Michael
Landon
Michael
Landon served for eight years as a church planter in
I.
INTRODUCTION
Recently,
I reported how an adult Sunday School class used word
associations to arrive at this conclusion: "The Psalms are elegant poetry,
songs and prophecies to cause sorrow, repentance, praise and thanksgiving in
order to arrive at confidence."[1]
This struck me as an excellent description of God’s way of reaching out to
people, of doing missions. By comparison, our missions
efforts have often been much less elegant, dare I say it, even ugly. As one
believer put it, “missionary” carries the connotation of "a poor speaker
coming in, telling stories about the poor, and showing pictures of the needy
and then passing the hat and doing everything you can to get everybody to feel
guilty."[2]
It
seems that the “Modern Missions Movement” is exactly what it calls itself—a missions
movement
based on a certain worldview called modernism, with strong leanings toward
simple utilitarian pragmatism[3]
and little concern for beauty. As such, this missions
movement has spread the gospel throughout the globe, probably with a lopsided
dependence on intellectualism, and it “also became one of the great
secularizing forces of the past century.”[4]
The purpose of this paper is to
point out the Psalms’ crucial place in postmodern missions - perhaps even as a
vital element of an emerging paradigm of missions for postmodern societies.
This paper is organized into two parts. The first part reviews crucial concerns
of postmodernism and demonstrates how the Psalms responds to them. The second
part suggests how the Psalms can help guide one to a new paradigm of missions
that may be especially useful in the postmodern world.
II.
POSTMODERNISM
AND THE PSALMS
Numerous authors have explored
postmodernism, but several Christian missiologists
have provided brief reviews of the concept in reference to evangelism and missions,
including Van Gelder and Bosch.[5]
Despite the value of all these sources, Hiebert’s
presentation is perhaps the best organizing principle for this discussion. He
highlights two significant sociological characteristics and three cultural
characteristics of postmodernism, and this section on the Psalms’ relevance to
a postmodern world is organized around these five themes.
Pluralism, as a theme of
postmodernism, is not only the existence of a myriad of ethnic and social
groups but the acceptance and affirmation of other peoples and their beliefs.[6]
What do the Psalms teach about pluralism?
At first glance, the fit seems very
difficult, since the Old Testament is adamant about worshipping only one
God—the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:1-6), the punishments for idolatry (Lev.
20:1-6), and the preaching of the prophets (Isa. 44:9-20). The New Testament
also openly and unapologetically declares that one can only come to God through
Jesus (Jn. 10:7-8; 14:6). The Psalms also demand exclusivity, since they call
humans to the one true God and the rejection of the false gods.
The
idols of the nations are silver and gold,
made by the
hands of men.
They
have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but
they cannot see;
they have
ears, but cannot hear,
nor is
there breath in their mouths.
Those
who make them will be like them,
and so
will all who trust in them. (Psalm 135:15-18)[7]
Additionally, many of the Psalms
have strong apologetic arguments for the true God. The author of Psalm 135
declares, “I know that the LORD is great, that our Lord is greater than all the
gods” because of what he has done—the creation, the exodus.
The
LORD does whatever pleases him,
in the heavens
and on the earth,
in the seas and
all their depths. …
He
struck down the firstborn of
the firstborn of
men and animals. (Psalms 135:6, 8-12)
So, how can the Psalms fit with
pluralism? First, notice the context of Psalms 135. One would expect what is
found in verse 1—this is a Psalm directed toward “the servants of the LORD, you
who minister in the house of the LORD,” but it is easy miss the reference to
Egypt in verse nine—“He sent his signs and wonders in your midst, O Egypt.”
It is true that the Psalms were most
often directed to the Israelites, but an amazing number are addressed to or
make significant reference to the peoples of the world—Psalms 1, 2, 22, 24, 33,
40, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 58, 66, 67, 68, 72, 82, 86, 87, 95, 96, 97, 98, 115,
117, 135, 138, 145, 146, and 148. Stuhlmueller
declares, “The prayer of
Here in verse 9, nothing is heard
of other nations under
Mays (1994:187) writes that one should notice the implicit
understanding of the concept “the people of God” in verse 9. They are
constituted “not by ethnic or national identity, but by the recognition of the
rule of the LORD” (cf. Weiser 1962:378 and Deist 1996). People from other
nations may become people of the God of Abraham, completely on a par with the people of
Thus, pluralism
is the context of many of the Psalms, and they address that situation.
