must acquire visas to cross borders. We live in a complex
world that is far more diverse than the world into which the early church was born. It is
in this world, therefore, that the disciple of Jesus is challenged to preach the gospel to ta
ethne. It is in this world that the evangelist must pass through the enormity of legal,
civil, religious and ethnic barriers in order to reach the hearts of men.
Nevertheless, I see the emergence of a new world wherein global communication of
the gospel will penetrate restrictive borders. It is imperative, therefore, that we understand
this new world in order to capture the opportunities that are presented to us for the
preaching of the gospel.
Since we live in a world where evangelists can be sent from one government (nation)
to another and from one culture (ta ethne) to another, it is imperative that sending
churches and going evangelists better understand the world to which they are going.
This world is constantly changing under the influence of a flow of information that has
never before existed in the world. This flow of information is producing another
common world culture as was characteristic of the Roman Empire. If God used the
commonality of the Roman economic, government and culture to expedite world
evangelism in the first century, then He can be doing the same today. If He is – and I
firmly believe He is – then it is a time for the global church to arise and educate itself
for the opportunities that are soon to arise over the cultural horizon of the world. It is a
time when the church must not divide itself into autonomous bits and pieces, but work
as one universal organism in order to take the gospel in to a world that God is opening
for evangelism.

If I were a prophet, I would say that God is doing something for us to enormously
populate heaven before the end of time. If we fail to realize this opportunity, we will be
held accountable. However, if we are perceptive to the work of God in present world
events, we will have eternity to rejoice because we were wise enough to take advantage
of the work of God to save souls.
Chapter 1
SOCIAL GLOBALIZATION
Because of an accelerated information flow,
we are transitioning into a new world,
a world of citizens who will sacrifice the past
for the sake of the future.
A society of people determines for themselves the course of their own history. No
foreign society has the right to establish either the destiny or the principles by which
other societies must live in the present or determine their direction for the future. Social
change is always a group decision from within. Therefore, the politic of one cultural
group cannot become the standard by which every world group must be measured. At
least in theory, this is true. But we are now moving into the next world, a world that is
increasingly networked into a global community by the communication of information.
We now live at the brink of another historical direction. Global communication, and
subsequently, the flow of information that has been made possible by the mass electronic
transfer of information, has changed everything. There now exists a strong global
electronic community that is networked by the click of a mouse. It is a community that
is developing its own culture. It is a culture that is presently running parallel to the
individual societies of nations and often in conflict with the regional dynamics that
determine the provincial community. Nevertheless, this global electronic and business
oriented culture is taking the world into a new dimension. This is not an era for mourning
over the past, but a time of wondering concerning the future.
In the future, social globalization will follow on the back of economic globalism.
The Internet society that is based on the international flow of information will produce a
world citizen who is not confined to the norms of either local or regional customs and
culture. The new world citizen seeks to be a part of a global community that meets at
Starbucks coffee shop for a sip of the new world order. He or she is a world citizen who
can identify an international corporation by the insignia of a swoosh and the jingle of an
advertisement.
Throughout two centuries of history, Africa has illustrated a continental example of
social globalization and cultural transition. Africa was, and in many African countries
still is, a mixture of tribal cultures that were and are represented by over three thousand
languages and dialects. However, when colonial powers in the past drew lines across
the African continent, borders were formed and nations were born that were destined to
emerge from millennia of tribal separation and conflict. Though in the beginning this
movement was at a snail’s pace, tribalism is now amalgamating into nationalism as new
generations move from rural to an urban setting. The transformation is now in hyper
drive. Not only is a renaissance happening in Africa in reference to this amalgamated
mosaic of culture and economics, a new continental society is rising, which society
seeks to be a part of the new global community. It is this new postmodern African who
will take Africa out of the isolation of the past and into the community of world fellowship.
This new urban generation has learned the skill of change in order to become and
remain a part of the new world.
