Missional Transformation: God’S Spirit at Work: Essays Celebrating the Outreach Ministry of Dr. Eugene Bunkowske

By Mark G. Press

Missiologists and mission-oriented folks have been invited to reflect on topics that touch on the transforming power of Gods Spirit. This series of essays has been produced as one way of celebrating the fascinating, missional career of Dr. Eugene Bunkowske, long-time missionary to Africa, long-time linguist and Bible translator, long-time seminary professor, life-long sharer of the Good News of Jesus the Christ. This volume offers plenty of meat to engage the serious student of missions but also a number of gems that will enlighten any Christian with a commitment to outreach or an interest in the churchs mission. Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod readers will be especially interested in some of the pieces, though any student of Sacred Scripture will benefit from many of the essays.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477295823

Mark G. Press

Rev. Dr. Eugene Bunkowske and Rev. Dr. Mark Press have teamed up on this manuscript. Their friendship dates back to the early days of Mark’s involvement in the doctoral program in missiology, which at the time was chaired by Gene. Their teamwork has been intensified over the years since Mark’s move in 2006 to join the staff of the Oswald Hoffmann Institute for Christian Outreach in St. Paul, MN. With offices directly across the hall from one another, Mark and Gene have found it easy to communicate and to work together in a number of outreach related projects. It is their hope and prayer that this effort will bless many people as you navigate through this special look at the Mission of God.

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© 2012. Rev. Dr. Mark G. Press & Rev. Dr. Eugene W. Bunkowske. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 1/3/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9583-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9581-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9582-3 (e)

Library of congress Control Number: 2012922982

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

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Foreword

By Dr. Gerald B. (Jerry) Kieschnick

Biography Of

Reverend Eugene W. Bunkowske, Ph.D., Litt. D., D.D., Lld

Who Is My Father?

By Joel Bunkowske

Transforming Power: God’s Work In Today’s World

Purposeful-Sending Applied In The Now Generation

By Eugene W. Bunkowske

Transformed People: Luther On Tentatio

By Douglas L. Rutt

Worldview’s Role In The Church’s Outreach

By Anthony Steinbronn

Seminary Investment In Mission Education

By Dale A. Meyer

Transformational Mission In The Lcms: Challenge And Promise

By Robert Scudieri

Appearing To Be Human For The Sake Of The Gospel: Missiological Contributions Of Eugene W. Bunkowske Toward Muslim Outreach In America

By Gary Rohwer

Transformation: God’s Mission And God’s Message

God’s Mission Is Transforming People

By Mike K. Rodewald

Life And Work Of Dr. Eugene Bunkowske Among The Yala People

By Ferdinand Orji & Linus Otronyi

Missio Dei: Transforming Center Of Scripture

By Mark G. Press

The Transformational Word And The Mission Of God: St. John’s Testimony To The Word In His Gospel Prologue

By Gregory J. Lockwood

Drop The Comma: A Transformed Vision Of Who We Are

By Robert Newton

In The Power Of The Holy Spirit: Transformed To Reach Out

By Rev. Fred P. Hall

Transformation: The Multiplication Factor

A Transforming Mentor: Rev. Eugene W. Bunkowske

By Mr. John Odey, Minister Of Environment Abuja, Nigeria

Transformation Of Indigenous Outreach Leaders: Grounded Theory And 2 Timothy 2:2 - A Case Study In Dynamic Indigenous Outreach Training

By Rev. Dr. David Erber

Transformational Leadership In The Kingdom

By Leonardo Neitzel

Transformation Through Maco: Master Of Arts In Christian Outreach Program – Genesis, Development And Implementation

