Because the scope of the title of this paper is so broad, it is only possible to raise some of the issues and identify them then point to some possible directions.
Sociologists tend to use assimilation , while anthropologists prefer the term acculturation .
People working in the church, especially in evangelism and church growth, often use incorporation in a technical sense for the process through which new people become full members of a local church. These processes also range over an axis from partial to complete. This lattercondition is often reinforced by the host people, who in their missionapproach intentionally accommodate themselves in some ways to the culture of the target people in order to develop credibility and win the right to speak. Since treating the concept of minorities is too huge an enterprise for the scope of this paper, we shall limit ourselves to the concept of ethnicity as an example of one of the most common types of minorities in our society. It combines both ethnic group and social class characteristics.