Second,
the Psalms affirm pluralism in a limited sense - as an affirmation of
differences in ethnicity, culture and personality. God created a wonderful
variety in his material world, and it all praises him (Ps. 96:11-13; 98:7-8).
God created culture and ethnicity by separating the people and languages at
The second of Hiebert’s
sociological characteristics of postmodernism is the desire for “loose
organizations and more personable relationships.”[11]
This seems to be a reaction to both the inflexible nature of many organizations
and the loneliness of many individuals. Not only has the Enlightenment paradigm
featured treating the world as a machine, it has tended towards treating people
as machines. As such, they can be manipulated like machines by social and
political specialists[12]
and are useful primarily for production.
Many churches may have fallen into
the mechanical trap as well, “[t]he result is a mechanical approach to human
organization, in which people become standardized parts within a ‘factory’
which has as its goals production and gain.”[13]
And even those who come to conventional churches are often lonely, since they
often live in "a plurality of life-worlds," where in no place do they
know another deeply, nor are known deeply.[14]
In response to this, people are looking for community. The Psalms responds to
this need for relationship in two ways.
First, although the Psalms
presuppose Tabernacle or
As
the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My
soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God? (Psalms
42:1-2)
This praise for
God comes not just because of his majesty and power, but also out of
recognition of one’s own weakness. In all the Wisdom literature, God draws near
- near to our fear, powerlessness, pain and sorrow. When one cries out, the
Psalms talk back in a language that understands pain (see Psalms 18)!
The Psalms emphasize that God loves
each person, despite his true hatred of sin. The most obvious example is Psalm
51, written by David after the discovery of his adultery with Bathsheba.
Another example is Psalm 32. Denying guilt was a terrible experience: "my
bones wasted away ... groaning all day long, ... my
strength was sapped" (32:3-4), but finally, "I acknowledged my sin to
you ... and you forgave the guilt of my sin" (32:5).
Second, according to the Psalms,
corporate worship can lead to deep personal relationships with one another. We
are here together because God loves us both (Ps. 86:5, 15), we survive only
because he rescues us both (Ps. 86:6-7 14), and our purpose and end in life are
to praise him (Ps. 86:8-13). Shoun clarifies how
music is related to relationships:
And it is in worship—“with the multitude”
(Ps 42:4)—that we share with one another most deeply.
The music of worship plays a pivotal role
in that sharing. First, to sing freely in the presence of others is make
ourselves vulnerable, to expose a
part of ourselves that is (for most of us) far from perfect. Yet in worship we
not only accept that vulnerability, we embrace it, because we understand the
closeness that it brings.[15]
Using Turner’s
work on rituals, Hatcher explains the power of music to build relationships:
For
example, a group of people singing songs around a campfire can enter into a communitas
experience in which they realize a togetherness that transcends their normal
awareness. Though to their knowledge they have not been ritually stripped of
anything, the awareness of their individualities has been brought low in
relation to their sense of togetherness, and they are impressed with the
special (sacred) power of that togetherness.[16]
In Psalm 51, David begins by
righting his relationship with God through confession of sin, but it ends with
proclamation: “open my lips, and my mouth will declare
your praise,” and then asks God to bless, not just himself, but
The first of Hiebert’s
cultural characteristics of postmodernism can be expressed as the falling apart
of the world: “it argue[s] against coherent plots and perspectives in art and
distinct styles in architecture…”[17]
He uses words like “fragmentation,” “discontinuity,” and “chaotic” to describe
this view of life.
But doesn’t this chaos sound
familiar to the Psalmist? Aren’t disorientation and fragmentation central
subjects for many of the Psalms? Brueggemann lists
five kinds of “Psalms of Disorientation” in the Psalter, including personal
lament, communal lament, two problems, penitential, and “after the
deluge—Thou!”[18] But perhaps, most
significantly, he introduces this section by criticizing traditional church
music.
The problem with a hymnody that focuses on
equilibrium, coherence and symmetry (as in Chapter 2) is that it may deceive
and cover over. Life is not like that. Life is also savagely marked by
disequilibrium, incoherence, and unrelieved asymmetry. In our time—perhaps in
any time—that needs no argument or documentation.…
The point to be urged here is this: The
use of these “psalms of darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the
trusting community, their use is an act
of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith. It is an act of bold faith on
the one hand, because it insists that the world must be experienced as it
really is and not in some pretend way. On the other hand, it is bold because it
insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for
discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or
inappropriate.[19]
This chaotic, confused, frightened
world listens to a poet like David (see Psalms 55:9-13, 20-22).
