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How can a Christian brought up in the metropolis of Sao Paulo speak the gospel clearly to a Buddhist raised in the mountains of Tibet? Every missionary confronts the difficulty of cross-cultural communication. But missionaries from the Third World, Bruce Nicholls says, must understand four cultures--"the Bible's, the Western missionaries' who first brought the gospel, their own, and the people's to whom they take the gospel."
Recognizing this, Nicholls proposes that the gospel be contextualized, that is, presented in forms which are characteristic of the culture to which the gospel is taken. The problem is to find the right cultural forms and thus keep the gospel message both clear and biblical. Nicholls deals with tough social, theological and hermeneutical questions and proposes a direction for missions in the future.
Bruce J. Nicholls, formerly executive secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship Theological Commission, was a career missionary in India working in theological education and in pastoral ministry with the Church of North India. He was also Editor of the Evangelical Review of Theology for 18 years and is now Editor of the Asia Bible Commentary series.
About the author
BRUCE NICHOLLS is a graduate of London Bible College, Ardmore Teachers College, and Princeton Theological Seminary. With his wife Kathleen, he taught for nineteen years at Union Biblical Seminary, Pune, India. He has founded several initiatives in the areas of theological education in Asia, including the WEF Theological Commission, TRACI New Delhi, the Asia Theological Association and the Evangelical Review of Theology. After thirty-nine years in India sponsored by Interserve, he now resides in Auckland, New Zealand.
