Connected to Culture, Conformed to Christ: Exploring Alternate Forms of Worship

Human language does not stay static, it is subject to change from time to time. For example, no one sleeps in church anymore. He is just “rationing consciousness.” No one is tall anymore. She is said to be “vertically enhanced.” No one is short anymore, just “vertically challenged.” Worship isn’t dull anymore. It’s “liturgically challenged.” The mode of worship is a pressing issue in the Seventhday Adventist Church today. Since the office of Global Mission was established, the Adventist Church has grown by leaps and bounds. The emphasis has been to reach the unreached, especially the people groups located in the 10/40 window. When the Global Mission office was established in 1990, there were 2,300 groups of one million people without an Adventist presence. In 2001, however, most of these people groups have been penetrated, and only 460 groups remain in which there is no Seventh-day Adventist presence. In 1990, twenty-seven countries were yet unentered. In 2001, however, there are only nine unentered countries. The exponential expansion of the church has brought about great rejoicing on one hand, and growing pains on the other. One major task has been the challenge of making the gospel meaningful to new converts. In many parts of the world, Christianity is still equated with Western culture because local cultural expressions of Christianity have often been rejected in favor of the more “enlightened” Western forms. Converts are often ostracized from their families or tribes. The newly planted churches have not had the know-how to adapt, modify, or replace the foreignness of the gospel. How should the Adventist Church respond to the fact that churches around the world are often copies of the G. T. Ng is the executive secretary of the Southern Asia-Pacific Division of Seventhday Adventist Church.