22.40 Craig Smith - Contending for the Faith (Part 1)

In today's episode, Craig Smith takes the stage and begins presenting the first session in his six-session Indigenous Faith teaching series.  Today's session is titled, Contending for the Faith, which is take from the New Testament book of Jude.Craig sets the table for the rest of this series as he explains why this whole Indigenous Faith focus of Tribal Rescue Ministries came to be.  Responding to a growing movement of syncretistic teaching that has been promoted as good, healthy contextualization of the gospel, Craig helps us understand what is contextualization  and what is syncretism.  He also unpackages the challenges modern evangelicalism has due to the lack of understanding of the supernatural world in the modern American cultural and church scene.  But spiritism is front and center in not only Native American traditional religions, but culture as well.  And, as Craig contends, unless and until the church begins to understand spiritism and animism, it will be hard pressed to apply biblical truth to the challenges facing Indigenous believers in sorting out how to process its culture in light of God's Word.These are big issues that are front and center to the developing of biblically healthy Indigenous followers of Jesus Christ, but issues than need good biblical answers to.  And that's why Craig and LaDonna Smith have felt compelled to provide biblical answers after over four decades of biblical study and research.  Their prayer is, through these episodes of Indigenous Faith, Indigenous believers will finally find answers on how to live biblically healthy lives in the context of our Indigenous cultures and communities.  They pray these sessions will be helpful to not only Indigenous believers, but to those who serve among them.  Welcome to this first episode of this first session on Contending for the Faith.