Beeson Podcast, Episode #602 Dr. Enoch Wan May 17, 2022 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney. My co-host, Kristen Padilla, is out sick today. Today in the studio we have a special guest who is on campus this week for our annual World Christianity Focus Week. Each fall, we host a Go Global Mission Emphasis Week during which we shine a light on missions and encourage our community to share the gospel with others – both at home and abroad. Each spring we host a World Christianity Focus Week during which we shine a light on some of the things that God is doing in other parts of the world. Both evangelistic and other. and encourage our community to take part in them. We are grateful to the excellent staff of Beeson’s Global Center for organizing both of these special weeks on Beeson’s campus. Speaking of our Global Center, if you or someone you know is discerning a call to missions you ought to look our way. We offer a Master of Divinity degree with a Missions certificate for students preparing to serve the Lord cross culturally. This mission certificate program is run by Dr. David Parks who leads our Global Center. It provides all kinds of educational opportunities for those involved in missions from cross cultural ministry internships or practica, as we call them here. To an international lunch club, to global voices presentations from all kinds of missionaries, to our annual emphasis weeks. Find out more at www.BeesonDivinity.com/globalcenter. Our guest today Dr. Enoch Wan who is Research Professor of Intercultural Studies and Director of the Doctor of Intercultural Studies program and the Doctor of Education program at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He is the Founder and Editor of a multilingual e-journal called Global Missiology. And is a past president of the Evangelical Missiological Society. Dr. Wan is a board member of the Worldwide Bible Society and Tyndale Christian Media Association, and is the author or co-author of more than 15 books on the subject of missions. Dr. Wan, thank you very much for being with us today. I’d like to begin by asking you to share with us your testimony just a little bit. Would you tell our listeners where you grew up and how you came to know the Lord Jesus? >>Dr. Wan: I was born in South China and grew up in Hong Kong. My father came to know the Lord through the ministry of American missionaries in China. We grew up very much into ministry. My father was the forerunner of training factory workers for evangelism. Of the seven brothers and sister, the siblings, we have five in the ministry and all of them retired except the youngest, number seven, is serving as a missionary using his PhD from Germany in education. I’m still active. My name is both in Chinese and English – Enoch. Because it was given by my father to encourage me to walk with the Lord. So, my personal conversion, genuine faith, came at the last year of high school through the ministry of a fellow Christian who happened to be Armenian Dispensationalist. I went on for further studies to train for mission and eventually was able to go to the Philippines and Australia. >>Doug Sweeney: I introduced you at the top of the show as a professor, a missiologist. And we’ll talk about what that means in a little bit. But you’re also a missionary and you served in a couple of different countries, as you say, the Philippines and Australia. Why did you become a missionary and why should our listeners be supporters of missionaries? >>Dr. Wan: As a young kid I was very curious about people from other countries with different cultural backgrounds. with that fascination, I began to read more and particularly missionary biographies and my people serving the Lord, lifetime commitment. So, when I was young I felt that I was called to Vietnam but the Lord closed the door every time when I was about to finish seminary there was the fall of Vietnam in 1974. When I was about to, again, go to Indonesia and things didn’t work out because of a political situation and my immigration papers. So, I went on to do church planting on Long Island, New York in the 70s and so on. >>Doug Sweeney: And you’re also a missiologist and of course many of our listeners know what that means but probably not all of them know what missiology is. Would you let us know? What’s missiology and why have you devoted so much of your life to missiological educational work? >>Dr. Wan: By training I’m an anthropologist. I have a PhD in anthropology from [inaudible 00:06:08] University of New York. I did my dissertation on New York China Town as an ethnographic study of immigrant community. To my understanding mission is the practical application of anthropological insights and research methodology for gospel outreach and church planting. The Lord had instructed us to pray [inaudible 00:06:45] for sending out laborers. And what I think I have been doing since 1978 on and off with church planting in New York and in Toronto, pastoral ministry in Richmond, BC, western Canada, but most of the time in theological education. Basically, it’s not only just praying the [inaudible 00:07:13] to send forth workers. I want to participate in the process and the preparation of kingdom laborers. So, before they go to the mission field to learn about cultural differences, linguist science, so that they are equipped to acquire a second language, and complexity of intercultural