Last week I was watching Jeopardy, one of my favorite TV shows. One of the contestants (a three time winner) is from near where I now live in Georgia. There was nothing unusual about that except that the man was Asian Indian, someone most people would not expect to be living in this Old South state. In our area, a large suburban county of Atlanta, a growing number of residents are of Asian Indian and Eastern Asian ethnicity. They are highly educated people have come legally to this region of the USA because of the economic opportunities available to them in the business and health care professions. They also want their children to receive good educations.
My purpose is not to criticize those folks for coming to our country, they are generally great assets to our society. However, their growing presence does present a challenge to those of us who are believers in Christ. Most of the immigrants from Asia are not Christians (though many actually are believers in Christ- I used to work closely with some of them). Therefore, they bring their traditional home religions with them. Most Asian Indians are Hindus (I have no idea what the faith is of the man on Jeopardy). In any case, in our area are several large Hindu temples with hundreds who worship in them weekly. One of them, located in Lilburn, Georgia, is the largest such in North America. Others are scattered around the Atlanta Metro area. Other Asian immigrants are practicing Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, or other eastern religions. Shrines and mosques can be seen here and there in Atlanta.
The challenge to Christians is to find ways to reach those new Americans with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, little, if anything, is being done to reach out to them in effective ways to share Christ with them. Most of us wouldn’t even know how to begin.
The main barrier for witnessing to people from Asia is the one we talk about all the time here at MarketFaith Ministries: that is, they usually have a totally different worldview than do we. When we try to communicate with them about religious or philosophical issues we find we are on completely contradictory wavelengths. Thus, we need to learn the kind of skills necessary to bridge those worldview barriers. As nice as those people may be, they are nonetheless in need of the salvation that only Jesus can provide. Unfortunately they are locked into worldviews that are spiritual dead ends. For Asians it is usually Far Eastern Thought. Freddy’s and my new book, Shattering the Truth Mirage, is designed to help Christians to understand the worldviews of those around them and to know what to say to better share their faith with them. It is available now on Amazon Books or go to our store at www.marketfaith.org.