By Rev. Dr. Paul Mueller

Transformation In The Life Of The Pre-Eminent Missionary, Jesus

By Rev. Dr. Robert Holst

The Transformation Journey: An Example To Consider

Rev. Dr. Eugene Bunkowske

About The Authors

FOREWORD

By Dr. Gerald B. (Jerry) Kieschnick

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Dr. Gerald B. (Jerry) Kieschnick served from 2001 to 2010 as president of the 2.3-million member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. He currently serves as Presidential Ambassador for Mission Advancement for Concordia University Texas in Austin. Prior to becoming LCMS president, Kieschnick had been president of the Synod’s Texas District for 10 years. He also served as elementary school teacher, mission developer, parish pastor, foundation executive director, and chairman of the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations. A native of Houston, Texas, he is a graduate of Texas A&M University (Animal Science) and Concordia Theological Seminary (Bachelor and Master of Divinity). He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Concordia University in Austin, Texas. Jerry and his wife of 46 years, Terry, have two grown children, one son-in-law, and two grandchildren, all of whom live in Texas.

It is a distinct honor and privilege to share with the reader these words of commendation for this Festschrift in honor of my good friend and brother in Christ, Dr. Eugene W. Bunkowske. In preparing for this foreword, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to me to invite Gene to share his brief response to a few questions I presented to him. Anyone who knows this man is well aware that speaking or writing anything brief is not his forte!

Nevertheless, I believe it will be a helpful addition to the very fine chapters of this Festschrift to pass along to you, in somewhat abbreviated fashion, what Gene shared with me about his early life on this earth. Here, in part, is his reply:

I was born as the first son during the depression years. My elder sister had died after just three weeks of life. She was born in a harsh South Dakota winter and died on January 2, 1933. Suffice it to say my father and mother determined by the grace of God to keep their second child alive. He was born on July 3, 1935 and they called him Eugene because as far as they could see he was well born.

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Bunkowske home 1935, Wecota, SD

By the age of three I was memorizing a new and important verse from the Bible each day. It was a joy to make my parents happy by doing the recitation well each evening before going to bed. The words of 1 Peter 5:7 about casting all my cares on God because He cares for me, which I learned early, was life changing for me. It got my focus off myself, my inability, my feelings of inferiority, and got me focused on God, with whom all things are possible.

I well remember that, when there was not enough food to go around, my mother gave each of us our share even if we wanted more. My father’s salary was $25.00 a month, but often it could not be paid or was only partly paid because the people of the congregation in Norris, South Dakota, between the two Indian reservations there, were also struggling to survive. The lesson is that good relationships and caring about others by putting them first and by helping in time of trouble is what being human beings together is all about.

When I received my first allowance of 5 cents my father said: One penny for church, one penny for Sunday school, one penny for savings, one penny for birthday presents and the final penny for something else that is important to you. This stuck with me and so the idea of the tithe for the things of God seemed like some kind of a human limitation and smallness that had little to do with Bunkowske reality.

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1942 (left to right) Paul, Father Walter, Marilyn, Mother Ottille and Eugene

Little did I know then how important the lessons of caring about others, especially in time of trouble, would be for us in Nigeria, where the very relational Yala people had a three month hungry season each year. Since there was no way we could feed all of the 60,000 Yala people, we also needed to live on just the very basics (without endangering our health) in order to become part of the Yala people.

Growing up in South Dakota was very good preparation for the African mission field. It taught that good human relationships are the key. One of the primary lessons learned is that there is a great difference between a junk pile and a garbage heap. A garbage heap is useless stuff that needs to be hauled away as soon as possible. A junk pile is a precious pile of seemingly useless stuff just waiting to be used when something needs fixing. This talent of repairing and renewing out of what city people consider nothing stood me in very good stead in Nigeria.

These brief vignettes from Gene’s early years provide a meaningful glimpse into the life of a man whose godly influence has been significant to many people from North America to Nigeria and many places in between.

My life has been immeasurably enriched and richly blessed by knowing and working with Dr. Eugene W. Bunkowske. His love for the Lord and his passion for Gospel proclamation are the legacy he will leave for those who follow. May God be praised for this wonderful servant and dear friend in Christ!

