Mission experts and directors of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Global Mission religious study centers met together last week in Nicosia, Cyprus, to share reports and discuss future directions for Adventist outreach in various parts of the world.

“Global Mission has established religious study centers for Buddhism, Secularism, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam, to help the church better understand and more effectively communicate with people of differing beliefs,” says Dr. Mike Ryan, director of Global Mission. “The centers aim to find mutual areas of agreement, and ways we can more effectively share with these people.”

Much of the discussion centered on the issue of “contextualization”-how to make Adventist faith and worship meaningful to people in varying cultures. Ryan cited the example of Global Mission’s contextualized Bible study in one country, where people are learning to study the Bible by meditating on and chanting Bible verses. “Although this would be highly unusual in the United States, for example,” he says, “it is culturally meaningful to these people. It helps them understand the Bible.”

The meeting emphasized that contextualization does not mean “watering down” beliefs. It means translating concepts and ways of doing things so that people in different countries can identify with, and understand them.

The meeting also discussed the agenda for the next Global Mission Issues Committee, a committee formed to address problems and challenges of working cross-culturally. Next scheduled for April 2001, the committee will discuss topics such as syncretism, reaching the secular mind, and the role of spiritualism and animism in certain cultures.