Showing and telling the Gospel among people who celebrate tribe and clan (the Arab world, Africa, youth culture) challenges the way in which Christendom, latterly, entered into attempts at evangelism and mission. Having one's own personal relationship with Christ may seem very strange to those cultures where they will come to Christ as a group, if at all, or when the clan-leader embraces the claims of Jesus.
Does the Gospel lead inevitably to democracy (as it has been outlined and embraced in and by the West)? Is making a 'personal decision' for Jesus necessary to salvation (if you confess with your mouth: 'Jesus is Lord . . ' ? - but then become a problem if one doesn't see further how one is to then fit into the Christ's Body, the Church, or become part of God's reclamation-project that touches all people, all relationships, all aspects of life in the cosmos.
Sandra Mackey, writing in ‘Mirror of the Arab World,’ states that: “Unlike the West that glorifies the individual, Arabs define self in personal relationships with others. And it is mutual obligation of one to the other than knits Arab society together. Consequently institutions are inseparable from those who occupy them. In the realm of Arab politics, a person who holds a political or legal position is seldom if ever capable of separating himself from his relationships within his family, community, or web of indebtedness in order to exercise an impersonal, institutional role. To the officeholder as well as those he represents, any act of independence is the equivalent of splitting the social atom, risking the release of unknown and uncontrollable forces that threaten order. Therefore, to most Arabs, it is better to live in tyranny than risk chaos.”
