Imperishable Inheritance

Mis­si­ol­ogy is actu­ally quite dif­fi­cult and con­tro­ver­sial. It ques­tions who we are as fol­lower of Christ and what we know of God’s Word. I will explore a mis­si­o­log­i­cal con­cept known as con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion and how this helps to avoid detri­men­tal errors in missions.

Con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion and Missions

The apos­tle Paul says in His first let­ter to the church at Corinth:

For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are with­out law, as with­out law, though not being with­out the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are with­out law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.
1 Corinthi­ans 9:19–22

What Paul is talk­ing about here is con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. That is, when he preaches to the Jews, he puts the gospel in the con­text of that cul­ture. Like­wise, when he speaks to the Gen­tiles he does the same for their respec­tive cul­ture. From this pas­sage, we can see that Paul used the Law of Moses to preach the gospel to the eth­nic Jews, and to the Gen­tiles with­out an under­stand­ing of the Law he used a dif­fer­ent method. So, Paul put the gospel in its proper “context.”

I found the fol­low­ing def­i­n­i­tion of con­text in com­mu­ni­ca­tions parlance:

“[C]ontext is the mean­ing of a mes­sage (such as a sen­tence), its rela­tion­ship to other parts of the mes­sage (such as a book), the envi­ron­ment in which the com­mu­ni­ca­tion occurred, and any per­cep­tions which may be asso­ci­ated with the com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” (Wikipedia)

Relat­ing the two quo­ta­tions, Paul put the gospel mes­sage in its rela­tion­ship with every­thing around it. If Paul didn’t bother with teach­ing the res­ur­rec­tion to the eth­nic Jews through Old Tes­ta­ment prophe­cies do you think he would have been suc­cess­ful? If Paul attempted to preach the Old Tes­ta­ment prophe­cies to the Gen­tiles with no prior knowl­edge of it would he have been suc­cess­ful? This is why Paul was so pow­er­ful in his mis­sion­ary efforts and why God raised him as He did. Read when Paul gave his tes­ti­mony while he was on trial before Agrippa in Acts 26:

“And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice say­ing to me in the Hebrew dialect, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you per­se­cut­ing Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ “And I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are per­se­cut­ing. ‘But get up and stand on your feet; for this pur­pose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a min­is­ter and a wit­ness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you; rescu­ing you from the Jew­ish peo­ple and from the Gen­tiles, to whom I am send­ing you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from dark­ness to light and from the domin­ion of Satan to God, that they may receive for­give­ness of sins and an inher­i­tance among those who have been sanc­ti­fied by faith in Me.‘
Acts 26:14–18 (empha­sis added)

When we do not account for the cul­tural con­text of those we preach the gospel to then we end up com­mit­ting the worst of mis­sions errors that being syn­cretism. Syn­cretism is when a per­son attempts to har­mo­nize two oppos­ing ide­olo­gies into one lead­ing to the degra­da­tion of both. For instance, if I preach the gospel with­out any to a Hindu with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion of his cul­ture and world­view syn­cretism will occur. The Hindu will have no prob­lem with Jesus being God, because he already believes that 330,000,000 other gods exist. The Hindu can then get a pic­ture of Jesus and a Bible and put it next to a Krishna shrine and the Vedas. The ques­tion then becomes, how do we avoid this from happening?

(Note: the Amer­i­can hol­i­days of Christ­mas and Easter are also strong exam­ples of syn­cretism. These hol­i­days are pagan in ori­gin that have been adopted by Christians.)

Escap­ing Syn­cretism Through Proper Contextualization

The most effec­tive method­ol­ogy to avoid syn­cretism is to use chrono­log­i­cal Bible teach­ing. This is where we teach the Bible, not start­ing with the gospel, but from Gen­e­sis 1 up to the gospel. In fact, how can any­one prop­erly under­stand the gospel with out an under­stand of vital top­ics such as the Fall, the Abra­hamic Covenant, Mosaic Law, and the prophets? It is also impor­tant than when we do teach that we are very clear about point­ing out dif­fer­ences between the Chris­t­ian mes­sage and that of their cul­ture. So, it’s not enough to say “Jesus is God,” but that Jesus is the only God (John 1:1, 5:18, 10:30–33) and the only way for redemp­tion (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Some object and say this takes to long and go straight to the gospel, but we must remem­ber that it took God 4,000 years to tell the gospel!

The topic of extrac­tion also becomes impor­tant. This is where the mis­sion­ary, after win­ning a con­vert, “extracts” the new believer from their own cul­ture and puts them under “mis­sion­ary watch.” Mis­sion­ar­ies have made this mis­take for cen­turies. One exam­ple is once con­vert­ing them they give them a west­ern name and attempt to fur­ther “civ­i­lize” them. But is this the Bib­li­cal model of missions?

