As Christians in Australia begin to experience living on the margins, voices of Christians who have thrived on the margins around the world become ever more relevant. If our society’s new rules can make living as a Christian feel less comfortable, we can learn from Christians who have experienced these challenges and much more, and are ready to share their wisdom. That’s the timely offering from a new podcast launched by Langham Partnership Australia, Out of the Margins, which connects to fresh perspectives on Contextualisation, Reverse Mission, Spiritual Warfare, Interfaith Dialogue and Social Justice.
It brings together unique voices to inform young Christians in Australia (and throughout the Western world) about issues facing them, challenge them on things outside their lived experience, and provide encouraging perspectives for navigating life as a follower of Jesus.
Langham’s program that provides scholarships for majority world Christians to gain higher degrees, has created a network of thoughtful Christian leaders, that this podcast plugs into.
Reverse Mission “There’s something about giving and receiving, isn’t there? Rev Dr Israel Olofunjana, a Nigerian baptist Pastor now living on London told Out of the Margins as he described the global shift in Mission. “Because missionaries in the past were giving, but now, those of us from those former colonies, we feel we have matured to a place where we can give, and oftentimes the Western world don’t like to receive, so it’s a big problem. It challenges our power dynamics that we don’t want to receive. We could conceive receiving as weakness, but receiving is not weakness.”
“Let’s start with a kind of a question, is reverse mission, is it a phenomenon or is it a move of the spirit? I would argue that it is both. It is a phenomenon of because of the great reverse migration. Which Andrew Walsh talks about, he said there are two kind of migratory patterns. We’ve had the European migration, which saw Europe went to the rest of the world.
“And now we have a reverse migration, which is people from the majority world coming back to the West. So, We situate the reverse mission discourse within those two migratory narratives as it is. So it’s a phenomenon from that perspective, but also it’s a move of the spirit because there’s a spontaneity that is happening in the sense that it’s not a planned attempt.”
Spiritual Warfare Karuna Sharma, a teacher and women’s dean at the Nepal Theological College has insight into the lived reality behind religions migrating from east to west. ““One thing is that I would really encourage the Western countries to understand that this is real and this is happening, right? People are facing spiritual warfare. And people are being delivered from that also, you know, from the bondages of many things that they had been facing in the past. And you hear life testimonies even today of how people are being released and then being transformed and having a new life. So it is real and I believe that the Western churches should not deny this aspect.”
Justice: Yohanna Katanacho, the academic dean at Nazareth Evangelical College, was asked about the tension between love and justice in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? “Love is not an excuse to abandon justice,” he said. “Love is an opportunity to pursue justice with the right heart. I want to bring justice for Palestinians, but not with revenge. And missional justice is not bringing a better future for Palestinians only. Missional justice is building a better future for both Palestinians and Jews.”
Out of the Margins is on all major podcasting platforms.