Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally: An Introduction to Missionary Communication (Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives)

內容簡介

Part one : Communication and mission. Communication, the missionary problem par excellence -- Man, the communicating creature -- The legacy of rhetoric to Christian communication -- Perspectives from the science of communication -- The meaning of linguistic symbols -- Why do missionaries communicate? -- Part two : Communication and culture. The role of culture in communication -- Christ and his communicators confront culture -- Cross-cultural identification -- "Possessing" a culture for Christ -- Culture and audience response -- Part three : world views : ways of perceiving the world. World view as a starting point for missionary communication -- World view and contextualization -- Communicating Christ into the naturalist world view -- Communicating Christ into the tribal world view -- Communicating Christ into the Hindu-Buddhistic world view -- Communicating Christ into a Chinese world view -- Communicating Christ into other monotheistic world views -- Communicating Christ into the world views of syncretism and multireligion -- Part four : Cognitive processes : ways of thinking. The importance of how we know what we know -- Cultural differences and the cognitive process -- Conceptual thinking and the Western missionary -- Communicating Christ in cultural areas where intuitional thinking predominates -- Communicating Christ in cultural areas where concrete relational thinking predominates -- Part five : Linguistic forms : ways of expressing ideas. The importance of language -- Why bother to learn a foreign language? -- How to go about language learning -- How far can language take us? -- Part six : Behavioral patterns : ways of acting. From Plato and Aristotle to Edward T. Hall -- The missionary and behavioral norms -- Seven aspects of the "behavioral dimension" -- Where the action is -- Part seven : Social structures : ways of interacting. Communication and societal orientations -- Status and role -- Kinship : kindred and lineage -- Nonkinship groupings -- Urban and rural societies -- Free and totalitarian societies -- Part eight : Media influence : ways of channeling the message. Media have their own "messages" -- The imprint of media on messages -- Mass media and mission -- Part nine : Motivational sources : ways of deciding. From persuasion to elenctics -- Psychology, ethnopsychology, and mission -- Motivation and decision making -- Receptivity and missionary response.