At the Coun­cil of Jerusalem (Acts 15) it was decided that the Gen­tile con­verts did not have to be cir­cum­cised. This model we need to bear in mind in our mis­sions efforts; we should elim­i­nate all pos­si­ble stum­bling blocks to accept­ing the gospel. If we tag on bag­gage to the gospel like adopt­ing a west­ern name, par­tak­ing in solely west­ern forms of wor­ship (study Eth­no­mu­si­col­ogy), or telling them they must no longer talk to their for­mer friends and fam­ily for fear of “falling away” (and I use that lightly because no true con­vert of God ever falls away, Phi 1:16; 1 John 2:18–20).

For instance, if I were to go over to Saudi Ara­bia, preach the gospel, win con­verts (with God’s regen­er­at­ing work of course), and then extract them from their fam­i­lies and home culture—what good would I accom­plish? What a stum­bling block that would be! Espe­cially since the goal of the mis­sion­ary is essen­tially to work him­self out of a job by set­ting up a local, repro­duc­ing church! We must let a con­vert stay within their sphere of influ­ence, because that will be an incred­i­ble tes­ti­mony to them. It’s not a west­ern mis­sion­ary pro­claim­ing the gospel—it is their own fam­ily member/friend.

Shed­ding the “West­ern” Gospel

“Bib­li­cally, the con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of Chris­tian­ity is not sim­ply to be the pass­ing on of a prod­uct that has been devel­oped once for all in Europe or Amer­ica. It is, rather, the imi­tat­ing of the process that the early apos­tles went through…Christianity is not sup­posed to be like a tree that was nour­ished and grew in one soci­ety and then was trans­planted to a new cul­tural envi­ron­ment, with leaves, branches and fruit that mark it indeli­bly as a prod­uct of the send­ing soci­ety. The gospel is to be planted as a seed that will sprout within and be nour­ished by the rain and nutri­ents in the cul­tural soil of the receiv­ing peo­ples.“
Charles H. Kraft, Cul­ture, World­view and Con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion (quoted from the Per­spec­tives hand­book pg. 389)

The gospel, by def­i­n­i­tion, is supra­cul­tural. It is not spe­cific to the west, and it cer­tainly is not some­thing that spread through west­ern means. Con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion really does chal­lenge how we see our entire faith. It chal­lenges our under­stand­ing of the gospel, church, Bible, other peo­ples, and much more. It is through the process of real­iz­ing the true gospel that we can be most effec­tive in our mis­sions efforts for the King­dom. Keep in mind that the gospel didn’t start in the west, nor is it con­tained there.

Remem­ber we should lead peo­ple to Christ and not Chris­tian­ity. The fol­low­ing are some sta­tis­tics on the 10/40 win­dow and ways you can get involved in God’s global purposes.

Facts on the 10/40 Window

A geo­graphic region extend­ing from the 10th to 40th par­al­lel that encom­passes most of North Africa, parts of the Mid­dle East, Korea and Japan. This win­dow rep­re­sents the largest unreached part of the world.¹

• In the 10/40 win­dow alone: 4.2 bil­lion peo­ple live there (the world’s pop­u­la­tion is 6.3 bil­lion), 85% are the poor­est of the world’s poor, and 95% of the peo­ple are unevangelized.
• The 10/40 win­dow con­sti­tutes only one-third of the world’s land­mass, yet nearly two-thirds of the world’s population.
• All of the world’s 50 least evan­ge­lized cities (with pop­u­la­tions over one mil­lion) are in the 10/40 Window.
• Over two bil­lion have never heard the name of Jesus — even one time!
• Only 10% (43,000/430,000) for­eign mis­sion­ar­ies are where 95% of the world’s needs are.

Get Involved

You can pray, send (both money and encour­age­ment), you can wel­come inter­na­tion­als here at home, mobi­lize (teach oth­ers about God’s heart for the world), or you can go to another region to share the gospel. The only other thing besides that is dis­obe­di­ence to God and His man­date. You can check out resources like the U.S. Cen­ter for World Mis­sions, Fron­tiers, Pio­neers, Wycliff, New Tribes Mis­sion, and many other great mis­sions agencies.

God’s global man­date was not for a select few, but all who have been bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20). In an age where we are sur­rounded with Chris­tians who are eagerly attempt­ing to find the will of God, they need to hear only: “Go therefore…”

“The Great Com­mis­sion is not an option to be con­sid­ered; it is a com­mand to be obeyed.“
Hud­son Taylor

“Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a res­cue mis­sion within a yard of hell.“
C.T. Studd

(This arti­cle has been reprinted. I wrote this arti­cle orig­i­nally for the Think­ing Deeply blog community.)