The Psalms not only acknowledge and
empathize with fragmented lives but also offer renewal, transformation and
hope. Once again, Brueggemann may have best expressed
it:
That is, the Psalms regularly bear witness
to the surprising gift of new life just when none had been expected. That new
orientation is not a return to the old stable orientation, for there is no such
going back. …
Rather, the speaker and the community of
faith are often surprised by grace, when there emerges in present life a new
possibility that is inexplicable, neither derived nor extrapolated, but wrought
by the inscrutable power and goodness of God. That newness cannot be explained,
predicted, or programmed. We do not know how such a newness happens any more
than we know how a dead person is raised to new life, how a leper is cleansed, or
how a blind person can see (cf. Luke 7:22). We do not know; nor do the speakers
of these psalms. Since
Brueggemann’s
first example is Psalm 30, which begins “I will exalt you, O LORD, for you
lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me” (Ps.
30:1). In such “[m]oments of weakness and of
strength, moments of pain and of joy,” Shoun explains
that music has a unique ability—“all can be held together in one grand,
timeless moment of song.”[21]
Within this fragmented and chaotic
world, postmodernism “also argues against any single system of objective
truth.”[22]
With this loss of stability, predictability, and confidence in the
establishment, the human psyche requires a replacement. In post-modernity, the
individual become one’s own standard and authority.
A
second theme of post modernity is that the mind creates the realities we know.
… We create the world in which we live. Therefore, we must be gods.… We are the
center of existence, so we should live for ourselves today.”[23]
Following the patterns of the
Enlightenment, some Christians may have become enslaved to reason. Brueggemann describes the Modern encounter with the gospel
and the distortion it has created:
The
gospel is thus a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth
that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane. Partly, the gospel is
simply an old habit among us, neither valued nor questioned. But more than
that, our technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance
into certitude, revises quality into quantity, and so takes the categories of
biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes.[24]
Thus,
postmodernism may have a point—some modernists, even those in conservative,
Bible-believing churches, may have been trying to domesticate God with the iron
rod of reason. In this crisis, Hiebert’s analysis of
epistemological positions clarifies both that some Christians may have been
assuming too much in their ability to know truth (naive realism) and that it is
possible to affirm ultimate truth without assuming that any one theologian can
speak definitively for God.[25]
Bosch
doesn't say that the West is fleeing reason altogether but that rationality is
being "expanded" to 1) "probe" rather than
"prove," 2) reevaluate "the role of metaphor, myth, analogy, and
the like, and 3) the rediscovery of a sense of mystery and enchantment."[26]
In truth, "the central doctrines of traditional Christianity, Frye says,
can be expressed only in the form of metaphor."[27]
To counteract an over-dependence on reason, experience has become more
important.
When I suffered a great loss in my
life, one of my mentors counseled me to read the Psalms, slowly and often. Kidner points out that Psalm 66 begins with “a world’s
homage,” then moves to “a nation’s story” and “a nation’s trial,” but it
finishes with “one man’s debt” and “one man’s story.”[28]
The Psalms … are rather the voice of our
own common humanity—gathered over a long period of time, but a voice that continues
to have amazing authenticity and contemporaneity. It speaks about life the way
it really is, for in those deeply human dimensions the same issues and
possibilities persist. And so when we turn to the Psalms it means we enter into
the middle of that voice of humanity and decide to take our stand with that
voice. We are prepared to speak among them and with them and for them, to
express our solidarity in this anguished, joyous human pilgrimage. We add a
voice to the common elation, shared grief, and communal rage that besets us
all.[29]
“Down through the ages many have
said they found themselves and their feelings and circumstances in these prayers. The closer truth is
that one finds oneself through these
prayers.”[30]
Through
the Psalms, one not only experiences life’s pain but also the worship of a
glorious God. Root explains how some today have been missing the boat when they
maintain that worship is something they perform or do in order to check it off
their “to do” list.
We
will have Sunday-only Christians as long as we have Sunday-only worship. We
have been fighting a losing battle because we have been proclaiming that
Christianity is something "you are," but worship is something
"you do." Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you are a
Christian you are worship to God.... Worship is as simple as the gospel itself.
