discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 222
222 Glossary
creative access areas—places in the world that are politically resistant or even closed to
traditional Christian missionary activity and where Christians seek to minister in
creative ways such as teaching English, doing medical work, getting a job, or setting
up a business
cultural adjustment—four- to five-stage emotional roller-coaster process of acculturation
that includes gloomy and depressing times as well as exhilarating ones
cultural anthropology—study of humanity, especially as it relates to cultures
cultural evolution—a now outdated theory that the cultural universals of all societies
are moving from simple to complex and from primitive to more civilized
cultural relativity—the attempt to understand societies and people groups on their
own terms and with their own value systems
cultural universals—categories of things like communication, law, economics, and religious
systems that occur in every culture
culture—complex, integrated coping mechanism consisting of learned concepts and
behavior, underlying perspectives (worldview), resulting products, customs and
rituals, and material artifacts
culture-bound—in linguistics, those words used in a language that are very difficult to
express in another language because they refer to something present only in one
particular culture
culture shock—part of the cultural adjustment process in which feelings of disorientation
and frustration are experienced as people try to assimilate unfamiliar things of
a new culture
dependency—lack of independence or self-sufficiency; in Christian mission it usually
refers to financial dependency
Diaspora—the dispersion or scattering of a people group outside of their native area
dynamic equivalence—thought-for-thought translation style first articulated by Eugene
Nida that attempts to evoke the same response in readers that was experienced
by the original readers
ecclesiology—beliefs about the nature, function, and purpose of church, a doctrine
that missiologist John Howard Yoder said is inextricably linked to missiology
enculturation—process in which children learn the culture of the society in which
they are raised; sociologists give the name socialization to this process
ethnocentrism—judging things in other cultures by the values and motivations of
one’s own
excluded middle—as it relates to Christian mission, the idea that all that exists is God
and the created world; there are no other significant supernatural realities
exegeting the culture—the process of analyzing and interpreting the attitudes, customs,
and ideas of a particular area, including the various social, religious, economic,
and other cues and clues by which those within a society make sense of
their own activities
expatriate (often shortened to expat)–-someone who is in a country other than that of
his or her upbringing
faith missions–-individuals or organizations who have no parent body helping to mobilize
financial support; the largest Protestant missionary sending organizations are