communication, things like that. So, that’s why missiological training is important. Before they make all the mistakes on the mission field. We also teach students mission history so they could learn from history the success and the failure of past efforts in mission outreach. So, that’s my conviction about why I should be involved in training and equipping kingdom laborers before they go out into the mission field. >>Doug Sweeney: We mentioned you also founded a journal on missiology global missiology. Who is that journal for? And what does it do? >>Dr. Wan: About 20 years ago the chairman of the missions department at Calvin Seminary and the dean of Fuller Seminary they encouraged me to start a journal electronically because the traditional journal would require a mailing address and subscription and many missionaries move around and some of them at locations that mailing would be problematic. And when they move because of furlough, because of re-deployment ... so, receiving traditional journal is difficult. And subscription might also cost them money. So, I was encouraged to start this journal with $50 from the department chair of Calvin to start this journal. So, I don’t have any foundation or any funding behind it. I pray and the Lord would send forth volunteers to help with different things. For example, the Chinese version we have simplified in full script so converting from one to another version would be difficult and uploading things would be difficult as well. But there are a lot of advantages of electronic journals. It’s free. It’s accessible anywhere if people have access to the internet. It’s not like the print journal – you don’t have limitation of words and length. And you could also post video and instruction. Things like that at the site that people could use. So, we started with English, but then many of our fellow workers who were Chinese and complained that, “How come you have an English journal but you don’t have a Chinese journal for us?” But I didn’t know how to type Chinese. It’s very complicated. So, after a few months of praying, the Lord sent me volunteers to help typing and lay out and uploading and two kinds of script, full script and simplified script. So, it’s a ministry to missionaries. Free subscription. Accessible anywhere. No limitation of length and format of presentation. So, I found that very encouraging. And since my work load had increased ... So, two years ago I turned the English journal to a new editor, Dr. Nelson Jennings. I still keep the Chinese one. I had others doing the French and Spanish version, which I don’t have the language skill. So, that’s the multilingual journal. >>Doug Sweeney: That sounds wonderful. It sounds like a lot of work but a marvelous use of technology. One of the many books Dr. Wan that you have done that we have highlighted this week is your book, “Relational Missionary Training: Theology, Theory, and Practice.” Published in 2017. Can you tell our listeners just a little bit about that book and its significance? What is relational missions? What’s the significance of that emphasis? >>Dr. Wan: Simply put, I taught missiological courses for many years. And found the popular way of doing mission in the West have been very programmatic, performance oriented, outcome based ... So, our Christian faith had been deprived of the relational touch. According to Ephesians 1 God the Father had chosen us in the Son that we are to be holy and so on. So, our God is such a relational God. His love for us transcends time and space. So, we found that in Jeremiah, talking about before being formed in the mother’s womb or being born, and Jeremiah was called and chosen and appointed to be the prophet for God. So, I went back to the study of the Trinity and spent three years on it. And realized that the doctrine of the Trinity is primarily relational – Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And from there I began to study Christian doctrine from redemption to sanctification to glorification, everything had a very personal touch. And therefore I want to rediscover the relational aspect of our Christian God, our Christian faith, and our Christian practice in outreach and evangelism and mission. So, I published a book on [inaudible 00:14:15] missiology where I spent a whole chapter critiquing the popular programmatic managerial approach. I am not the only one with that kind of critique. The [inaudible 00:14:26] decoration in South America where you had the gathering of Asian and Latino Missiologists, they all had the same sentiment. So, I want to insist that we believe in a relational triune God. Our Christian faith is supposed to be relational. Both in essence and in practice. And in our Christian mission outreach should be relational. For example, friendship evangelism should not be a means to an end. But rather we should have genuine friendship, just like God’s way of dealing with people like Apostle Peter. He spent a lot of time personally mentoring him through different situations, including his denial and his restoration in the last chapter of John and so on. I taught one student and he was very promising. He was a seasoned missionary in South America. And I walked with him for several years and published a book, “Relational Missionary Training” as an alternative to the popular programmatic performance oriented outcome based type of training program. So, that’s the essence of why I