Worship is a life given in obedience to Christ. At one time worship was the act
of going to the temple and making a sacrifice, but in Christ, we sacrifice
ourselves. Our lives become worship to God.[31]
As the previous section pointed out,
the postmodern world is self-centered. One consequence has been emphasis on
self-realization, health and therapy. As emphasis on therapy and healing has
grown, concepts such as sin, self-denial and salvation have declined.[32]
Many churches have become "vendors of religious goods and services,"[33]
and many pastors have uncritically fallen into the role of therapists to meet
the consumers' needs.[34]
Marrs points out the modern pastoral
dilemma in dealing with suffering:
The Psalter is replete with laments that
articulate the cries of ancient Israelites who experienced intimately life’s
injustices and sorrows.… Given this dilemma, we unfortunately often rely upon
ourselves as principal resource. Left to our own devices, we may engage in
empathetic dishonestly (“I know how you feel”), theological arrogance (“It must
be God’s will”), or even theological nonsense (“God needed your baby in
heaven”).… But if we are to be faithful to scripture,
we must challenge ourselves to go where scripture goes.[35]
The Psalms make
it clear that the problem in life is often one’s own sin. Psalm 51 is the
classic example, where David confesses his sin. This Psalm can serve as a guide
today: confess sin (51:1-5), ask God for cleansing (51:6-14), repent or commit
to a new life (51:15-17), and ask God’s help to restore proper relationships
with others (51:18-19).
A second way that the Psalms deals
with pain is to cry out for justice denied by the sin of others. Psalm 64
begins, “Hear me, O God, as I voice my complaint,” and continues “hide me from
the conspiracy of the wicked,” “but God will shoot them with arrows,” “let the
righteous rejoice in the LORD and take refuge in him; let all the upright
praise him!”
Psalm 77 reveals a man in deep
distress, crying out to God for redemption. As he meditates on the situation,
he asks, “Will the Lord reject forever?” (Ps. 77:7-9) Then he decides to appeal
to the God who redeemed
Hiebert
lists two sociological themes and three cultural themes as characteristics of
postmodernism. This preceding section demonstrates that the Psalms speak to
this situation. 1) Pluralism was the context of the Psalms and the reason for
many of the Psalms, since their purpose was apologetic and evangelistic. 2) The
need for personal relationships outside of a bureaucratic context is exactly
God’s desire, expressed through the Psalms that call humans to intimate relationships
with the Creator. The Psalms as music also provide a method for fostering
relationships among God’s worshipers. 3) To a fragmented, confused world, the
Psalms can say, “I know how you feel!” The “Psalms of disorientation” speak the
language of confusion and pain. 4) Along with the narrative sections of the
Bible, the Psalms glory in experience. Don’t believe in my God because of
logic; believe in him because of what he’s done for me and my people—saving us
from slavery, leading us to our own land, rescuing me even when I was in the
wrong! 5) Finally, the Psalms reveal the cause of so much dysfunction--sin, the
sin of others and my own sin. And the answer is repentance, the doing of
justice/righteousness and return to the Father.
III.
SUGGESTIONS FOR A PSALMIC
The section above demonstrates that
the Psalms respond to postmodern concerns. Without abandoning the foundational
examples of Jesus and Paul, I submit these five reflections to guide action and
spur further discussion on missions to postmodern souls.
In an attempt to avoid the
relativism common today, often only revelation has been deemed authoritative or
important. As a result, some tend to devalue anything other than the sermon and
Bible teaching.
Hiebert
has done an excellent job of presenting a realistic, yet humble epistemology
that affirms absolute truth.[36]
But Reese is equally helpful when he pointed out that theology has been seen as
both "understanding seeking faith" and "faith seeking
understanding."[37]
While evangelicals have concentrated on the "understanding seeking
faith" side (use of reason to arrive at faith), Reese asserts that others
assume faith and use the Biblical text to understand the world.
Expressing this search to understand
life from a Biblical perspective is a vital part of the personal and community
Christian life. Brueggemann points out that
"long before Freud, the psalmist understood the power of speech, the need
for spoken release and admission, the liberation that comes with the actual
articulation to the one who listens and can respond."[38]
Along similar lines, Christians
should value not just the content of Biblical theology, but also the process of
theologizing. The Psalms are revelation and theologizing mixed together.
Unfortunately, the most instructive times are usually the bad times, so the
Psalms often present not so much a final theology as the struggle to
understand.
The
imprecatory psalms can be especially revealing about the need for process.
Psalm 59 is addressed to evil rulers, “Do you rulers indeed speak justly?”
(59:1) After condemning their sin, David calls on God
to “break the teeth in their mouths, O God; tear out the fangs of the lions!”
