Here’s a serious and fairly critical question I am pondering about how leadership looks in a pioneering context.

Is the primary role of the pioneering leader to:

a) Act as a catalyst and empower others to engage in missional activity that is in line with their calling and gifting. This will mean that ‘less happens’ unless people get it happening, but it also means that what does happen will flow from the hearts of the people who initiate it.

b) To seek out and start up initiatives that others can be ‘envisioned for’ and get on board with. This allows a go-getter to ‘go get em’, but its failing is that the go-getter could finish up spinning all the plates himself if no one else gets excited about any of the projects. Or he could go the route of guilting people into ‘serving God’ to keep them going

I realise we do both, but if you had to pick a primary

free cujo movie download role what would it be and why?

While there is no question that scripture was written in and for a specific cultural context, this is also a great card to play if some aspect of the Bible doesn’t suit us.

Don’t like wearing hats to church? Its ok girls cause it was cultural

Want to have a same sex marriage? Go for it. Paul was writing for his own culture. And t doesn’t apply to us now.

You know the drill”

I came across an interesting ‘cultural card’ in Bangkok last week however that I would value your reflections on. In most of the western world the way to deal with conflict between two people is in accordance with the Matthew 18 principle. Go your bro/sister, take a friend etc.

According to my friend Jeff, who we stayed with, In some parts of Asia the way to raise an issue is to tell a friend who tells a friend who then tells the person who you have issues with. And you deal with the issue thru these intermediaries.

When asked how they see this in light of Matthew 18, their response?…

Matt 18 is cultural and specific for those people at that time. Now I can’t see that at all, but I am product of my culture and I see things thru that lens!

Of course the question it raises at some point is what is authoritative and what is temporal and culturally bound? And if we have no good way of determining this (that isn’t culturally bound in itself) then is there anything in scripture we can really be bound by?

I’d be interested to hear from some Asian readers how they see this issue in particular, but also to hear some broader comments on the question that is at the core of it all.

How do we know what is and isn’t ‘cultural’?