Abstract
When missionaries or church workers enter a new culture with the gospel, they actually have three cultures to deal with: their own native culture, the culture of the target people, and also biblical or “kingdom” culture. We need to understand all three in order to communicate faithfully our message to the people we aim to reach for Christ.
In this paper, I make a sample comparison between Russian culture and that of the United States and of Scripture, using Carolyn Ryffel's adaptation (1994) of one of Geert Hofstede's “Dimensions of Culture” continuums (1991, 1986, 1984) as a framework. The purpose of this paper is to encourage the reconsideration of the place of each of these three cultures in our missionary activities and the making of conscious, informed decisions about our approach to mission in regard to them.
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