(59:6) The emotional struggle with suffering that
includes dependence on God is the point of this psalm, not the final rational
conclusion. The Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Job all present models of faithful
living through life’s pain, and Christians today shouldn't be afraid to admit
that they live and learn much like the faithful did centuries ago.
When the church is aligned with the
society, its gospel message tends to be both common and nice.[39]
At the edge, the gospel can challenge and draw blood (Hebrews 4:12). It can
present a new worldview, present a new ethical behavior and demand change
(Romans 12:1-3).
To flee the roles of executive or
therapist that the consumer culture has thrust on the pastor, Roxburgh has suggested three roles for the pastor of a missional church: apostle, poet and prophet.[40] Brueggemann links poet and prophet:
To
address the issue of a truth greatly reduced requires us to be poets that speak against a prose world.
The terms of that phrase are readily misunderstood. By prose I refer to a world
that is organized in settled formulae, so that even pastoral prayers and love
letters sound like memos. By poetry, I do not mean rhyme, rhythm, or meter, but
language that moves like Bob Gibson's fast ball, that jumps at the right moment, that breaks open old worlds with surprise, abrasion,
and pace. Poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in a situation of
reductionism, the only proclamation, I submit, that is worthy of the name preaching. Such preaching is not moral
instruction or problem solving or doctrinal clarification. It is not good advice, nor is it romantic caressing, nor is it a
soothing good humor.
It is, rather, the ready, steady,
surprising proposal that the real world in which God invites us to live is not
the one made available by the rulers of this age.... Our preferred language is
to call such speech prophetic, but we might also term it poetic. Those whom the
ancient Israelites called prophets, the equally ancient Greeks called poets.[41]
In the past, students ... were really
puzzled by Plato's devoting time to rhythm and melody in a serious treatise on
political philosophy. Their experience of music was as an entertainment, a
matter of indifference to political and moral life. Students today, on the
contrary, know exactly why Plato takes music so seriously. They know it affects
life very profoundly...[42]
In many societies, music is the
favorite method of communicating strong messages, especially counter-cultural
messages.[43] It is effective for three
reasons. First, Parker points out “[o]ne of the glories of music is that it
says what words cannot say.”[44]
Second, it is symbolic, and power structures often don't understand, so they
can't censor or pervert the message. And third, people tend to remember musical
lyrics much easier than any other form of communication.
The Psalms can definitely come to
the forefront of the gospel encounter with the postmodern world because they
speak the postmodern language - experience, emotion, symbolism.[45]
Poetry and music have been widely recognized primary channels of communication
since Bloom identified the younger (post modern) generation's "addiction
to music."[46]
As stated at the beginning of the
article, missions are sometimes associated with “rustic,” “cheap,” and even
“ugly.” Many of the psalms set a standard for the richness and elegance
possible in missions. Like Brueggemann’s poetic
preaching, I believe that the gospel deserves - and the postmodern world is
searching for - truth and good news “that moves like Bob Gibson's fast ball,
that jumps at the right moment, that breaks open old worlds with surprise,
abrasion, and pace.”[47]
Inductive and narrative sermons are certainly steps in the right direction,[48]
but “gospelized” music can provide the power, variety
and beauty that few preachers will ever attain.
[1]
Michael L. Landon, “The
Psalms as
[2] Brad Jones,
quoted in “Winds of Renewal,” Mission
Frontiers (January-February 1999), www.missionfrontiers.org/archives.htm.
[3] David J.
Bosch, Transforming Missions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991),
334-335.
[4] Paul G. Hiebert,
foreword in Bridging the Gap, by
Bruce Bradshaw (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1993), iv.
[5]
Van Gelder has an excellent discussion of six themes
of postmodernism and the varied intellectual and sociologi-cal
forces that contributed to the growth of post-modernism, as well as describing
the implications of these changes for North American ministry and mission in
his two articles "Mission in the Emerging Postmodern Condition” and “A
Great New Fact of Our Day: America as Mission Field” in The Church Between Gospel and Culture, ed. George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder,
57-68, 113-138 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996). Bosch devotes an entire
chapter to seven changes in the Western world as it moves from an Enlightenment
paradigm to a postmodern view. He lists and discusses these changes: 1) the
expansion beyond reason to experience, 2) moving beyond subject-object roles
among humans, 3) the rediscovery of teleology, 4) the challenge to the importance
of progress and development, 5) changes in epistemology, 6) a chastened
optimism, and 7) the growth of interdependence. Bosch, Transforming, 351-362.
