Synopsis: Missionaries from the West like to hit the ground running to solve as many of other people's problems as possible in the increasingly short term they have available for service. Hang on, says Jim Harries After twenty-four years in Africa, observing how poverty, traditional practices, dependency, and misunderstandings continue, Harries asks, what is the point of bringing solutions that local people cannot reproduce? Harries challenges missionaries and development workers to counter dependency on the West by engaging in sustainable ministry that local people can imitate. This...

Description: Communication in Mission and Development identifies, unpacks, and articulates fundamental problems in communication in mission and development as it is being carried out in Africa and the majority world today. New technology, unique in the history of mankind, is throwing up vexing issues, to date barely recognized, in communication practice. This book reconsiders: Previous work by mission scholars on communication. Questions regarding materialism in Africa. Widespread understandings on the nature of human equality. The impact on communication of the holding of monistic vs....

In this compendium, Jim articulates the impact of the nature and shape of the interface between the West and Africa, and how that interface works or does not work. Read on if you are interested in Africa, mission, development, globalisation, communication, linguistics, theology, dependency, or power dynamics in intercultural perspective. The conclusions reached in the fourteen articles in this compendium endorse Jim s deepening conviction that some Western missionaries and development workers ought to engage in their ministries in Africa and the majority world using indigenous languages and...

Secular assumptions underlie much formal communication between the West and Africa, and even intra-Africa. Secularism is dualistic by nature, but thinking in Africa is mostly monistic. This book suggests that it is better to be rooted in faith in Christ than in so-called secularism. The great respect given to the Bible in much of Africa verifies this idea. Communication of and through Christ is a bridge that can enable indigenous sustainable development. The same gospel is the bridge over which the West itself passes. Maintaining supposedly secular presuppositions may be denying sub-Saharan...

The natural world alone provides an insufficient foundation for life. African people, as others, look elsewhere for guidance. The secularism implicitly taught in educational systems throughout the African continent frequently fails to engage with weaknesses in today's status quo. Here uncovered Christian roots of secularism can provide a means to interact with African and majority world realities. It is time for dominant western scholars to stop ignoring activity in the divine realm. This book starts by delving deeply into indigenous African Christian expression. Through discussion on the...

What if the whole ""God delusion"" approach is a neo-colonial imposition at the linguistic and philosophical level? Could it lead to unmitigated disasters in intercultural communication and development work? This paradigm-challenging book points to the necessity, in light of contemporary impasse in intercultural understanding, of God's involvement in the encounter between the West and the majority world, especially Africa. Failure to account for God, the cradle of imagination operative in human hearts and minds has resulted in a black hole that deeply troubles intercultural engagement between...