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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
which he also saw in Naaman in 2 Kings 5:18, and among evangelical
Roman Catholics who still attend the mass. Accordingly, MBBs
“must... never stray from the core components of the Gospel,” but
through Bible study and with the Spirit’s guidance they will determine
“[h]ow much of orthodox Islam they can affirm.” (Travis
2000: 55, 56) In this way, Travis asserted, MBBs remain members
of the Muslim community and, thus, are able to reach out effectively
with the gospel within it. Next, Travis discussed various strategies
some MBBs adopt regarding recital of the shahada, 18 giving four
case studies of individual MBBs. In his conclusion Travis allowed
for C5 to be a temporary option, given the few cases which have
been documented and the lack of available and critically considered
longitudinal, through-time observations.
Judging the word ‘church’ to frequently reflect Western habitual
assumptions, Caldwell also proposed a notion of ‘kingdom’ needed
to be recovered, such that the church can be understood as “not so
much a congregation as it is a movement, a life, an organism, a
seed,” as “yeast” and, to avoid institutional and organisational overtones,
Caldwell suggested a corrective metaphor of ‘kingdom sowing’,
‘to refill the time-honored term “church planting” with the
fresh biblical content.’ (Caldwell 2000: 30) This will be, he concluded,
“incarnational” regarding cultural forms (Caldwell 2000: 31).
In the ongoing search for biblical precedents for C5 ministry already
evident in this issue of IJFM, Caldwell (2000: 26) cited Jesus’
words in John 4:21-23 and the apostles’ Temple attendance in Acts
3:1 as indicating that ‘place’ is secondary to the issue of ‘heart’, a
distinction which he unpacked at greater length with regard to Jesus’
encounter with the Samaritan woman and her fellow villagers
in John 4. This in turn underpinned the aversion to extractionism
18 Discussion of this particular performative encounter with Islam has remained a
primary arena for debate regarding C5. See, e.g., Travis and Travis (2005: 407);
Corwin et al. (2007: 11-12, 15); Woodberry (2007: 27); Smith (2009: 33-35); n.n.
(2010a: 406). Brown (2007b: 71-73) provides a helpful layered analysis of what
recital or non-recital might communicate.
St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 463