BIOGRAPHY OF

Reverend Eugene W. Bunkowske, Ph.D., Litt. D., D.D., LLD

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WHO’S WHO IN AMERICA AND WHO’S WHO IN THE WORLD

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Dr. Eugene Walter Bunkowske in 2009

For the past 30 years Dr. Bunkowske has taught and lived Christian outreach, missiology and cross cultural ministry while serving as a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne and Concordia University in St. Paul Minnesota. Today he serves as the Fiechtner Endowed Chair Professor of Christian Outreach in the Oswald Hoffmann Institute for Christian Outreach at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota. His activities include being God’s vehicle for bringing those of various people groups and languages closer and closer to Jesus by means of all legitimate ways available. He is especially tasked with connecting the world community with the university students, faculty and staff and all with Jesus the Christ, both locally and globally. Dr. Bunkowske is also very much involved in serving as an advisor to master’s and doctoral students in doing systematic research and dissertation and thesis writing. He has advised some 35 to 50 students in their doctoral work.

From 1982 to 2002 Dr. Bunkowske served as a Professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Included in his work there was the founding and directing of the Ph.D. program in Missiology. He also served as a co-founder of the Lutheran Bible Translators, founder of the Lutheran Society for Missiology, Board of Directors consultant for God’s Word to the Nations Mission Society and chief editor for the God’s Word Translation of the Bible. He has been and still is consultant to several mission societies and is on the Board of Directors of a number of mission societies including the God’s Word to the Nations Mission Society, the Lutheran Society for Missiology and the World Mission Prayer League. He also served as a Vice President of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) from 1989 to 1998.

During the 22 years from 1960 to 1982 Dr. Bunkowske and his family served as missionaries in Africa. During the first years in Africa, Dr. Bunkowske worked in Nigeria. He served as an evangelistic missionary, trainer of school teachers, church district president and school manager. He built a hospital, worked with Yala coworkers in reducing the Yala language to writing and with expatriate and Yala coworkers in Yala literacy and Bible translation. He also served as leader and chairman of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s mission work in Nigeria.

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Eugene and Bernice called to Nigeria, Africa on May 4, 1960

During these years Dr. Bunkowske also served the Lutheran Bible Translators in establishing their work in Liberia and Sierra Leone and developed the Vacation Institute for Training in Applied Linguistics (VITAL) in collaboration with the University of Liberia in Monrovia, Liberia.

Later he was loaned by the LCMS to the United Bible Societies (UBS) for the work of Bible translation consultancy in West Africa and then in the whole of Africa. During his final years in Africa, Dr. Bunkowske served as the UBS Bible Translation Coordinator for all of Africa. From Nairobi, Kenya, he trained Bible translators and Bible translation consultants and managed the work of twenty Ph.D.-qualified consultants who directly supervised language reduction and translation in 400 Bible translation projects in the 60 plus countries of the African continent.

Dr. Bunkowske received his initial training at Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota from 1949 through 1955. His theological training was continued at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri from 1955 through 1960, including a vicarage at Immanuel Lutheran church in Crystal Lake, Illinois. He was awarded the BD (Bachelor of Divinity, later M Div. [Master of Divinity]) degree in 1960 just prior to being sent to West Africa by the LCMS as an evangelistic missionary. In 1976 Dr. Bunkowske received the Ph.D. summa cum laude in Linguistics, with minors in Cross-Cultural Studies, Anthropology/Sociology and Communication, from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).

Dr. Bunkowske stands as a recognized expert in this area of Christian Outreach. He has lectured and conducted workshops and seminars in over half of the countries in Africa, many parts of the USA and in many other parts of the world. His Topics in Yala Grammar, together with the ten books that he edited for the Mission and Communication Congress series and three books for the Lutheran Society for Missiology are recognized as making an outstanding contribution in the field of Christian Outreach, Linguistics, Missiology, Evangelism and Communication.