think our God is a relational triune God. Our faith should be a relational one in terms of the Holy Spirit indwelling in us individually and also in the Church institutionally, organizationally, and therefore everything had to go back to the relational aspect of it. >>Doug Sweeney: That seems to me to be a crucial insight, particularly in the West these days. I’m thinking about listeners who may be leaders at missions boards or missions pastors at big churches who think almost inevitably about programs and budgets and outcomes and that kind of thing. Do you have a word for them about how to make good use of your emphasis on relational missions? Is it possible to be an administrative missionary who thinks programmatically in terms of outcomes and be relational at the same time? Or what word do you have for them? >>Dr. Wan: Programmatic approach is very pragmatic and functional. Which has its place. For example, if I drive my car, my car should be running. I buy a watch, the watch should be running efficiently so that I could save gas and so on. So, there’s a place for it. But unfortunately if we are so obsessed with the performance and the program we forget the reason and the motive behind it is relational. That is giving up the primary, the essential, for the secondary, which is very sad. So, I spent many years researching, teaching, publishing on relational approach. And yet I’m a seminary professor. I’m editor of a journal. I serve as president of EMS. I had to produce. I had to perform. But I have to check myself all the time why I’m doing it. Is it relationally motivated with my vertical connection with God in touch of his heart by the guidance of the Spirit, relationally? So that whatever I do will be natural outflow of that kind of vertical anchoring with God. So, I do perform and I like performance. But I have to check myself why I’m doing it. Am I competing with another organization, another denomination? And therefore I feel good because of my performance and my success? Do I value the praise of men because of my performance? Or do I value God’s judgment on me? Faithfulness should be first and then fruitfulness. Character should be foundational and then the career. Personhood should be primary and then the performance. And you could go down the list. So, that’s the priority of relation, but also there’s the necessary outcome of the performance. So, the two are not to be separate but they have to be lined up according to the priority and that’s the difference. >>Doug Sweeney: Dr. Wan, the reason we are blessed by your presence this week is that you’re here on campus for our World Christianity Focus Week. And one of the themes that we’ve been discussing with you on campus here this week is the theme of Diaspora Mission. You spoke in chapel yesterday about Diaspora Mission in action from refugee to kingdom laborer. I want our listeners to benefit a little bit from this as well. Can you tell them about the Diaspora Mission emphasis? And how they might get involved with it? >>Dr. Wan: The phenomenon of people being scattered from their homeland overseas or elsewhere have been historically true of the Jewish people in the Old Testament and the early church during the time of persecution after the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 8. So, people being scattered because of war and famine and study and immigration and so on, but at a fastest pace, larger scale, more extensive happened in the last recent few decades. Before I was invited to Beeson about a year ago and now because of COVID it didn’t happen. And now I come for real this time. And between the invitation and now you had the event happened in Afghanistan and we saw six million people left the country for neighboring countries. And currently now you have four million Ukrainians leaving the country as well. So, Diaspora is an ongoing thing. Anytime in the world you have people moving around. But it didn’t happen just accidentally because their boundary and their time of their location according to Acts 17 had been within the guidance and the supervision of the lock of history. So, because the movement of people in a new area in a new environment, they were receptive to changes and in the process they would be most receptive to the invitation to consider the gospel. So, the movement of people had been chaotic and critical, but also in terms of global evangelism it’s also providential. So, as an anthropologist I studied the [inaudible 00:22:30] trend and then want to utilize that kind of understanding of movement of people for kingdom purpose and therefore develop research and publish things on this matter and propose methodology and how to do it. 16 percent of the world’s population is found in the G7 countries. And the movement of people, 1/3 of them globally is found in the seven countries. So, as a result we have a lot of people from overseas moving to our neighborhood whether they be refugees or immigrants or international students. So, we have to see the reality that they [are around 00:23:20]. We have to take hold of the opportunity to reach them at the time when they are receptive to changes. So, we practice the great commandment of loving our neighbors, offering our help in their time of need, and develop the relationship then we can engage in evangelism and that’s what the Diaspora missiology is all about. >>Doug Sweeney: I’m running low on time but I want to