Teaching
Bible Lessons
Bible lessons will be taught by incorporating the culture and the worldview of the people group. Our goal is to come to an understanding of the people’s worldview in order to target bridges and barriers of their culture. We will start in Genesis and end in Revelation climaxing at the gospel prevention. We will teach the entire Chronological narrative of History as God sees it and revealed through His Word. We plan to make word for word lessons in the heart language, and involve the people as we prepare each lesson. This is done so each lesson can be as thorough as possible, culturally relevant, and reproducible by/for the people as they will need to carry on Biblical Curriculum development in the long run. We desire to make each lesson available for future use so it is something the people can go back and reference as they study the Word of God.
Creating Anticipation
We want to create anticipation for the gospel. Ravi Zacharias says, “What you win them with, is what you win them to.” Pre-Evangelism is where we will win people’s hearts by building relationships and learning to operate in their culture. While we may leverage physical aid such as clean water or provide some medical, we are not winning people through physical aid, but through loving people life on life. We want to live life in a culturally relevant way and also create worldview tension. Creating anticipation, starts to make people question their spiritual beliefs, as we gently point out their inconsistencies. Anticipation could be built by asking a simple question like this “Do you know where sickness comes from?” And then saying, “when I learn your language well enough, I will tell you about that.” People are complacent with their beliefs, and by the leading and working of the Spirit of God, we can help to wake them up with a desire for "more," and for God Himself.
Foundation Bible Teaching
Unreached people groups do not know the God of the Bible, so we will teach the Bible from beginning to end. Chronological Bible teaching presents a foundation for understanding Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Bible is one story. You wouldn’t start reading a novel from the middle, so why would we with God’s story? God’s Word is unfolded chronologically and progressively through history. The old testament brings clarity, meaning, and significance to concepts like holiness, love, grace, wrath, law, sin, substitutionary death, etc. All are concepts that must be understood in order to receive the Gospel. Teaching chronologically through the Old Testament will help develop an understanding of the nature and character of God. The progressive development of the story of the Bible should act as the stage for the story of Christ. People must come to understand their beginnings and condemnation in Adam, and be brought under conviction of sin through the biblical record of God's hatred of sin, the punishment of unrepentant sinners, and through the declaration of His holiness. We teach this way to develop a holistic understanding of God and lay the prerequisite and foundation to be able to receive Jesus Christ. How would you know that Jesus is the Messiah unless the Old Testament has defined him? Chronological Bible teaching has proved to be an effective way to communicate Gods Story to an animistic people group.
Challenging Worldview
When teaching, we want to meet people at a worldview level. Our goal is to challenge their core assumptions about reality, the supernatural, the natural, the spiritual and the physical. Animism is a powerful system of the enemy, a trap to keep those who embrace it as its prisoners. Paul Hiebert describes animism as, “A world in which most things that happen are brought about, whimsically and arbitrarily, by spirits, ancestors, ghosts, magic, witchcraft, and the stars. It is a world in which God is distant and in which humans are at the mercy of good and evil powers and must defend themselves by prayers and chants, charms, medicines, and incantations. Power, not truth, is the central human concern in this worldview” (Understanding Folk Religion: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices) This must be challenged through God’s Word so that the Gospel may be fully embraced and not syncretized.