[6]
Paul G. Hiebert,
“The Gospel in Our Culture: Methods of Social and Cultural Analysis” in The Church Between Gospel and Culture, ed.
George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder, 139-57 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1996), 152.
[7] The New International Version
for all quotes from the Bible.
[8] Carroll Stuehlmueller,
“The Foundations for Missions in the Old Testament” in The Biblical Foundations for Missions, ed. Donald Senior and
Carroll Stuhlmueller, 9-138 (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 1991), 135.
[9] J. Du Preez,
“Interpreting Psalm 47” Missionalia
25.3 (1997): 308f; parenthetical references in the original, www.geocities.com/missionalia/psalms47.htm.
[10] Du Preez, “Psalm 47,” 8, italics in original.
[11] Hiebert,
“Gospel,” 152.
[12] Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger
and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind, Vintage Book Edition
(New York: Vintage, 1974), 112-114.
[13] Paul G. Hiebert, “Missions and the Renewal of the Church” in Exploring Church Growth, ed. Wilbert R.
Shank, 157-67 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 159. See also David O.
Moberg, The
Church as a Social Institution, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker, 1984).
[14] Berger, Homeless, 64.
[15] Carol Shoun,
“God’s Word in Us Richly: the Power of the Psalms as Songs,” Leaven 7.3 (1999): 123-4, italics in the
original.
[16] Mark J. Hatcher, “Poetry,
Singing, and Contextualization,” Missiology
24.4 (2001): 481, italics in the original.
[17] Hiebert,
“Gospel,” 153.
[18] Walter Brueggemann,
The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis, MN
Augsburg, 1984), 51-121.
[19] Brueggemann, Message, 51-2, italics in the original.
[20] Ibid.,
123-4.
[21] Shoun,
“God’s Word,” 125.
[22] Hiebert,
“Gospel,” 153.
[23] Ibid.,
154-5.
[24] Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet (Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress, 1989), 1-2.
[25] Paul G. Hiebert,
“Epistemological Foundations for Science and Theology,” Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin (March 1985): 5-10.
[26] Bosch, Transforming, 353.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72, 2nd
ed. (London:
Inter-Varsity, 1975), 233-5.
[29] Walter Brueggemann, Praying
the Psalms (Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 1983), 15-16.
[30]
[31] Root continues with texts that
support this conclusion: Romans 12:1-2; Hebrews 12:28-29; 13:15-16; I
Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:17. The common Greek word for worship, λατρεύω, is translated
both serve and worship. Mike Root, Spilt Grape Juice (Joplin, MO: College
Press, 1992), 20.
[32] Hiebert,
“Gospel,” 155.
[33] George R. Hunsberger,
“Sizing Up the Shape of the Church” in The Church Between
Gospel and Culture, ed. George R. Hunsberger and
Craig Van Gelder, 333-46 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1996), 338.
[34] Alan J. Roxburgh,
“Pastoral Role in the Missionary Congregation” in The Church Between Gospel and Culture, ed. George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder,
319-32 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 322.
[35] Rick R. Marrs, “Out of the
Depth: The Psalms and Pastoral Care,” Leaven
7.3 (1999): 144-5.
[36] Hiebert,
“Epistemology.”
[37] Jack R. Reese, “Hermeneutics and
Theological Paradigms: A Pastoral Concern,” paper read at the Christian
Scholars Conference, 1990.
[38] Brueggemann,
Message, 97.
[39] Andree Seu,
“Nice” World Magazine 14 #26 (1999):
45.
[40] Roxburgh,
“Pastoral Role,” 326-32.
[41] Brueggemann,
Poet, 3-4, italics in the original.
[42] Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987),
70-1.
[43] Hugo Slim and
Paul Thompson, Listening for a Change
(Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1995), 71-2.
[44] Shoun,
“God’s Word,” 122.
[45] Jacob A. Loewen,
"Myth and Mission." in Readings
in Missionary Anthropology II, ed. William A. Smalley, Enlarged 1978
edition, 287-332 (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1978), 327. Refers to Hendrik Kraemer, From
Missionfield to Independent Church, (The Hague,
Netherlands: Bockencentrum, 1958), 81 and Daniel von Allmen, “The Birth of Theology,” The International Review of Mission 75 #253 (1975): 41-4.
[46] Bloom, Closing, 68.
[47] Brueggemann,
Poet, 3-4.
[48] Nancy J. Thomas, “Weaving the
Words: The Book of Ruth as Missiologically Effective
Communication,” Missiology 30.2
(2002).