introduce our listeners to one more new concept that you gave us today in a wonderful lecture that I attended. The title of today’s lecture with the students was, “Glocal: God’s Mission in the 21st Century.” Help our listeners understand what the word “glocal” means and how it should shape the way we think about participating in God’s work in the world? >>Dr. Wan: During the lecture I explained about the major companies international company engaging in the business, like McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I used examples in China and you have McRice and McNoodle and you have [inaudible 00:24:34], all those have been offered by McDonalds and KFC. So, when they are in China they don’t sell just friend chicken or hamburgers. But they tailor make to the local people’s taste and sensitive to the market and that is called localization. But they are international companies. So, they have a global enterprise. So, when you take the first part of the word “globalization” and the first part of the word “localization” and combine them together and you form a new word called “glocalization.” And this was a business practice for a long time for several decades. And we have a parallel situation in the Christian circle in terms of mission outreach. Used to be traveling overseas to engage in cross cultural mission. When you are local you are doing evangelism. But now God is sending people from other countries into our neighborhood. And therefore we should reach the people in a neighborhood that God sent our way to be part of what we talk about Great Commission and worldwide evangelism. I used the example of Act 7 of the conversion of Paul because of the ministry of Ananias in obedience to the mission. He was given a simple task, a local mission of looking up Saul, laying hands on him, helping him to see, and out of his obedience, even though it was illogical, unreasonable, and he did it. So, his local mission of finding [inaudible 00:26:32] he being a resident of Damascus, a major city in Syria, 200 miles north of Jerusalem, but that simple local mission of finding Saul, laying hands on him, and praying for him, restored his sight, had global impact in the life of Apostle Paul. So, in Acts 22 he recounted that incident and mentioned about Ananias as well. Otherwise you only find Ananias mentioned once in Acts 7. So, the performance of a local mission, like identifying Saul, laying hands on him, had global impact. The same way when we engage in local action, right, reaching scientists in Huntsville, or reaching international students on campus near your neighborhood. We might be engaging in local mission. But it has global impact because the international student returns home, they become church planters, they become influential political leaders, lawyers, in their own area. It’s just like Daniel and his few friends. They were refugees, they were being captured, and they were forced to pick up a Babylonian name and so on, and eventually they became very influential figures in the Babylonian empire. So, that’s what we call glocal mission. And you could do that here in Alabama. Right at the middle of the Bible Belt you have a Black Belt where you have a very unique situation and we engage them and it might have global impact. >>Doug Sweeney: What a great set of emphasizes you brought to our community this week. Thank you very much. Missions Go from everywhere to everywhere, as we say these days. God wants us to be missionaries right where are and everywhere we go. And you’ve underscored that in a marvelous way with us this week. Dr. Wan, we began the interview on a personal note – just asking you about your past and your testimony and so on. We’d like to end on a personal note as well. We conclude our interviews always by asking guests what the Lord is doing in their lives these days? What God is teaching you now that you might share with our listeners by way of sort of concluding on an edifying note for them? So, what’s God teaching you these days? >>Dr. Wan: Well, I just came from a class where students asked about my friends who are now with the Lord. David Haslegrave, Ralph Winter, [inaudible 00:29:32] and all those people. Recently, many of my friends are gone. I will be turning 75 soon. And I want to start well and end well. So, faithfulness is a challenge. And I’m grateful the Lord has given me good health. I go swimming every day before COVID. After COVID I walk with my wife one hour every day to keep in good shape physically and mentally. I’m still full time and doing research and doing publications. And because of COVID I was able to finish a lot of book projects that had been delayed for a long time. There were about half a dozen books finished during those two years. So, I want to continue research, publication, and teaching. And Lord willing I would like to be faithful. That’s what is on my heart, is to be faithful to the end. >>Doug Sweeney: A good word for all of us. You have been listening to Dr. Enoch Wan. He is Research Professor of Intercultural Studies and Director of the Doctor of Intercultural Studies, and Doctor of Education Programs at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. Thank you, Dr. Wan, for being with us today and all week long. Thank you listeners for tuning in. We’re praying for you. We ask the Lord to bless you. And we say goodbye for now. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.