Social globalism often frustrates local and regional social structures. The
postmodern African generation is light years away from their village parents. When a
forty-year-old African business person returns to the village to visit parents and grandparents,
he brings his computer along with enough battery life to last only a few hours.
When the battery on the computer is dead, it is time to return to the city. There is no
time for long hours around the fire, no time for extended visits with relatives. The urban
renaissance African has lost contact with his or her roots. He or she has become a part
of a global urban community that has new desires and visions for the future. There is no
desire to go back to the village, back to a life that is often fatalistically locked into an
economic and social time warp. The new urban African has broken the traditions,
dispelled with the voodoo dolls, and become a member of a scientific age that has given
birth to a technological heritage for their children.
This is one reason why the old mission methodology of going to the cities in order
to evangelize a nation no longer works. The global citizen of Nairobi, Kenya is not
going back to the village, back to tradition, superstition and tribalism. His visit there on
weekends is only “battery life” in time before he wants to return to his new world
civilization in the city.
Only indirectly will churches in the cities evangelize rural settings. They may seek
to financially support a “missionary” in rural settings. But we must relegate to the
archives this notion that a first or second generation individual in the city will sell his
computer and townhouse in order to return to the village of his grandparents. This will
not happen. Discard those old 19th century books on mission methods that taught we
will evangelize a nation by evangelizing the cities.
Our thinking on the methodology of sending a national postmodern urban evangelist
to a rural setting must be revisited. This methodology does not happen in the West, and
neither does it happen in the Third World. The difference between urban and rural
settings of Third World countries is more extreme than the Western context. There is a
McDonalds in Dallas and also one within a short driving distance of middle rural
America. I can buy petrol in Los Angeles, but also in Stafford, Kansas, a village of
1,500 people. But in China and Africa, it is 97 octane in Beijing or Nairobi, but lamp
oil in most interior villages. It’s a Whirlpool washing machine in Cape Town, but a
river bank in a Transkei village. The difference between rural and urban environments
in Third World countries demands that we change our thinking about sending an urbanite
evangelist from Accra to an interior village by the river. Third World urbanite
Christians are not going to pick up their families and move to the village. The proof of
the argument is in the fact that this supposed migration does not happen.
It is this new Third World urban social order that will take us into the future. What
is exciting about this new urban social engine is that it is not driving us forward with a
culture that is slow and comfortable. We are in hyperdrive. We are accelerating beyond
the transition speed of normal social change simply because the youth want a university
education in order to have a greater piece of the economic pie. And herein is a source of
advantage, as well as much conflict and discomfort. The old wineskin culture that is
often filled with a rural setting is being burst with an urban postmodern generation that
will never go back to the village. The information highway has sculptured a new
generation to accept rapid change as a way of life. New web pages of information are
only new opportunities to learn more, and thus, remain ahead of a competition who is
online at thousands of megabytes in download speed. In a globalized economy, the 2.6
gigahertz computer will survive over the 2.4. And the urban postmodern business
person knows this. He must, therefore, change in order to beat the competition. He
must change business practices, change market strategy, and if necessary, change his
business culture. He has adapted to change, but the village culture of his roots will not
accommodate this new world of a rapidly changing urban life. It is for this reason that
he will not make the transition from urban to rural life.
One of the principal cultural cues of the postmodern generation, and thus the citizen
of the new world, is change, rapid change. The easier it is for one to change, the better
he or she will survive and the better economic gain there will be. The better one’s
business assimilates new information into the operational function of business, the more
successful one will be. It is no longer a world of traditions that cannot be sacrificed. It
is a world of transitions. And thus traditionals and transitionalists are in conflict.
Postmodern and moderns (the older generation) will never solve this issue. They do not
have to. As moderns relinquish life in the next twenty years or so, the postmoderns will
usher in a new world. As urban postmoderns become the norm for establishing the
generations to come, the Third World will never be the same again.
