SIDE BY SIDE
Reflection on Perspectives Susan Zimmerman I read a column by a woman in New York state who started reading War and Peace when she first went into lockdown and was sad when she finished it, because she thought the pandemic would be over by then.
To quote Ralph Winter, one of the editors of the Perspectives reader, “The Bible is not simply a bundle of divergent, unrelated stories . . . the Bible consists of a single drama: the entrance of the Kingdom.” –The Kingdom Strikes Back, Ralph D. Winter
I felt somewhat like that letdown reader when in May I completed the Perspectives class hosted by College Church (full name, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement), though I started the class in mid-January, before the pandemic and social distancing defined daily life. When the class switched from inperson to weekly Zoom sessions in mid-March, I thought, “Well, half the course is left. When we’re done in mid-May, perhaps life will be more normal.”
I’m sure this truth has been preached and taught to me many times, but for some reason, I never let it sink in. However, during Perspectives, I spent 15 weeks seeing that from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture brings us one story: God’s plan to redeem his fallen creation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The entire Bible is a mandate, to use a Perspectives’ keyword, for spreading the good news of the kingdom. For me, this understanding brings renewed motivation and eagerness to read all of Scripture and dwell on God’s singular plan to bless all the nations.
Of course, that didn’t happen. But as I reflect, the pandemic, while occasionally a disruptive backdrop, wasn’t a barrier to what God wanted me to learn and experience from the spring 2020 pandemic edition of the Perspectives class at College Church. NOT AN ACADEMIC EXERCISE. Perspectives is a 15-week class designed to help everyday believers understand and respond to the vision of God’s global kingdom purpose. When I signed up, I got a really thick book to read, 768 pages to be exact. Not as long as War and Peace, but it can feel like it. Plus, they also gave me a 182-page study guide. The course covered a lot of ground in four major “perspectives” on global mission—biblical, historical, cultural, and then for the final four lessons, what the syllabus called “strategic,” but I think could be labeled “personal.” As in, what are you, Perspectives student, going to do now? Perspectives is not meant to be an academic exercise. It’s meant to be life altering. Here is some of how I’m wrestling with that “What are you going to do now?” question. THE BIBLE IS A LOT MORE THAN STORIES I grew up hearing and reading Bible stories. Not just in Sunday school, but at home where, once I could read, my parents gave me a story Bible. I especially loved the Old Testament stories of Israel’s kings, and literally read the cover off that book. Bible stories are a wonderful teaching tool. But the first lesson of Perspectives told me we were moving well beyond storytelling.
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SPEAKING OF “NATIONS,” WHAT THEY ARE, AND AREN’T I had always understood the word “nations” to mean individual countries with defined borders. This was fine for middle school geography class, but it skewed my understanding of the Great Commission. When I read Jesus words in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” I thought that meant countries. Like India. China. Sudan. Albania. Ukraine. Ecuador. Because that’s where missionaries go, right? In Perspectives, I learned over and over (they really want you to get this), that the Greek word used in Scripture for “nations” is “ethne” or “peoples.” As Steven Hawthorne, another Perspectives editor explains, “When it [nations] is used with the Greek word meaning “all,” it should be given its most common meaning: an ethnic or cultural people group.” –Mandate on the Mountain, Steven C. Hawthorne Perspectives helped me recognize how “peoples” are talked about all through Scripture. In Abraham’s seed “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Messiah was prophesied to extend his kingdom over “all peoples, nations, and people of every language” (Dan. 7:14). And in what is the theme verse for Perspectives: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matt. 24:14) For me, this means the “nations” we are commanded to reach are not just “over there” but right here, at home, in DuPage County, in Wheaton, in my neighborhood. I don’t have any
