Quotes of Note

“The greatest moments of Native History lie ahead of us if a great spiritual renewal and wakening should take place. The Native American has been a sleeping giant. He is awakening. The original Americans could become the evangelists who will help win America for Christ! Remember these forgotten people!”
Dr. Billy Graham

“…we see God working in terms of Jewish culture to reach Jews, yet, refusing to impose Jewish customs on Gentiles. Instead non-Jews are to come to God and relate to Him in terms of their own cultural vehicles. We see the Bible endorsing, then, a doctrine we call biblical sociocultural adequacy in which each culture is taken seriously but none advocated exclusively as the only one acceptable to God.”
Dr. Charles Kraft, Anthropology for Christian Witness, Orbis 1996

The next 10 to 20 years will bring Native cultural expressions to the body of Christ that will be a tremendous blessing to many.
Richard Twiss

Biblical Christianity is never found apart from a culture. It is always part of a culture. The Christianity of the New Testament was a part of the Greco-Roman world of the 1st century. There is no such thing as plain Christianity. Christianity always expresses itself through a culture. It is unique in that it can be expressed equally well in any culture.
Grunlan, Stephen A. and Marvin K. Mayers, Cultural Anthropology: A Christian Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988, 244.

“The only way to drive out bad culture is to create good culture. We need to recognize that artistic talent is a gift from the Lord — and that developing those talents is the only way to create good culture.”
C.S. Lewis as quoted at: http://www.breakpoint.org/script4.html

“We know that this nation entered into solemn treaties [with Indian tribes] which have been continuously violated for more than 250 years. It’s a disgrace. It’s an outrage. We must do everything in our power to keep those treaties. Otherwise, the word of the United States government is no good.”
U.S. Senator John McCain, Presidential Candiate

“I have but one passion – it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.”
Count Zinsendorf

“Without Christ, not one step; with Him, anywhere!”
David Livingstone

“Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”
Jim Elliot, Missionary to the Auca (Waodani)

“Lord, make me a crisis man. Let me not be a mile-post on a single road, but make me a fork that men must turn one way or another in facing Christ in me.”
Jim Elliot

The development of strategies for world evangelization calls for imaginative pioneering methods. Under God, the result will be the rise of churches deeply rooted in Christ and closely related to their culture. Culture must always be tested and judged by Scripture. Because men and women are God’s creatures, some of their culture is rich in beauty and goodness. Because they are fallen, all of it is tainted with sin and some of it is demonic. The gospel does not presuppose the superiority of any culture to another, but evaluates all cultures according to its own criteria of truth and righteousness, and insists on moral absolutes in every culture. Missions have all too frequently exported with the gospel an alien culture and churches have sometimes been in bondage to culture rather than to Scripture. Christ’s evangelists must humbly seek to empty themselves of all but their personal authenticity in order to become the servants of others, and churches must seek to transform and enrich culture, all for the glory of God. (Mark 7:8,9,13; Gen. 4:21,22; I Cor. 9:19-23; Phil. 2:5-7; II Cor. 4:5)
Point 10 of the Lausanne Covenant on EVANGELISM AND CULTURE

“Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy.”
Mother Teresa