As Fiechtner Chair Professor of Christian Outreach at Concordia University, St. Paul, Minnesota, Dr. Bunkowske is responsible to bridge the gap between the community and university in ways that sensitize people to others of different cultures and languages and to God’s goal that all should be one with God and with each other in and through Jesus. He is tasked with the challenge of developing creative approaches for getting outreach into the blood stream of people, organizations, governments and institutions throughout the world. He does this by assisting the Concordia University faculty and staff, members of congregations and people of other church entities with understanding the essential nature of translating God’s message into every language and social context worldwide. For Dr. Bunkowske, Christian Outreach is the beating heart at the center of ministry, both in North America and in non-North American contexts.

As creator of the Ph.D. in Missiology degree program and as initial director of the Master of Arts in Christian Outreach Leadership (MACOL), Dr. Bunkowske has developed an unparalleled opening for people to study and do Christian Outreach from the perspective of Seed Planting for creative living and the multiplication of Seed Planters and communities of followers of Jesus. In the MACOL program students are afforded a unique chance to bond with others from all over the United States and the world. They quite naturally become practicing partners with their creator God in His mission of outreach to all and thus become mobilizers for God’s mission of bringing people of all languages and nations into His desired divine unity and harmony for His purpose and blessing for all.

Dr. Bunkowske has been recognized in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World for his contributions in Higher Education, Christian Outreach, Evangelism and Missiology. He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees by St. John’s College, Winfield, Kansas, Concordia University, Irvine, California, and Concordia University, St. Paul Minnesota.

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(left to right) Barbara, Walter, Ada Bunkowske, Nancy, Joel and Bernice

Dr. Bunkowske and his wife, Bernice, have four married children (Barbara, Nancy, Walter and Joel), eleven grandchildren, and reside at 1249 Highridge Ct. Maplewood, Minnesota 55109, telephone: [phone]. E-mail: [e-mail].

WHO IS MY FATHER?

By Joel Bunkowske

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Joel is an attorney whose areas of practice include venture capital deal structuring; intellectual property; media production, finance, and distribution. Joel is a Visiting Professor of Business Law and Management at the Keller Graduate School of Management in Nashville Tennessee. Joel has worked extensively in the music, television, and film industries doing finance, distribution, consulting, producing, and directing of projects from locations such as the Grand Ole Opry, Walt Disney World, and Universal Studios Florida. Joel has done venture capital deal structuring for record and movie companies as well as a $180 million foundation. Joel is the writer/director of the Christian film Believe: The Misfit Pawn and a founder of the Academy of Christian Motion Pictures International.

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Eugene and Joel Bunkowske between African chiefs

Who is my father?

A man who answered a call to missions.

A man who built a hospital.

A man who created a writing system for an African tribe.

A man who translated the New Testament into the new writing system.

A man who taught the tribe to read the Bible.

A man used by God to bring an entire African tribe to Christ.

A man who became a translations consultant to the entire continent of Africa.

A man who built a PhD program from scratch.

A man who trained hundreds of missionaries around the world.

A man who set up the translation framework for the God’s Word to the Nations Bible translation.

A highly intelligent, highly educated, highly accomplished man.

He has dedicated his life to the work of Jesus Christ.

I’m sure Jesus will say, Well done.

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Joel William Bunkowske in African dress

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TRANSFORMING POWER:

God’s Work in Today’s World

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PURPOSEFUL-SENDING APPLIED

IN THE NOW GENERATION

By Eugene W. Bunkowske

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Editor’s Note: To assist the reader, this article will use the following conventions:

Italics will be used to identify words transliterated from foreign languages.

Words in quotation marks will identify words as symbols.

Bold (other than in headings) will identify definitions of key words.

DEFINITIONS AND DIRECTIONS

Purposeful-Sending and Purposefully-Sent-One are my common language definitions for mission (Greek apostello) and missionary (Greek apostolos). These definitions will be further unfolded in section 2 where we consider God’s Purposeful-Sending gets LOST IN TRANSLATION.

Present-day literature speaks of the Now Generation as the Millennial or the Mosaic generation. I prefer to speak of today’s generation as either the Now Generation, the Information Generation (IGens) or the Next Generation. I will use these different designations to lift up different characteristics of this people group.

