Missions Resources - Bibliography
One Church, Many Tribes: Following Jesus the way God made You
Authors: Richard Twiss
ISBN: 0830725458
Publisher: Ventura, CA: Regal Books
Number of pages: 219
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary: Reviewed by Paul Grant
Few stories in the history of human cultures are as intriguing as that of the survival and and eventual thriving of Native North American cultures and languages under a half millennium of pressure. Despite tactics ranging from out-and-out murder, to benign seduction via the market economy, with many stations in between, my people have failed to extinguish or assimilate the first nations of this continent.
Now in the 21st century, countless people of European decent in Canada, USA and Europe are looking to these same nations for a taste of authenticity and depth in a world of shallowness and fragmentation. Thousands of years ago, the Romans swept over the Greeks like a flood, but ultimately became Greek in their hearts. By the first century, the New Testament was being written in Greek, not Latin.
In the same way, the conquering Americans are being spiritually conquered. Go to any community presentation nearly anywhere in North America, where the words "Native American dancer" or "Native American drums" appear on the schedule, and you will instantly draw a crowd. Go to any reservation in the summer, and try to count the Europeans, especially Germans, who walk by. Indeed, all one has to say in a speech is "as the Ojibwe elders say ..." to guarantee all eyes and ears in the room.
In One Church Many Tribes, Richard Twiss of the Rosebud Lakota sifts through myth and legend to reveal God's strategy for the nation's host people. He demonstrates God's desire to use the cultures of First Nations peoples - in all their mystery, color and beauty - to break through to those involved in New Age mysticism, Eastern religions, even Islam.
At the same time, he says, "[m]ost missiologists agree that after 500 years of active missionary effort, only three to five percent of the Native populations are born-again Christians ... Christianity has not sufficiently or effectively penetrated Native culture." Twiss goes on to explain how the practice of setting the gospel into the context of a culture, which in the second half of the twentieth century became the dominant method of missions, has yet to be widely applied to this continent.
Christianity has grown in recent decades at a pace unknown in human history, with hundreds of millions of believers in China, Africa, South Asia and beyond, largely due to the missionaries being replaced by locals, the gospel being sufficiently de-Westernized to speak into the needs, hopes, fears, and injustices of the respecive cultures. The Western church is increasingly recognizing that the future of our faith will mean not just partnership with globally mature churches, but even submission to their leadership and innovations.
Richard Twiss is sufficiently versed in missions and missiology (his identity opens doors for him in countries otherwise closed to evangelists) to know a double standard when he sees one. There is a long way to go in contextualization of the gospel in North America before we come close to syncretism. We react to native drums with panic about false gods not seen in decades overseas. We still resist even the most basic native aesthetics in church worship. This double standard keeps people from the gospel who otherwise thirst for a spiritual life - not just natives, but the hordes of whites who pack auditoriums, pow-wows and reservations looking for whatever it is they are missing.
In short, the church of the world cannot succeed without a vital and authentic Native American Christianity.
One Church, Many Tribes is a rallying cry for the Church to work as one so that the lost may learn to walk in life with beauty, along the path of the Waymaker.
Richard Twiss
(Taoyate Obnajin: He Stands With His People)
is a member of the Rosebud Lakota/Sioux tribe. He believes that no other people
group is so uniquely positioned by God for world evangelization as the First
Nations peoples. Cofounder and president of Wiconi
International, Richard is also a member of the International Reconciliation
Coalition. He has been a national conference speaker for Promise Keepers and
has appeared as a guest on the Focus on the Family radio program. Richard,
his wife, Katherine, and their four sons live in Washington State.
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