Richard Twiss Rocks

Have you heard of Richard Twiss? He captured my imagination at the Off The Map (Nov. 1-3, 2007 in Seattle) conference in various ways. He's a native American and the president of Wiconi International. Wiconi is pronounced "we-cho-nee." I said it wrong when I asked him about it--oops.

He's an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe. He's fully native and fully a Christ-follower. He's also pursuing his Doctorate in Missiology at Asbury Theological Seminary.

He's funny and provocative. Funny: "The good things for us native people is that we know that when the chips are down the buffalo is empty." I love that.

Provocative: he talks about how Christianity has been put on native peoples and with it a cultural oppression. Do you have to leave the Indian ways to be a Christ-follower? Do you have to accept the cultural bias of Western Christianity and accept the colonial oppressive version of this faith to be a true Christian?

He asked: "Does God have cultural, linguistic, musical, and architectural preferences?" Obviously not. He reminded us that English is not the language of heaven.

We all have a culturally conditioned world view. Is my world view to small? Am I a Christian bigot? I hope not! However, I confessed (quietly to God) some of my pre-conceived notions and biases that surfaced as he spoke.

He wrote "One Church Many Tribes." I'll write a review on my blog of the book. I'm going to be following this guy!