Ministry Location and Culture
Like Christ said in Matthew 28:19, make Me disciples from the world; we are tasked to accomplish His assignment. This paper documents a program, Grounded to Worship, with the objective of focusing on people from Orania, South Africa, for kingdom growth and spiritual awakening by promoting individual and corporate prayer. Unlike many other African countries, South Africa is unique because it contains Afrikaans and Anglos groups with entirely different cultures (Wolff et al., 2017). Afrikaans practice high-context culture, while Anglos are known for practicing low-context culture. For this plan, Orania is selected because it is dominated by Afrikaans associated with high context culture, which places a higher value on relationships, tolerance for ambiguity, collectivism, and high power distance (Hornikx & Le Pair, 2017). For Gospel ministers, outlining and understanding ministry location, as well as the culture of the inhabitants, is crucial.
Activities
Once on the venue, the ministry will involve some pre-determined activities, outlined as follows:
- The ministers will link prayer and evangelism through small group lessons and sermons. It is essential to connect prayer sessions to preaching in every meeting because it is the only way ministers will pass the main message to the audience.
- Ministers will structure corporate prayer time for every ministry group, small group, and corporate experience. Scheduling every prayer session will be necessary, as it will prevent confusion, over-coverage, and under-coverage in every session.
- Ministers will provide resources and training on the use of corporate kingdom-focused prayer, and this will be one for all small group classes.
- Intercessors and prayer groups, including deacons, students, congregational care, will be identified and roles allocated to each to prevent confusion.
Components of the Ministry
Ministry planners play a pivotal role in outlining ministry components. The elements of Orania’s ministry are prayers and evangelism. From a prayer perspective, the targeted audience will be required to establish their identity as praying individuals by regularly participating in all kinds of prayers, including group, personal, or corporate prayers (Salisbury, 2018). The ministers will also be expected to crown daily meetings with messages related to the theme of the ministry, Grounded to Worship. In particular, the evangelism message will awaken the audience to actively pray while seeking God’s will for themselves and others, including praying for family members and friends.
Target Groups
Gospel has been ministered to four groups of audience in the past and today. The first group of people consists of those who love scriptures and prophesies of God. These are people who are likened to the Jews and like listening to one of their own. In Orania, the target audience comprises men and women, young and old individuals, well-informed on biblical knowledge or lacking the knowledge of God. It is important to have a combination of believers and non-believers in the Gospel ministry since each of them has a role to play (Davies & Thate, 2017). These individuals resemble Romans, and they need God who can powerfully meet their deepest needs.
Those who are knowledgeable biblically are vital because they will guide individuals who lack it. The essentiality of targeting children, youths, and adults is that everyone is called on to preach the Gospel irrespective of age.
The Implementation of Each Component
Aforementioned, in this ministry, two components are to be accomplished, namely praying and evangelism. The targeted audience will be expected to establish their identity as a praying team by participating in a group, individual, or corporate prayer from a prayer perspective. In addition, the number of prayer groups and intercessors will be increased regularly, everyone will be expected to pray for people they are connected to, and monthly prayer guides will be distributed to the team. From an evangelism point of view, ministers will be expected to break down the message into aspects such as praying ceaselessly, praying for friends, and praying for family members. Generally, the targeted audience would be encouraged to pray regularly by practicing practically or through scripture readings.
Host Country Receptive Conduct
Due to cultural differences, it is difficult for a minister from one culture to adapt faster and preach the Gospel in another culture. In this ministry, most ministers are American nationals by birth. As missionaries at Orania, leadership mistakes can stem from the mismatch between leaders’ background culture and Orania’s cultural expectations. For example, most ministers are expected to come from North America, where a low context culture is dominant, hence contradicting the host culture (Smedley & Smedley, 2018). As Hornikx and Le Pair (2017) stated, a low-context culture is characterized by a low tolerance for ambiguity, task orientation, avoidance of interpersonal relationships, and individualism. Ideally, addressing Afrikaans can be a challenging task because they continuously form new relationships as well as tolerate ambiguity and teamwork.
The only way to minister successfully in such a conflicting culture is by adopting cultural flexibility, whereby the ministers will shift leadership styles with changes in culture. However, ministers need to practice cultural flexibility in moderation to avoid cultural relativism in the ministry (Togarasei, 2017). A blend of cultural dynamism and biblical facts will be required to convey a successful Gospel message.
Assessment of the Fitness of the Plan
Fitting into a strange culture can be a difficult thing for ministers than can be expected. As a result, ministers are expected to be responsive to cultural differences during ministries since it enables them to embrace a suitable leadership style for a particular culture. The program documented here is a good fit for individuals informed or uninformed about scriptures because it takes care of their needs. Due to the existing minor disparities, as suggested by Serrano (2018), ministers need to flex their leadership styles to fit every audience group. Gospel ministers must adapt their teachings to the contextual culture.
References
Davies, D. J., & Thate, M. J. (2017). Religion and the individual: Belief, practice, and identity. MDPI-Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. St. Alban-Anlage 66 Basel, Switzerland.
Hornikx, J., & Le Pair, R. (2017). The influence of high-/low-context culture on perceived ad complexity and liking. Journal of Global Marketing, 30(4), 228-237. Web.
Salisbury, M. C. (2018). Worship in Medieval England. Amsterdam University Press.
Serrano, C. A. (2018). The temple, the body, and the people: Ancient metaphors for the modern church. Journal of Biblical Perspectives in Leadership, 8(1), 3-11. Web.
Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. (2018). Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldview. Routledge. New York.
Togarasei, L. (2017). Parenting as Paul’s preferred style of leadership: some insights for Christian leadership in faith communities. Journal for Contextual Hermeneutics in Southern Africa, 116(1), 1-15. Web.
Wolff, H. E., Maseko, P., Kaschula, R. H., Anthonissen, C., & Antia, B. E. (Eds.). (2017). Multilingualism and intercultural communication: A South African perspective. NYU Press.