Definition of Terms used in GRA Missions Ministry

Biculturalism
The ability to move between two cultures (birth culture and adopted culture) and live in either without experiencing culture shock.

Bicultural Bridge
The set of relationships between missionaries and their counterparts in the culture they seek to reach. These relationships affect the missionaries ability to communicate effectively to that culture.

Bonding
The attachment and sense of belonging normally established between the parent and child at birth; by analogy, the attachment of missionaries to their host culture following entry and contact. This initial attachment for missionaries can be enhanced by effective entry strategies and language learning techniques.

Bridges of God
Naturally occurring networks of kinship or group ties which can be used for transmission of the gospel.

(A) Church
A congregation of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ who seek to obey His commandments as recorded in scripture and extend His kingdom throughout the Earth.

(The) Church
The Body of Christ worldwide; the community of the Holy Spirit; the people of God from all nations. The Church encompasses the reign of the kingdom and acts as God's agent in the world in His continuing plan to extend His kingdom to all peoples, nations, tribes, and tongues.

Church Pastor/Overseer
To take over from missionaries when Churches have been successfully planted. To multiply Churches from the parent Church.
To take responsibility for all Church expansion and multiplication activities thereafter.

Church Expansion/Growth
This is a process whereby an existing Church reproduces itself within a locality. This result from the evangelism effort of its members within that locality (Acts 2:47b; 19:9b,10).

Church Planting
This is a pioneering art of evangelism, preaching, teaching and discipleship process among Unreached People Groups. This is what missions effort is aimed at.

Closure
A commitment to setting definite goals and developing specific means to complete world evangelization. Closure works toward accomplishing the task of MT 24:14, seeing the gospel presented to every people group in a way that it allows it to be extended throughout that group.

Comity
The practice of designating a particular mission agency to be responsible for the evangelization of a specific geographical territory, to prevent overlapping of mission programs and personnel. Comity was planned to reduce waste and increase effectiveness but it tended to produce "denominationalism by geography."

Concept Fulfillment
Identifying useable redemptive analogies within a culture which could effectively present Biblical truths and demonstrate them as the fulfillment of cultural expectations.

Conglomerate Church
A church which is made up of people from several different segments of society who have been converted through one-by one decisions out of various tribes, castes, and levels of society. It may be a committed and dedicated congregation but it is seldom able to effectively evangelize the surrounding community.

Contextualization
Presenting the Gospel in ways which consider the world view of the respondent culture. Adapting the Biblical message into forms that are true to the scriptures but appropriate to the local culture and society.

Culture
The concepts, habits, skills, instruments, civilization, etc. of a given people in a given period of time. Culture must be learned by each generation. Culture is constantly changing. Definitions:

KWAST - The patterned way of doing things within a particular society which binds people together and gives them a sense of identity and continuity.
HIEBERT - The integrated system of learned patterns of behavior, ideas, and products characteristic of a society. The symbol systems that people create in order to think and communicate.
HESSELGRAVE - Folkways, models, and mores, language, human productions, and social structures of any given people.

Culture Shock
The sense of confusion and perplexity produced by a psychological disorientation most people experience when they move for an extended period of time into a culture significantly different from their own. It can result in homesickness, depression, resentment, hyper-irritability, and even physical symptoms of psychosomatic illness.

Double Cultural Imperialism
Imposing our own culture on others and despising their culture.

Dynamic Equivalent Translations of Scripture
Translations in which the meaning of the text or concept is preserved in transmitting it to another culture, even if it is presented in a different form.

Dynamic Equivalence
This approach seeks to convey to contemporary audiences meanings equivalent to those conveyed to the original audience, by using appropriate cultural forms. This can be applied to the translation of scripture or to the formation of a local church. Contrast with Formal Correspondence.

Ecclesiastical Ethnocentrism
The view that the way things are done in one's own church or denomination is the only right way to do them. This considers all other churches to be wrong wherever their rituals, beliefs, or practices differ from our own.

Epochs of Redemptive History
Periods of 400 years duration which give useful methods of evaluating the ways in which God's kingdom was extended from the days of Abraham to the present.