Now to the directions:

1.   The World was created for Purposeful-Sending will set the initiating foundation for what follows.

2.   God’s Purposeful-Sending gets Lost in Translation is the natural progression for a linguist who sees the language challenges that Information Generation people (and, for that matter, people of other generations) face in getting things straight because of less than the best translations.

3.   The Continuity and Discontinuity of Purposeful-Sending makes explicit the deep-structure presuppositions from which the presentation naturally flows.

4.   Reality for the Next Generation of Purposefully-Sent-Ones gives background and present substance to the thought world in which the Now Generation lives and functions.

5.   Contexts for the Next Generation of Purposefully-Sent-Ones shows how the shift in contexts over time has contributed to how purposeful-sending does or does not get done by the Now Generation.

6.   The Sociology of the Next Generation of Purposefully-Sent-Ones unfolds the sociological framework in which the Now Generation lives and works.

7.   Best Themes and Practices for Communicating the Purposefully-Sent Message among People of the Now Generation lifts up the communication themes and text types that have proven helpful in Information Generation communication.

8.   Interactive Relationship Restoration Initiates Purposeful-Sending in the Information Generation points out some of the ways that Purposefully-Sent-Ones carry out Purposeful-Sending in the beginning of the 21st century.

9.   The Conclusion wraps it all up with some fitting scripture portions.

1.

The World was created for

Purposeful-Sending

The LORD sends the sun to be a light during the day. He orders the moon and stars to be lights during the night. Jeremiah 31:35¹

I am looking east into the sunrise at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The upper edge of the cloud bank above the ocean is beginning to etch with pink. Next the entire cloud bank changes from blue to pink and then to brighter and brighter pink. Activity on the beach comes to a halt. People stop talking and walking. Their eyes are fixed on the changing colors. The breath-taking wonder gets bolder and broader until the fiery red sun breaks through. After several minutes of awe-struck wonder, the activity on the beach begins to move again as the sun turns from fiery red through all the shades of orange to yellow and then to bright white. As regular as clock work, God’s purposeful-sending of the sun happens every day. Without it, physical life as we know it on earth would not exist.

But it isn’t only the sun that is purposefully sent. Throughout history God has been purposeful in sending His people out for and into His strategic goals and purposes. Qualitatively, God created the world "good² and very good³. This good and very good" creation also establishes God’s perfectly organized operating system (POOS). This system rests on the solid foundation of truth manifested in the Old Testament⁴ and made fully explicit through Jesus the Christ in the New Testament⁵.

God created humans in his image and likeness for communication with Himself and each other⁶. He also created all the stuff⁷ needed to make it possible for humans to function as His vice-regents on earth. It is highly significant that God, humans and stuff are all different from each other. Being created in the image and likeness of God sets human beings apart from God and also from the many other things that God created out of nothing. Key also in the sending process is the fact that God used what he created first as his means for further creation⁸and for his ongoing purposeful-sending⁹.

While the organized work of the sun is highly regularized, the purposeful works and ways of God’s human sent-ones show much more spontaneity and individual creativity. In humans the image and likeness of God opened the way for a great deal of responsible self-determined thinking, planning and human entrepreneurial application. It opened the way for carrying out God’s planned goals and objectives or for rejecting the privilege of being God’s purposefully-sent-ones. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was the quality control factor in evaluating the proper use of human free-will. Ultimate allegiance to God and His perfectly organized operating system was to be measured by just one requirement which was to never be fatally flawed by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. ¹⁰

2.

God’s Purposeful-Sending gets

Lost in Translation

An important part of being created in the image and likeness of God is language. There are at least 7015 languages in the world. In each of these languages humans have the linguistic ability to creatively relate and manipulate symbols and meaning. Plants and animals do not have this sophisticated language ability. This innate human ability features arbitrary but at the same time generally agreed-upon relationships between symbols and meaning. For example the symbol man is normally related to the meaning male gender in English. Arbitrarily, English speakers could have related the symbol man to the meaning small baby if they had chosen to agree upon that particular symbol-meaning relationship.

