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J. Dudley Woodberry carefully lays out how most of Islamic vocabularies and the five pillars of Islam initially belong to Jews and Christians, and then proposes how they can be re-used in the context of Christian missions by examining outcomes of two international conferences: The North American Conference for Muslim Evangelization held in Glen Eyrie, Colorado in 1978 where a number of foundational papers devoted to contextualization were included in the compendium The Gospel and Islam; the outcomes of international conference of the Muslim Track of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in Zeist, Holland in 1987. After reviewing the research trends, Woodberry explained specifically that Jews and Christians mostly own and practiced the vocabulary and the five pillars of Islam. Among many vocabulary words, Woodberry explains the origins of Allah, Wahy (revelation), Nabi (prophet), Injil (Gospel), Qiblat (direction of prayer), and Salat (ritual prayer). Woodbury then proves the same for the five Islamic pillars; Shahada (confession of faith), Salat (Ritual prayer), Zakat (Almsgiving), Sawm (Fasting), and Hajj (Pilgrimage). Woodberry recognizes the difficulties of reusing the widely accepted five pillars as the core of Islam for Christian missions and presents concrete examples of contextualizing Islamic vocabulary and the five pillars in the context of Islam. Woodberry argues that this is necessary for training leaders to facilitate creative and new growth movements, finding balance with other matters of the church, discarding meaning in Muslim terms and reusing forms only, and overcoming ossified contextualization. Woodbury emphasizes that despite the challenges of contextualization, he witnesses God’s blessing which reuses the vocabulary and the five pillars of Islam to reach out to God’s new people.

This article compares a traditional and socio-ethnic understanding to the Chinese Muslim ethnicity, and also describes modern experiences that the Muslim ethnicities are experiencing as they expose to the modernization of China. Furthermore, this article reviews the missiological implication to Chinese Muslims that those changes bring. Surprisingly, China has a long history with Islam, not too different from the Middle East. China’s first encounter with Islam is considered to be in AD 616/17 when S‘ad ibn Abī Waqqās (594674), Ja’far ibn Abi Talib, and Jahsh entered through the Chinese southeast coast and spread Islam in the area. Over 1400 years, Muslims have migrated, been absorbed, or developed through various routes in China, through many dynasties such as the Tang, Ming, and Ching. In 2009, the population of Muslims in China is approximately 21.6 million, which accounts for 1.6% of the mainland China. Within China’s fifty-six official ethnicities, Chinese Muslims take part in ten. These people have preserved their identities by practicing traditional Islam and preserving unique identities. However, ever since after the Ching Dynasty, Mao’s communism, and Deng Xiao Ping’s open door policy, China and its people have been encountering dramatic changes; the ethnic Muslims are no exception. Such change in culture and self-identity prompt people to questioning who they truly are, and what are their identities. In order to understand this continually changing and unchanged identities that those Chinese Muslims are having, this paper begins with the following questions. What defines ethnicity? How do we clearly identify ethnicity when modern Chinese Muslims encounter such change? What influences do social networks and information channels have on Chinese Muslim identity shifts? What aspects must we observe to discover their current addresses? And finally, what kind of missiological implications that we can have that those newly understood ethnic identities brings to us. This article will mainly introduce one of China’s ten Muslim ethnicities, the Hui, whom I, the author, had personally worked and interrelated for sixteen years. In order to establish the concept of ethnicity and ethnic minority in China, this article will introduce how the concepts of ethnicity in China has been developed. Also, to introduce what is more effective way to understand ethnic minority for mission, this article will compare the ethnological concepts between ethnic group and ethnicity. For such motives, this research will employ an urban anthropological approach. The main scholars that lay the foundation of approach are Edwin Eames and Judith Goode, Claude S. Fischer, John Gulick, Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, and William Flanagan.

The aim of this paper is to suggest some goals of future missions for present day Christians in the light of the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of early Nestorian missionary movement with a clearer perspective of the history of Nestorian missions than thus far understood. The Nestorian Church originated in the 5th century A.D. during the Sassanid Empire in Persia. It is often known as the Syrian Church or the Syrian Ancient Church in the West and Kyungkyo(景敎) in the East. The Nestorian Church spread to Central Asia and further eastwards via the Silk Road reaching China by the 7th century A.D. I shall demonstrate the historical significance of Nestorian Missions in modern day Turkey, Central Asia, and in Turkic na tions by focusing on the life of Rabban Bar Sawma and the growth of Nestorian Church during the Kingdom of Osroene and the Sassanid Empire. The paper will weave stories of the Mongol Ilkhanate of Persia and its relation to the Christian Mediterranean countries in the 13th century A.D. and to the Roman Catholic Church in the Persian Gulf of Mongolia and in the Middle East.

The purpose of this article is to review the recent conditions of civil wars and of Christian missions in South Sudan and offer some suggestions guided by the following five questions: Why did this tragic civil war occur in South Sudan, a country so rich with water and oil? Why did the British give up establishing two separate independent nations at the end of the colonial rule when Sudan suffered ceaseless internal conflicts stemming from irreconcilable differences between the North and the South? How did the many rebel groups in South Sudan come to exist? Why do they fight with the South Sudanese government? How could Korean missionaries effectively contribute in a country as deeply wounded as South Sudan? The author begins the article with some general information and brief historical background of South Sudan in order to demonstrate a multilayered complexity of the current situation. Section two focuses on three major periods prior to the 19th century that continue to fuel the conflicts between the North and the South due to systematic discrimination and exploitation against the Southerners: The reign of Egypt, the reign of Anglo-Egypt, and the period after its independence. Section three discusses a progressive development of South Sudan’s from the referendum on independence in January 2011 to the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2015 between Sudanese government and Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Section four analyzes the course of civil wars and the formation of South Sudan. Lastly, section five provides a summary of a few missionary activities, thereby suggesting how Korean missionaries can contribute in this country.

This paper draws attention to Kitab Al-Burhan of Ammar al-Basri as a contextual theology founded on Great Traditions responding to the challenges that the Eastern Church faced under the dominion of Islamic power. It investigates how Ammar’s theology is relevant and fruitful to address present Muslim-Christian relations. For that purpose, the paper studies his context as a dhimmi and flourishing Abbasid intellectual milieu with translation movement, then examines the peculiar features of the contents of Kitab al-Burhan that Ammar al-Basri as a contextual theology. It is noted that Kitab al-Burhan of Ammar remarkably retells the compelling story of Christian discourse with his contemporary Muslims. Ammar reminds today’s evangelical Christians how the former Christians as a dhimmi under Muslim rule reinterpreted Christian faith and rearticulated the “handed down” Tradition and eventually transmitted them to coming Christian generations by producing a contextual theology. Moreover, he maintained faithfully to the apostolic faith and Great Tradition. His theology evolved from his pastoral and missional concerns in the situation that substantiative Christian’s conversion to Islam and the particular challenging context of Dhimmitude. Ammar was a significant contextual theologian who addressed theological issues which are pertinent and meaningful for modern evangelical Christians such as Christianity as the true religion, Trinity, Incarnation, and critical enculturation of Islamic culture and language for doing contextual theology.