Wednesday, 18 March 2020

Messianic Jewish Outreach (2)

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Yesterday, guided by Stuart Dauermann, we started looking ar the distinction between mission and outreach. Having outlined his point of difference, Dauermann continues:

Second, while the Messianic Jewish congregational movement relates to the Jewish community as its own community, forming synagogues mirroring those of the wider Jewish world, missionaries and Hebrew Christians generally see themselves as rooted in the church world and encourage the Jews whom they reach to affiliate with "Bible-believing churches", adopting the Gentile Christian world as their primary community of reference.

This is very telling and reflects a basic assumption about the ongoing value of covenant and God's repeated promises to His people. Converting Jews to become Gentiles is breaking God's promises for Him! Dauermann again:

Congregations within the Messianic Jewish movement have always sought to prevent communal assimilation and to fortify Jewish life and intergenerational Jewish communal cohesion. Along these lines, Messianic Jews are increasingly thinking of outreach from an eschatalogical perspective, whivh highlights the communal consummation of the Jewish people.

Tomorrow, we'll look at Dauermann's scriptural foundation.

Taken from Stuart Dauermann, "Messianic Jewish Outreach", chapter 7 in Introduction to Messianic Judiasm, edited by David J Rudolph and Joel Willits, Zondervan 2013, page 92.