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World Languages and the Bible

God’s Purposeful-Sending gets lost in translation in several ways. A primary example of loss has to do with the translation of the Greek symbol apostello – purposeful-sending. This powerful Christian symbol is used 133 times in the Greek New Testament. It is correctly and explicitly translated in John 20:21, where Jesus says, Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. However, in most cases in the English translations, the purposeful-sending meaning of apostello has been domesticated, even emasculated and often lost.

What happened is that the Latin missio/mittere (sending) was transliterated into English with the symbol mission and "missionary. In the translation by transliteration, mission and missionary" lost the active verbal meaning of sending and were reduced to passive noun status. In English it is not possible to say (as it is in Greek), "Jim missioned (purposefully sent) the man. The result is that the English symbol mission" became attached, meaning-wise, not to purposeful-sending, but to intention and work. For instance, in the phrase mission of God, the primary meaning of the symbol mission for English speakers-hearers today is the intentions and work of God, not the purposeful-sending of God. The primary meaning of the word missionary in like manner became doer of the work of God rather than purposefully-sent-one.

What has happened in English is that the meaning purposeful-sending of the biblical Latin missio/mittere and the biblical Greek apostello/apostolos have in most cases been lost for English speakers-hearers, including many Christians. This is especially true since most Western Christians look for the meaning of English Christian words not in the original Hebrew and Greek symbols but in English Christian writings and conversation about God and His Word.

This commonly leads to projecting the regularly used English non-Biblical meanings back onto the original language symbols and grammar without giving the matter a second thought. This causes original meaning alteration and at times total meaning distortion and destruction. Lost in the process is the ability to recognize and apprehend the biblical meanings directly and accurately, even from the original Hebrew and Greek biblical symbols and grammar. This kind of meaning distortion happens in regularly used Bible translations. That is why Bible translation needs objective precision, much prayer, a good knowledge of the basic nature of how languages work and of the accurate meaning of the symbols and natural grammar patterns of both the receptor and the original languages.

A second dynamic example of such distortion is the commonly used meaning of the English symbol "church" - building, institution or place - rather than as a community of believers. Here again meaning is lost in translation. The primary meaning of the symbol ekklesia in Greek is community of believers. The Greek ekklesia in a secondary sense means the gathering together of those believers¹¹. Ekklesia does not mean building, institution or place. In English the Greek symbol ekklesia has been translated with the English symbol church. In English usage today the inaccurate meaning building, institution or place is regularly attached as the first and preferred meaning to the symbol church.

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Ekklesia understood as a community of people

This is true also in English usage among Christians. What has happened is that, in the translation process, the meaning building, institution or place has been forcefully pushed back onto the scriptural symbol ekklesia. The result is the replacement of the original Greek meaning community of believers with the English meaning building, institution or place.

I am a Bible translator and I must confess that inaccurate translations happen and that they are often unintentional. They happen because it takes strength of character on the part of a translator to carefully follow the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek text when a present day symbol (like church for instance) that carries inaccurate meaning is so popular in everyday Christian usage. Translators may employ the commonly used meaning of present-day symbols in their translation work without fully thinking about what they are doing. This mistranslation happens most often when there is not a single word symbol available in English to translate a Greek symbol like ekklesia. In such a case, several English symbols (if you will, a phrase) like community of believers must be used if the translation is to be accurate.

Try reading community of believers every time that you see the symbol church in your English Bible. You will immediately find the powerful meaning of God’s original message coming through to you in place of the incorrect meaning that English speakers normally attach to their English symbol church. Obviously this case is a challenge that most English Bible translations have not yet appropriately dealt with.

Another Example:

Jesus called his disciples to follow him. This call was to move around together, eat together, teach and learn together wherever they went and whatever they did. To be a follower of Jesus was not only to be a learner but also to be a believing apprentice, a disciplined follower and a committed and loyal supporter who gave ultimate allegiance to Jesus at all times and in all situations. Being a disciplined follower of Jesus was not only about the transfer of information but primarily about imitating the teacher’s life, affirming and sharing his values, passing on his teaching and attracting other followers into the movement on a 24/7 basis.