Ethnocentrism
The belief that one's own culture, race, nation, is superior to all others; the view that one's cultural ways of doing things is the correct and only way; the tendency to judge the behavior of people in other cultures by values and assumptions of our own. All cultures are naturally ethnocentric. Effective cross-cultural workers must struggle to overcome their normal tendency to assume superiority of their own culture.

Evangelism
Sharing the good news that God has provided a sacrifice for sin through the death of His son, Jesus Christ, and inviting all people and nations to enter into that liberation from sin and death, through repentance and believing; the activity of reaching out from an existing church to those within the culture who have not had an opportunity to hear the message.

E-0 Evangelism
Bringing the church members to renewal or repentance.

E-1 Evangelism
Sharing the gospel with members of one's own culture, near-neighbor evangelism.

E-2 Evangelism
Sharing the Gospel with those of somewhat different cultures; may involve learning another language or culture for effective communication.

E-3 Evangelism
Sharing the gospel with those from a culture very different from the evangelist; will certainly involve learning one or more languages, and another culture for real effectiveness.

Frontier Missions
Cross-cultural evangelism by a worker from a different culture where no missiological breakthrough has taken place, i.e. within an unreached people group.

Formal Correspondence
Relating to either Bible translation or church formation, this implies a slavish imitation, either in translating a word or forming a church model. It is usually ineffective and confusing. Contrast with dynamic equivalence.

Goers Those
World Christians who respond to the Mission Mandate by leaving their home country and taking the Gospel to another culture.

Group Process
The normal way of decision making in non-Western societies and peoples, whereby decisions are made jointly by all members of a particular group. This is in contrast to the individual decisions commonly made in Western societies. An understanding of the group mind and group decision making is vital to the facilitation of people movements.

The Great Century
The period from 1792 to 1914 during which the great worldwide expansion of Protestant Christianity began.
Incarnational Identification Sacrificial identification on the part of the missionaries with the culture and the way of life of the people they seek to reach.

Indigenization
Presenting the Gospel in a way that is consistent with the principles and assumptions of the indigenous culture while remaining authentic to the foundations of scripture.

Indigenous Church
A congregation of believers who live out their lives, including their Christian activity, in the patterns of local society, and for whom any transformation of society comes through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the principles of scripture.

Intercessors
Those world Christians who respond to the Mission Mandate primarily by sustaining the extension of Christ's kingdom through serious, committed, on going prayer.

Mandate
The non-negotiable responsibility of all those who are recipients of the blessings to Abraham to work for the extension of those blessings to all families of the earth, as revealed by God (Gen 12:1-3).

Missions
It is defined as the sending of persons with the gospel to a people who have not heard at all or have heard little in order to make them disciples of Christ.

Mission Field
A mission field is a place where the gospel has not been preached at all (Rom.15:20) and/or where the church available there is dead or is not a 'Living' Church. This could be a community, tribe, nation, or country such as the Fulanis in Northern Nigeria, Niger Republic
and Mauritania

Mission Agencies
Organizations of people who have banded together in a commitment to the Lord and to one another to make special efforts to cross cultural frontiers in order to evangelize and disciple those who would not otherwise have an opportunity to hear the Gospel.

Mission Station Approach
A strategy whereby missionaries live in a compound separate from the surrounding culture. Converts are often encouraged to join them on the compound, thus separating them from the families and friends they might otherwise reach (gathered colony approach). It produces educated and often committed Christian individuals, but seldom a multiplying cluster of reproducing churches.

Missionaries
Residential/local/Indigenous Missionaries- those living among the cultural groups and supported by a sending local Church.

Non-Residential/Foreign Missionaries-those living outside the cultural groups, but mobilizing human, material, and financial resources and prayer support for the targeted group.

Missionary Mechanisms
The ways that, throughout history, God moves His people (both with and without their willing, co-operative obedience) to reach those peoples who have yet to hear the good news. Witnesses will go to the nations or God will cause the nations to "come to the blessing." The four mechanisms are: voluntary/go, involuntary go, voluntary come, involuntary come.

Missiological Breakthrough
The establishment of a viable, reproducing church within an otherwise unreached people group. This is achieved by undertaking a frontier missions outreach.