And it shouldn’t. I am always fascinated by those anthropologists who seek to guard
and save some existing primitive culture of a former century. One such South African
zealot lived for six months with the Himbas in the northwestern part of Namibia. Her
book chastised the modern world for violating the homogenous culture of these people
whose life-style had not changed for centuries. But I ask, When a Himba baby becomes
sick, must the body die. Must a baby have the opportunity to receive an antibiotic for
the sickness for the modern world? My answer to the question is that if the First World
antibiotic will save the baby, bring the Himbas into the First World hospital and into the
21st century. The Himbas also have a right to a better and easier way of life. They have
a right to a radio and a pair of First World shoes to put on their feet in order to walk
across the sun-scorched sands of the Namib Desert. What gives me the right to have,
but at the same time, deprive others? What selfish humbugs we often become in the
cocoons of our own luxury. I think some anthropologist simply want to keep some
cultures in a zoo for historical studies.
If you are afraid of change, you are probably screaming and yelling. Your world
possibly seems as if it is coming apart. It is. But this is world history in the making.
The rate of change is much faster than it was in the past. It is much faster because the
flow of information in our telecommunicative world travels at light speed, not by the
pounding of signals on a drum. We must not let this upset us. It is a part of nature to
change. How fast changes are made is determined by the amount of new information
that is communicated and assimilated into society. The greater the emphasis on education,
the faster the change.
The only problem with some is that the existing cultures of today are being transformed
so quickly. The older generation is thus in culture shock. Acculturation is
difficult for the young. When we place it in the world of the old, it is often very unsettling.
But I would remind our older African citizens that our children and grandchildren
cannot be stopped. They are taking the world into another global society wherein
nationalism is turning to globalism. Our children and grandchildren want to be citizens
of the world, not just Nigerians, or Ghanaians, or Kenyans, or even Americans. If you
are still hung up on tribalism, or even nationalism, you are light-years removed from the
new urban postmodern generation of the world that is being born out of this present
generation.
As global citizens, the next generations will deal with international conflict in
different ways. The 21st century citizen will not be in conflict over the ideologies of
nation against nation. It will be a conflict of one global culture against another. An
example that illustrates this is the invasion of Latin American culture into the western
culture of the United States. For the past several decades legal restrictions have sought
to stop the migration of Latin Americans from coming across the southern border of
America, but to no avail. Resistance to this cultural flow has waned to the point that
legalized “illegals” have now become a part of the American legal system. A resignation
to the new social future has become a way of life.
The same has been happening in South Africa since the early 90s. The South
African culture has been bombarded with millions of illegal immigrants from the
northern countries of the continent. It is not just the “new” South Africa in a political
realm, but a new cultural South Africa has developed by the influx and saturation of the
cultures that millions have brought with them from the northern countries. And this is
good. Every country is blessed by immigrants. They are blessed because the immigrant
brings hope for a better life, while the resident too often has taken for granted what he
has. There is a greater work ethic among immigrants, for they are a culture of survival.
What is globally happening with many nations is historical and natural. Cultures
simply cannot remain isolated in their own time capsule. They change, adapt and
modify. Outside cultures force us to adapt and change. From now and into the future of
the rest of the history of the world, we will be living in nations that are constantly
invaded by “foreign” cultures. We may seek to stop this new wave of immigration at the
borders, but there are no visas needed to access the Internet. This is the new way of life.
During these invasions of ideology there will always be cultural conflict. Sometimes
severe conflict will occur, as in the battle lines between the Islamically defined cultures
of the middle East and the Christian defined cultures of the West. But regardless of the
conflicts, the invasions will continue. It is best, therefore, to learn how to be acculturated
and accommodated as we are invaded with cultures from outside our cocoons. We
must accept this, for this is the way of the new world community.
It is inevitable that social globalization will continually generate cultural conflict.
As the postmodern generation takes us into a different global culture, a new global
society will continue to emerge. It is not what this society will be, but how it will
continue to develop. Built within the culture itself are mechanisms for change. And
thus, as a culture of change it will never be stagnant in order to be identified by a
specific name. We are only in the beginning of a series of new world cultures. There
will be many more “new” worlds to come simply because culture has now developed the
ability to rapidly change with little pain.
