An article presented first in draft form as the reading for participants in a guest lecture that I gave on 27 November 2023. to the 'Cross-Cultural Christianity' class at Tyndale Theological Seminary (Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands). The video recording of this lecture ('Paul's Gospel for All Nations and the Social Powers') is available below. 

The video recording (in two parts) of the guest lecture given on 27 November 2023 to the 'Cross-Cultural Christianity' class at Tyndale Theological Seminary (Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands). 

The video recording (in two parts) of the reading given in November 2022 to the 'Cross-Cultural Christianity' class at Tyndale Theological Seminary (Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands)—a partial reading of the first two parts of the book that is currently being written by the author. A full written version, complete with extensive footnotes can be read by members of his website at the following links for: Part I and Part II . For members, Part III is also now available.

An article written in response to the increasing calls around the world (in response to the death of George Floyd in the USA at the hands of several police officers in 2020) for European and American societies to deal with systemic racism. This is a call to Christians to recognize and begin to deal first with systemic partiality and racism in our churches and Christian organizations based on the witness of the New Testament.

This article was first published in Dutch as  ‘De wil van de Vader in een pluralistische samenleving tot uitvoering brengen’, in: André Droogers e.a. (red.), De stereotypering voorbij: Evangelischen en oecumenischen over religieus pluralisme, Zoetermeer, Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 1997. In it I give modern day examples of the impact of 'ethnocentrism' and Paul's concept of the 'elemental powers' [Gr. stoikeia] (Med.#30) on Christian witness and dialogue with people of other cultures in Amsterdam. 

The published Dutch article is available on the Dutch translation of this website page.

In his book (pp.17-18), Eric Law writes the following about his own experience with social power: “Having grown up in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen, I spent a lot of time feeling totally powerless… In Hong Kong, you began life being powerless and you waited until it was your turn to have power. You gained power in two ways: by seniority, or when an authoritative figure appointed you… I was not aware of my powerless posture until I entered the education system in the United States. Before, I waited for the teacher to recognize my worth…, (but) in the States, I had to volunteer my answer to prove that I knew it better than the others…

"I was living in two incompatible cultural understandings of personal power. At home and in Hong Kong, I was taught to compete. When I succeeded, I waited to be recognized. The understanding was that…others would know it and I did not need to blow my own horn, which would be considered very impolite. In order for this cultural system to work, the people in power also had the sensitivity to recognize and perceive nonverbally what people were good at and when they were ready to participate. In school in the United States, I was also taught to compete. The difference was that I had to let others know I was good or they would not notice. I did not have the awareness to see this… so I thought there was something wrong with me… which is the tendency of a powerless person… In order for me to survive school and work, I, at one point in my life rejected my Chinese heritage… To climb the ladder of the American dream, I had to learn the aggressive ways of the system here…

"Through my experience of the Gospel, I learned about empowerment. I was liberated and was able to confront anything that came my way… Then during my (seminary) field education with Chinese refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia, I discovered I was so overpowering that it was counterproductive. The foundations of my perception of personal power were shaken again. I had to rethink what empowerment meant if my own empowerment could cause others to become powerless. True empowerment should empower others at the same time.” (italics are mine).

To read more about what Eric Law learned about social power and ‘true empowerment’ in the multi-cultural ‘peaceable (family) kingdom’ of Jesus—click on ‘Book review by Ron Benefiel’ (above).

See also Meditation #68. 

‘If you follow the history of the Church from the 1^st century right into the 20^th century, you will find that the continent of Europe functioned in many ways as God’s main bridge to move the Gospel from the Middle East to the ends of the earth. This movement of European missionaries reached its peak during the past five centuries, with many coming from European immigrant populations in the Americas…. Yet as the 20^th century was drawing to a close, Europe had become the only continent in the world where Church membership was declining, and Christians in the non-Western world began to outnumber Christians in Western countries. Was God finished with Europe as a bridge? Or was he just busy constructing a new kind bridge in Europe to accomplish his eternal purposes?’

This paper explores the relationships between immigrant and native Dutch churches in Amsterdam, making use of Putnam’s theories about how ethnic diversity affects the two kinds of relationships that make up social capital: ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ relationships. The paper concludes with some observations from the Christian Scriptures. Are there biblical resources on which all Christians can draw concerning our Father's purposes for ethnic diversity in urban societies like Amsterdam, and which interact in a useful way with Putnam’s ideas about bonding and bridging relationships that contribute to social capital?