Mobilizers
Those World Christians who respond to Missions Mandate by assisting others in the Body of Christ to become prepared, trained, and released to cross-cultural service and helping each church and each Christian find their role in the process of world evangelization.
Nation Biblically, an ethnic unit or people group (GK: ethnos; Heb.: gam or mishpahgeh) rather than a geopolitical country. Specifically, this Greek word is used in Matthew 24:14 and 28:18-19. These Scripture serve as Jesus Biblical mandate for world missions.

Matthew 24:14: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations [ethnos], and then the end shall come."

Matthew 28:19: "Go therefore and make disicples of all nations [ethnos], baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

People Group
The largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of acceptance or understanding.

(Reached) People Group
A people group within which there exists a growing, reproducing church movement, able to evangelize their own people.

(Unreached) People Group
A people group which does not have a cluster of growing, indigenous congregations able to reach the rest of that culture, therefore requiring cross-cultural workers until that point is achieved. This people group has no indigenous community of believing Christians able to evangelize their own people.

People Movements
The process by which whole people groups decide together to become Christians.

Preaching Point
A location where a missionary preaches to any who will listen. No indigenous leaders direct the group, converts are seldom baptized. This type of gathering is unlikely to reproduce.

Redemptive Analogies
Elements within a culture that anticipate aspects of the Gospel. Their God-ordained purpose is to prepare the culture to recognize Jesus as Savior.

Regular Missions
Mission work by a different culture worker among a people group where a missiological breakthrough has already taken place.

Rice Christians
People who become Christians simply for the material benefits that this will bring to themselves and their families.

Role
A function or office taken or assigned to someone with which certain cultural expectations are connected. In another culture, these expectations and behaviors may be significantly different from what is initially assumed by the missionary.

Senders
Those World Christians who respond to the Mission Mandate by funding and assisting cross-cultural workers who go out to complete world evangelization. It is estimated that it takes six to thirty committed senders to sustain one worker to the field.

Spontaneous Expansion
The situation wherein new converts are formed into churches which from the beginning are fully equipped with all spiritual authority to multiply themselves without any necessary reference to the foreign missionaries.

Status Position
Rank, or standing within a social system related to roles and functions. Expectations as to status will differ within each culture for various roles and functions.

Strategy
A plan or action based on an overall approach to reaching a stated goal or solving a specific problem. Strategy, as opposed to tactics, is not concerned with details but with general purposes and intentions.

Tentmaker Missionary
A trained, experienced Christian worker who uses his/her secular profession or training as a vehicle for entering cross-cultural ministry, particularly in closed or restricted access countries.

Three-Self Formula
The formula for mission strategy which plans to foster development of churches that are self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating.

Twenty-Five Unbelievable Years
The period after WWII, from 1945 to 1970, during which colonialism, the most powerful forces in the 19th century, was overtaken by nationalism, clearly the dominant force in the latter part of the 20th century. In 1945, Europeans controlled more than 99% of the non-Western world. By 1970, they controlled only 5%. These years also saw an unexpected upsurge of Christianity in the Non-Western world.

Universalism
The teaching that because God is good, all people will ultimately be saved. Any variation of that teaching which implies that people do not need to accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in order to be reconciled to God.

Values
What is considered "good, beneficial, or best" within a society. Values provide pre-set decisions between choices commonly faced by members of a culture. They define what "should or ought" to be done inorder to conform to that culture's way of life.

Viable Church
A sufficiently developed indigenous Christian tradition with the resources and motivation able to evangelize its own people without cross-cultural help.

Welcomers
Those World Christians who respond to the Mission Mandate by working to complete world evangelization through reaching international populations (I.e. students, refugees, immigrants, military trainees, etc.) whom God has moved to their home territory or place of residence.

World Christian
A Christian who has caught the vision of God's global purposes and, in obedience to the Lord, has responded to that vision in practical ways. One whose lifestyle has been transformed in relation to that vision and obedience.

World Evangelization
The communication of the Good News of God's salvation in Jesus Christ until all peoples, nations, tribes, and tongues have an opportunity to hear it in a way that they can understand and to which they can validly respond.

World View
A range of definitions offered:

KWAST - What is considered to be "real" within a culture concerning the ultimate questions of reality. It forms the core of culture and effects every component of culture.
HIEBERT - The basic assumptions people have about the nature of reality and of right and wrong.
HESSELGRAVE - The way people see or perceive the world, the way they know it to be.