Last month at Off The Map I was introduced to Richard Twiss. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, don't pass it up! He's got a great sense of humor and a powerful message.
Anyway, meeting him challenged me to come home, pull his book off my shelf, and read it. I had One Church Many Tribes for nearly 2 years before reading it. (Yeah, I buy lots of books and some wait awhile before I get to reading them. I think God has a special time for when I should be reading any given piece of literature.)
For me, the blessing of this book has been to push past my prejudices, stereotypes, and view of the problems within the First Nations culture in our society and to begin to see their beauty and value as equal members of the family of God. It makes me want to learn more about them.
He points out how, typically, Christianity has focused on evangelizing the Native Americans in a way that says, "to be Christian means to be 'white' and western in cultural style and practice." He illustrates in a variety of ways how their culture, although not perfect (like the rest of the world's cultures-white included), has great potential to glorify God and to reach out to a whole variety of other cultural groups with the Gospel.
In short, this book is a call to Christian unity while "Following Jesus the Way God Made You!", as the subtitle of the books says. It's a real eye opener towards both the injustices suffered by the Native Americans and the beautiful way God has created them to be!
What if we celebrated the beauty of ALL God's kids? (rich, poor, stylish, unstylish, successful, unsuccessful, educated, uneducated, all colors, with problems, sane, not so sane, ..............etc.)
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