The biblical resources in this paper are developed more fully in two video teachings given at Tyndale Theological Seminary: 'A Theology of Cultural Diversity' (2015) and 'Social Power and the Multi-Ethnic Family Kingdom: Implications for Global Christianity Today' (2017). These are  available to those who sign up as a member of the Father Meditations. 

"In spite of the decline of the old religious establishment,  the century-long wave of secularization seems to have crested, and may even have begun to recede. The Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) finds that the number of self-described Christians stopped declining as early as the beginning of the 1990s. Among the under-20s, the number has started to increase in recent years.... What is going on with religion in Holland?

"The reason the Christian population of Holland has stopped shrinking and is likely to avoid further decline is a phenomenon that until now has been largely overlooked by commentators on Dutch politics and society: Christian immigration. Analysts usually focus on the one million Muslim immigrants and their offspring who have made the Netherlands their home since the early 1950s. But in the past decade, Muslim immigration has been overtaken by a larger stream of immigrants, namely Christians from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. An SCP estimate puts the number of Christian immigrants in Holland at around 700,000-- and rising fast. Recent immigration reports suggest that for every new Muslim moving to Holland, there are at least two new Christian immigrants."

This article was first published in Dutch in Mecca en Mokum III, a publication of Stichting Evangelie en Moslim, Amersfoort, the Netherlands (2002). Divided into two parts, it was published that same year in English in two successive issues of World Christian News, Colorado Springs. In it I describe the lessons I learned about 'contextualizing' my witness about Jesus among my Moroccan neighbors in Amsterdam by using the biblical model of Jesus' witness among the Samaritans as a model.

The published Dutch article is available on the Dutch translation of this website page.

In Chapter 6 of my Master’s Thesis (‘The Mediation of Ethnic Identity among Ghanaian Evangelical and Pentecostal Churches in the Netherlands’, 2005), I describe how my own commitment to the Lordship of Jesus in my life--founded on the Bible as God's revelation, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the witness of my mentors in the faith--has mediated my own sense of ethnic identity over the years, particularly during the first three decades of my life as a missionary migrant living in the Netherlands. As in the main body of my thesis I look at how this migrant has reconstructed his sense of ethnic identity in three different contexts: when living in the Netherlands, when on furlough in the United States, and when moving in the international circles of the Church and my own missionary society worldwide.

This article, based on a paper I wrote for one of the courses at the VU University in Amsterdam that I followed toward receiving an MA in Cultural Anthropology (2005). In it I show how I applied the Mayers-Smith 'Basic Values Model' to help me be more successful as an immigrant in the Netherlands with indigenous Dutch people. The latter will also find this model helpful in their relationship with their immigrant neighbours. When you  sign up to be a member of the Father Meditations website you will also have access to an extended video teaching I gave in 2017 on this subject, showing how I applied the 'Basic Values Model' in building relationships with my Middle Eastern neighbours.  

A Dutch version of this article is available on the Dutch translation of this website page.

"How is culture learned? The learner must realize that cultural worldviews can be perceived by outsiders at some times more than at other times. This article describes these times when cultural worldviews are laid bare for the perceptive to grasp. At these times cultural views are more explicit than at other times: during times of crisis, during rites of transition, through proverbs, by contrast, and by analyzing how words and sounds are organized and classified."

A Dutch version of this article is available on the Dutch translation of this website page.

In the early 1970s, I spent almost three years in Indonesia working as a bookkeeper for two mission organizations that served all the Protestant missions in that region. I was in my early twenties, and while there I made it a priority to learn the Indonesian language and build friendships among my Indonesian peers, especially in a local church. As I was about to return to the USA, one of these friends, as he was saying goodbye, said to me, ‘We are going to miss you; you are the first Westerner who has let us get to know him’.

Often well meaning missionaries and other expats from a dominant culture put significant effort in seeking to identify with the local people where they are sojourning, but they do not pay much attention to letting the local people really get to know them. Jacob Loewen calls this ‘reciprocity in identification’; and in this classic article he illustrates: what such reciprocity involves, the negative consequences when it is not practiced, and the benefits when it is. I consider this article one of the most important ones I have ever read concerning intercultural ministry and relationships.

A Dutch version of this article is available on the Dutch translation of this website page.