The crossing of boundaries should be a normative experience as Christians grow and mature

In 1973, I left my rural Christian childhood home and became a university student. I experienced the dissonance of a world that was much bigger, more diverse, more troubled, and less predictable than anything I had known before. My questions of who am I, where am I going, and who will go with me, were to me far more compelling than academic pursuits. My university’s motto was “Let there be light,” but I was in the shadows. In his grace, the Lord was leading me toward his light, and by 1975, he had given me enduring faith, my future wife’s heart, and a call to pursue his kingdom first.

During those two years, I experienced my first boundary event and paradigm shift.

But not my last. Almost like clockwork, every ten years I again experienced dissonance followed by reflection and eventual illumination. Even then, it was not until my fifties that I realized this was a normative experience for all who respond to the Lord’s invitation to “follow me, and I will make you become something you are not, yet.”

God uses boundary events to fully develop our capacity to minister across boundaries.

Boundary events are transitional experiences Christians can expect to encounter as we move from one ministry phase to another. God uses boundary events to fully develop our capacity to minister across boundaries, or cross-culturally. Understanding, recognizing, anticipating, and embracing boundary events is critical for the worldview transformation that empowers ministering cross-culturally.

Over a lifetime the Lord will intentionally lead us through a series of boundary events. Some will pass almost unnoticed. As James W. Fowler points out, others will be “significant alterations in the structures of one’s knowing and valuing… in the basic orientation and responses of the self,” where cognitive/affective/evaluative worldview presuppositions “effectively die and must be replaced… feelings of anguish, struggle and possibly guilt and grief… Our very life meanings are at stake…" This is the stuff of which faith stage transitions are made.

Boundary events follow an identifiable process. They begin with a sense of dissonance, the confusion and emotional stress that we feel when we face something new, something unexpected, something that conflicts with our convictions, actions, or values. While our tendency is to avoid or deny disturbing dissonance, the Lord’s tendency is to increase dissonance.

For example, Jesus recognized dissonance in the wealthy seeker’s question about good deeds and eternal life (Mark 10:17-31). Jesus looked at that seeking man and loved him, and that love intensified the man’s dissonance by asking him to do what seemed impossible. Jesus did this intentionally, not only for the rich man but also for his disciples who, in reflection, asked, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus intensified dissonance to create a learning moment that exposed and challenged their subconscious worldview assumptions about goodness and salvation.  

Increased dissonance leads to intense reflection, the second phase of a boundary event. Intense reflection moves us toward asking, seeking, knocking, exactly the reflective practices Jesus promises to honor by giving answers, revealing new insights, and opening the locked doors in our worldview assumptions (Matthew 7:7-8).

Sometimes intense reflection is resolved quickly; other times intense reflection, accompanied by ever-increasing dissonance, goes on for months or years. This intense reflection is the essence of what Paul Hiebert has identified as a worldview transformation working out in deeply held beliefs, values, and behavior. Without this intense reflection, we will not be transformed.

The “aha” moment, comes after intense reflection.

Illumination, the “aha” moment, comes after intense reflection. William R. Miller and Janet C’de Baca note this as “a sudden insightful awakening, a crystallization of awareness…a vivid, surprising, benevolent, and enduring personal transformation.”

Illumination represents a paradigm shift where a fundamental worldview presupposition changes so profoundly “that one perceives and understands reality in a different way” as Robert and Richard Clinton describe it. Hiebert notes that this level of a paradigm shift describes the “radical reorganization of underlying components… like rebuilding a house using parts and pieces of the old, but with a radically new way of ordering the fundamental configuration… the world itself does not change, but after the transformation, people live in a perceptually different world.”

Those who experience these transformations are often surprised and, according to Miller and Baca, say things like “it just happened,” and when asked what has changed in their understanding they respond, “everything changed, and the change has lasted and lasted to this day.” These “aha” transformative illuminations represent a conscious recognition of deep worldview presuppositional transformation. When this happens positively for Christians it can represent a new alignment of cognitive/affective/evaluative assumptions with biblical reality.

Being forewarned is to be forearmed. The Lord will use boundary events to lead us into worldview transformation.

Often these transformations are unexpected, and we feel as if our very foundations have been shaken, and in some cases such as severe culture shock, the experience is painful. Painful but essential for the freeing worldview transformation that follows and allows us to recognize that everything has changed, and that at our very core, we are more closely aligned in our responsiveness to the One who said, “follow me, and I will make you become something you are not yet: fruitful cross-cultural fishers of men and women and girls and boys from all nations and peoples on earth.”  

Originally published by ChinaSource. Republished with permission.

Dr Ken Anderson is the board chair for ChinaReach, an indigenous missiological training effort intended to help China move from a mission field to a mission force. He holds DMiss and MAGL degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary. From 2011–2021 he served as an itinerant extension biblical training missionary in China and Nepal. He is currently leading missiological training in Mark’s Gospel for an indigenous church planting movement in southern Nepal and serves on boards including a Russian video seminary, a Nepali aftercare home, an indigenous ministry effort in Mexico, and as an elder in his local church.