Here are a couple excerpts from “Above All Earthly Pow’rs – Christ in a Postmodern World” that I read tonight.
“Some of the more conservative Christian groups continue to speak of America as a Christian country, or at least that it should be a Christian country, or at the very least that in its origins it once was a Christian Country. The reality, however, is that America is the world’s most religiously diverse nation now and from a Christian point of view it is as fully a mission field as any to which churches now are sending their missionaries. This is true, not only because of the arrival of these new immigrants with their diverse religions, but also because of the postmodern decay in American culture.” (page 108)
“Beginning in the 1960s, and blossoming in the 1970s and 1980s, “spirituality,” for a significant number of people, came into its own and became preferable to “religion.” The distinction that quickly took root was that religion stood from organized belief in its public form. It stood for participation in worship, support of the church or synagogue, and acceptance of its doctrines. Spirituality, by contrast, has come to stand for what is private and internal. What this typically means is that those who are spiritual accept no truth which is not experientially grounded. In the one, there is doctrine which is part and parcel of the church; in the other, mystical encounter which may often be accompanied by an unorthodox disposition. In the one, faith is lived out with a religious structure; in the other, there is suspicion of, if not hostility toward, religion which is organized.” (page 109-110)
Wells, David. Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2005
5pointers 
09/14/2006 at 7:23
Interesting thoughts, I do like Dr. Wells and wish I were still at Gordon to take more classes from him! Concerning the United States as being a mission field, I have some issues, or additions perhaps.
In our zeal we are too quick to call ourselves or our ministry “missions”, when in fact “missions”, I believe, and in terms of missiology (from what I understand) is “living and ministering cross culturally”. Of course this is sort of life is available in the United States, for instance you may say someone living in the ghettos of the inner city is living cross culturally but…is he really? Where do we make distinctions among the arms and legs?
Please don’t misunderstand me, my goal is not to diminish the ministry here in the US but I feel as though “we” give more credence to the idea of being a missionary to that of being an evangelist, for instance. Where has the job of evangelist gone? Is it reserved solely for the heretics on TV who steal peoples money in the name of God? I think not. Perhaps it refers to those men who stand on college campus’s and declare that everyone is going to hell and that they are without sin. Surely these men are “true” evangelists.
No! It is precisely because of their spiritual turpitude that we have blurred the lines between “missions” and “evangelism” or “apostle” and “evangelist”. Or perhaps I should get on the dispensationalist boat and declare that the gift of evangelism is no longer operative, it has ceased because the Holy Spirit no longer calls people to their own culture, only to others. Don’t worry about being called an evagelist (if you decide to stay and live within your own culture) surely there are some cross cultural people who will show up to your church on occasion and you may inherit the title “missionary”, it is so much more glorious!
I grant you that this is all merely semantics and that in reality “mission” refers to God’s “mission” to the world in which we are all taking part, even the heathen for that matter he uses them just as much as me, they may in fact be the best “missionaries”, their depravity extols the glory of God. But in all seriousness, I just wonder if we have blurred some lines and blurring is never good, perhaps we need to start calling “cross-cultural” missionaries “apostles”, this is in fact what they are, right? After all there is no divinely inspired word for mission or missionary.