THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE PSALMS TO A POSTMODERN MISSIONS PARADIGM

Abstract

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."  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."