But we can be sure of one thing. Conflict between parallel cultures will supplant
ideological conflict. Or at least, parallel cultural conflict will be the main driving force
that will determine ideology. Out of this conflict will develop new cultural world views.
We have already identified a new cultural ideology. It is the culture of political/religious
terrorism that we identify as fundamentalism. There will be more to come as the
world becomes a smaller neighborhood where different, but parallel cultures, will seek
to impose the norms of their existence on others.
I would surmise that the desire of the postmodern generation and its ancestral
offspring generations will sacrifice ideology for conformity. The desire to be community
moves into second place the desire to stand for idiosyncrasies in ideologies. Ideologies
will be “whatever,” while culture will be determined by a Western competitive
arena wherein global business people will seek to economically better themselves in a
free-market that has globalized many businesses. Ideology will be sacrificed on the altar
of a better way of life. So buckle up. Here we go.evangelistic responsibility.
This is not something that I am teaching of my own opinion.
This is an axiomatic truth, that is, a truth that is self-evident. When churches become
financially rich, they seek to hire their work done for them. Members then sit idly by
when the fulltime evangelists does the work. You know this is true.
It is difficult to convince one who is obsessed with a successful secular job that he
cannot buy his way out of personal involvement with a paycheck to a fulltime preacher.
The problem is not in the preacher, but in the one who thinks he can be obsessed with
his work in worldly things while someone else assumes his responsibility in being
personally involved in good works and evangelistic outreach.

Though it is almost impossible to restore rich churches who have hired a staff to do
their “spiritual business,” there is always hope. But the hope lies only in the repentance
of those who have chosen to sit on a bench during the “hour of worship” while someone
else becomes personally involved. Only repentance will salvage a church house full of
such people. By repentance I mean that every member must make a commitment to
become personally involved in what Jesus would have every disciple do. This was what
Paul exhorted Timothy to tell the rich. “Command those who are rich … that they be
rich in good works.” (1 Tm 6:17,19).
G. Restore daily discipleship.

We have created a religion that naturally dies once it has reached the end of its life.
Now think about this. We have now the “hour of worship.” This is not a New
Testament concept. It is the result of an industrial/business culture that seeks to
departmentalize every aspect of the life of a disciple. We reason that since work is
departmentalized between 8:00AM and 5:00PM, then certainly “religious time” can also be
departmentalized. In order to enforce this concept, the departmentalized “hour of
worship” is boxed in between an “opening prayer” and “closing prayer.” Fulfilling
one’s personal duties as a Christian is thus confined to an assembled “hour of worship,”
outside which, one is on his own time and free from any responsibilities to fulfill one’s
service to God. This is the belief and behavior of the dead church. It is true churchian
doctrine at its best.

Acts 5:42 is a record of the behavior of the early church. “And daily in the temple,
and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”
There was a daily obedience in the lives of the early disciples because they realized the
urgency of their calling. As priests of God who never ceased doing the responsibilities
of priesthood, they were daily into the work of God to preach the gospel to the lost and
teach the disciples. There is no such thing in the New Testament as an “hour of
worship.” There were no opening or closing prayers. Discipleship was a lifetime, allthe-
time commitment to serve. Anything different in belief is an apostasy from the
truth. Anything different in behavior is an apostasy to a religion that we have created
after our own desire to shirk our duties and separate ourselves from personal
involvement in the lives of others.
In order to start growing again, we must restore in our lives daily discipleship. We
must be daily priests of God who minister the word of God to the world. When we once
again become excited about sowing the seed of the kingdom because we are excited
about the need of preaching the gospel to the world, we will start growing. We will
have more conversions only when we grow in the conviction that every disciple must
become involve daily in preaching the gospel to the world. Nothing else will keep the
church growing into all the world.