Culbertson's Philosophy Of Mission

Philosophy is the study or creation of theories about basic things such as the nature of existence, knowledge, and thought, or about how people should live.
Philosophy is different from strategy, with strategy being the specific ways in which a philosophy is put into action or implemented. By hashing out a philosophy of mission is a good way to get people in an organization on the same page. So, without a shared philosophy of mission, a mission team will find it difficult to effectively evaluate what is currently being done or to meaningfully plan for the future (Gailey, Culbertson p 149). Most philosophies of mission can be broken down into a set of constituent attitudes. These component attitudes may include how holistic one believes missions should be a conviction about whether the primary target should be unreached people or responsive populations. It should be feelings about the gospel should be presented primarily in truth encounters or in power encounters. The ingredients of one’s philosophy of mission will be gradations of ideas or positions spread along a continuum (Gailey, Culbertson p 149).
A second philosophical issue with a continuum of positions relates to which groups of people should be the focus of mission efforts: those that are unreached or those that are responsive. Therefore, if there are Christians without a people group, it may still be defined as unreached if its indigenous Christians are too few to evangelize their own people without outside assistance (Gailey, Culberston p