殷切款待式的本地跨文化宣教事工：一種實踐整全宣教觀的事奉

Local Cross-cultural Missions with Hospitality: A Gospel Ministry that Follows Integral Mission Model

Chun-wah KWONG

Massive and rapid population migration, as one of the key features of globalization, opens up an opportunity for local cross-cultural missions. While the practice of sending missionaries to a distant place follows a centrifugal model, local cross-cultural missions follows a centripetal model. In a centrifugal mission model, missionaries are sent to live as guests in foreign countries, where they serve as evangelists with the expectation of local hospitality. In a centripetal mission model, however, non-Christians move to the missionaries’ home countries where missionaries serve as hosts. Besides being an important virtue in the life of the people of God, hospitality also becomes a central part of missions in a centripetal model. Local cross-cultural missions should be practiced as a ministry that includes both evangelism and hospitality. The author calls this kind of ministry “local cross-cultural missions with hospitality.”
A controversy about the role and importance of social concern in missions broke out among evangelicals in the 1970s. Some leaders regarded evangelism and social concern as two opposing ministries, the juxtaposition of two contrasting ideas. According to them, missionaries should choose either of the two, or must put evangelism as the first priority. Another camp of leaders, however, tried to establish an integral model for missions. René Padilla, a theologian from the Republic of Ecuador, was the representative of this view. This article argues that local cross-cultural missions with hospitality, as a model of integral mission, work very well in overcoming the oppositional thinking of evangelism and social concern. Local cross-cultural missions with hospitality, as a holistic ministry for the material and spiritual needs of the guests, should not be divided into two kind of ministries, i.e. evangelism and social concern.