Compassion Immersion - Week 3
For the final week of Compassion Immersion, we examine the life of Lesslie Newbigin, whose life helps us understand what it means to “be a missionary” and “love your neighbor.”
Newbigin was born in the UK and was a missionary in India for more than 40 years. Missionary work in the turn of century was often a weird form of British Colonialism - the belief was that to become a Christian, you had to also become British and speak English. Newbigin didn't subscribe to this, looking for ways to bring Christianity into the unique context of Indian language and culture. Newbigin then returned to Great Britain and found a society that was *very* different than the one he left - one that had succumbed to the "myth of progress" and a very false story about reality and the world. Newbigin began contextualizing Christianity for his own country of birth - a missionary venture of a different sort.
Newbigin became one of the most influential theologians in the modern world - especially about the topic of mission and how the church/Christians can engage the culture in powerful and Biblically faithful ways that spark real life change. Newbigin's thinking and ideas are as relevant to us today as they were a few decades ago.