Discipleship was all about purposeful-sending and about being purposefully-sent-ones. One of the best ways to lose purposeful-sending or the idea of being a purposefully-sent-one was and is to relegate sending to regular times, places and only certain Christian people. This continues to happen as the Old Testament (Hebrew) symbol hishtakeva and the New Testament (Greek) symbol proskuneo got and still get lost in translation.

The Brown-Driver–Briggs Hebrew-English lexicon on page 1005 defines the Hebrew symbol hishtakeva as: To bow or prostrate oneself. This is done by stretching out flat on the ground with your face down or at times by kneeling with the forehead on the ground. Thayer in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament on page 548 defines the Greek symbol proskuneo as: 1. To kiss the hand towards one (from pros, towards and kuneo, to kiss). 2. To do homage or make obeisance by kneeling or prostrating oneself.

Both the Hebrew symbol hishtakeva and the Greek symbol proskuneo communicate a very special relationship between human beings and God. The following contrasts exemplify that relationship:

Created to Creator

Lesser to Greater

Dependent to Independent

Helpless to Helpful

Receiver to Giver

Forgiven to Forgiver

Respecting to Respected

Fearful to Fearless

Captive to Deliverer

Weak to Strong

Worshiper to Worshiped

Human to Yahweh

In summary the Hebrew symbol hishtakeva and the Greek symbol proskuneo involve absolute commitment to a recognized and respected sovereign, to one who deserves ultimate allegiance.

The Hebrew and Greek symbols hishtakeva and proskuneo are translated into English with the English symbol worship. Here again the problem is the inability to choose the correct symbol in trying to convey the original Hebrew and Greek meaning. When an inaccurate symbol has been chosen, distortion or even total inaccuracy of meaning happens. In this instance two of the key meaning components connected with the Hebrew and Greek symbols hishtakeva and proskuneo are affected. They are:

1.   What makes the activity acceptable or unacceptable and

2.   The place for doing the activity.

First we turn to acceptable and unacceptable hishtakeva and proskuneo. How do we identify which is acceptable and which is not acceptable? It took some very careful scripture study to identify just what to look for in terms of acceptable and unacceptable hishtakeva and proskuneo. Finally it became clear that the biblical indicator of acceptable and unacceptable is focusing on the correct object of the Hebrew and Greek verbal symbols hishtakeva and proskuneo. The potential objects mentioned in the scripture are:

1.   Yahweh (The God of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob who is the Triune Father, Son & Holy Spirit).

2.   Idols (Dagon, Chemosh, Baal, Success, Fame, Power, etc., etc.).

3.   Demons.

4.   People.

5.   The Beast.

6.   Angels.

The one and only object that indicates or marks acceptable hishtakeva and proskuneo is Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, who is the Triune Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All of the other entities receiving hishtakeva or proskuneo are objects of unacceptable hishtakeva and proskuneo. It is also interesting to note that 25 to 35% of the biblical examples speak of unacceptable hishtakeva and proskuneo and 65 to 75% of the examples speak of acceptable hishtakeva and proskuneo.

Next we turn to the proper place for doing hishkateva and proskuneo. A careful study of scripture indicates that in both Old and New Testament this activity is a free and spontaneous reaction of recognition and respect to the Triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). It is also clear that this activity can and should be done anywhere, anytime and anyplace. In fact the biblical examples of hishtakeva and proskuneo show that in only 15% of the instances cited does the activity happen at a formally named site and that in 85% of the instances cited the activity happens in common, ordinary places that are not formally named or specifically designated as places for hishtakeva and proskuneo to happen.

So how are the life and activity of God’s purposefully-sent-ones and purposeful-sending damaged by a loss of meaning in translation? The answer starts with the fact that most often the meaning attached to the English symbol worship includes as very basic: