Contents: pt. 1. Context, text and pre-texts -- Context: the world of religion today -- Text: what the Bible says -- Pre-texts: theology and personality -- pt. 2. Practices: Beyond competition and cooperation -- Universality: reaching out to all, including Christians -- Fellowship: Belonging precedes believing -- Localization: focusing on questions and concerns of the local community -- Commitment: holding ideas with conviction; acting decisively on those ideas; not letting those ideas be divisive -- Freedom: honoring the principle of religious choice -- Effectiveness: allowing the context to determine the form of witness -- Consistency: striving for consistency between methods and goals -- Variety: communicating the Gospel in many forms -- Respect: not disparaging others in order to champion your own; not disparaging your own in order to respect others -- Charity: loving those to whom we witness -- Missional ecumenicity: practicing mission as the joint project of the church -- Jesus, mission innovator: Jesus's model of giftive mission -- pt. 3. Method: how do we do it -- The spiral of knowledge acquisition: learning about new cultures and new religions -- Experiencing: the influence of our personal histories -- Bracketing: putting convictions on hold -- Encountering: learning from a new culture and religion -- Evaluating: appraising the new culture and religion from a Christian viewpoint -- Integrating : reshaping our own views and mission practices -- pt. 4. Giftive Mission -- Metaphors for mission -- The four gifts -- Giftive misssion -- Appendix. Biblical interreligious encounters. Abstract: Given the unique religious climate of the twenty-first century and the challenges to Christian missions it poses, Christianity Encountering World Religions proposes a new model for interacting with people of other faiths. The authors term this model "giftive mission," since it is based on the metaphor of a free gift. They suggest that seeing mission activity as giving the greatest gift possible-- the gospel message-- not only has the potential for greater missionary success but also enables us to imitate more closely God's gracious activity in the world - from back of the book. Published in: Grand Rapids, Mich. Physical description: 407 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

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