What does First B Jackson teach about native american outreach?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on Native American outreach starts with a single phrase from John 1:14: the Word became human and lived among us. Duane Bristow, director of the Brethren Navajo Mission, brought this message out of seventeen years of living and working among the Navajo people. The whole point he pressed on was the difference between incarnational ministry and what he called impositional ministry. Jesus did not arrive demanding that people leave their culture behind before they could hear the good news. He entered the culture. He spoke the language, wore the clothes, and used the instruments of the people He came to reach.
Duane was honest about where Christian mission to Native peoples went wrong. Passages like the one in 1 Corinthians 11 about hair length and head coverings had been used to tell Native people they had to stop being who they were in order to become Christians. The result, he said, was that only three to five percent of Native Americans in North America have come to faith. The message itself was not broken. The way it was delivered was. Paul himself, in that same chapter, says the churches have no such custom, yet the church made it one anyway and imposed it on people who had never asked for it.
The contrast Duane kept drawing was between that history and what Jesus actually modeled. When Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus pointed to Himself: if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. That is what incarnational witness looks like. God, through Isaiah 43:19, says He is always doing something new, and Duane's challenge to the congregation was to notice it, get out of the box, and carry the gospel the way Jesus carried it, by moving into the neighborhood rather than demanding the neighborhood move toward you.
Taught from John 1:1-3, 14 · John 14:5-11 · 1 Corinthians 11:13-16 · Isaiah 43:19 · Colossians 2:20-23
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 11:13-16
13 Judge for yourselves. Is it appropriate that a woman pray to God unveiled?
14 Doesn’t even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?
15 But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering.
16 But if any man seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither do God’s assemblies.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- October 2, 2016 10 02 16 Sunday Sermon Traditions Duane & Diane Bristow Missionaries Duane and Diane Bristow share how incarnational ministry among the Navajo people means revealing the Father through relationship, not imposing religious culture.
- October 2, 2016 The Word Became Human and Lived Among Us Missionary Duane Bristow shares how Jesus modeled incarnational ministry by entering our culture, and challenges believers to carry that same living witness to others.
- October 2, 2016 The Word Became Human and Lived Among Us Dwayne Bristow of Navajo Brethren in Christ Mission preaches on incarnational ministry, asking whether we reveal the Father to others or merely impose our own religious standards.