There are some fundamental reasons why missionaries are very slow to change their ways. It sometimes feels easier to help someone believe in Jesus than to convince a missionary to accept different methods of ministry. I stumbled onto some reasons that may begin to explain this. A Typical Conversation In conversation with others, I find people mistake me as saying one of two things, neither of which is my meaning. Before stating these mistaken impressions, I’ll first give a general... Read more
Ideally, we can share the biblical story orally and visually. In other words, what people see in a model will reinforce what they hear with their ears. *** If you would like a copy of the packet (in English) I made presenting this model, click here. *** For a very scaled down version of the model in Chinese, click here. Biblical theology is foundation to all theology and ministry We must not let biblical story be confined by systematic theology,... Read more
以辱为荣：Honored through Shame Jesus overturns the world’s understanding of honor and shame. When people give their loyalty to Christ, they have died and are raised with him. They share in his honor and shame. Although not of the world, they are to live in it. In a sense, they become aliens and exiles within the world. As the true image of God, Christ manifests the divine glory. As a man, he represents all humanity (being “the last Adam,” 1 Cor... Read more
So, do you think this could be the next big method people use to do evangelism? This is hilarious. Maybe this is an updated version of “Evangelism Explosion”? If you have a problem with the link, you can also click here. Read more
How are we to understand Christ within the grand narrative of Scripture? After all, Jesus himself said that all Scripture was about him (cf. Luke 24:27, 44–48). Previously, I said that the box represents the world enslaved to sin. The bottom line/side of the box is a time line of biblical history. The smaller box on the right signifies Israel within the world. God the Father Raises Up A King Thus far, the model has readied us for Christ’s arrival.... Read more
This post depicts Israel within the biblical story. The summary follows the picture below. God established Israel for the sake of the nations. God made a covenant with Abraham, promising that through his offspring, all nations would be blessed. (As a significant side note, Paul explicitly calls this promise “the gospel” in Gal 3:8). Israel is God’s strategy to overcome the curse and death ushered in by the failure of humanity beginning with Adam. In time, God rescues Abraham’s descendents,... Read more
Today, I begin to explain step by step how to tell the whole story of the Bible. From the beginning, my aim has been to develop a model that is coherent, reproducible, faithful to Scripture, and balances a variety of biblical themes. Accordingly, I take seriously the theme of honor-shame in the Bible. It is imperative for us to be able to retelling the grand narrative of Scripture. Evangelism should be rooted in biblical theology, not the other way around.... Read more
If you would like to download the graph above, click here (a bigger picture) or here (smaller jpeg). WHY THESE NAMES FOR THE STAGES? In order to help people remember the big movements within the biblical narrative, it is helpful to give them “verbal hangers,” which capture the key idea of the period. As I have written elsewhere, the best theological contextualization occurs when our presentations highlight the prominent themes that overlap Scripture and the culture. 1. 天下一家 (tiānxià yī... Read more
It’s asking a lot of a single model to capture the whole biblical story in a balanced way, which can also be easily remembered and reproduced by others. Well, here’s my go at it . . . . The following is an overview of the biblical story, divided into 6 stages. This post only gives a bird’s eye view of the Bible narrative. My July 2013 article in Global Missiology (“Biblical Theology from a Chinese Perspective”) is more detailed. It... Read more
Although many can recite a set evangelistic presentation, fewer people could comfortably make sense of the whole Bible’s grand story. We need some help. That was the point of my first post in this new series. If we were to develop a model that retells the whole biblical narrative, what would it say? What would it do? This second post explains why I designed just such a tool (which I’ll introduce in the next post). What about methods that exist... Read more
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