God Enters Our Context . . . and that has made all the difference!

Contextualization in mission, as a concept for understanding how to do cross-cultural ministry, is a fairly new idea.  The first use of the idea was in 1972, but it has rapidly received so much attention as a field of study that there are 259 different contextualization models that have been researched and proposed in just 40 years.  Pretty intense focus if you ask me.  I think the reason for the focus is twofold.   

First, its newness notwithstanding, it was the right idea at the right time.  Global mission has had its successes and its failures.  The human spirit being what it is, we try to find out what we are doing right so we can repeat the good behavior and try to diagnose the wrong so we can root it out.  Contextualization in mission was the rooting out of the bad idea that all western missionaries had to do to be successful was transplant our forms of biblical interpretation, worship, moral codes, standards, and behaviors into the host culture.  This cultural imperialism has had devastating consequences in some contexts, but not all.  Taking the context of the host culture into account has been a godsend revelation to mission studies and helpful in limiting the harmful aspects of our gospel sharing across cultures.  

The second reason for a missiological focus on contextualization is its inherent truth in the operations of God.  The doctrine of the incarnation is as old as John's gospel when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" (v 1, 14).  I have learned in seminary before that this was the Holy God, who is completely other than what we are and fully apart from us as spirit, that condescends to us in our humanity to show us His face and, thereby, save us from ourselves.  I have understood this doctrine for many, many years and yet it took on a fuller meaning when I was in class with my Korean missionary friends.

What God did in the incarnation, among many things, is that He entered a middle-Eastern, 1st century Jewish context and demonstrated to us all--even those of us 20 centuries removed from this appearing--that this is the way of God.  He left his context as the wholly and holy other God and entered our context, the broken, fallen existence of those He created and loved to win us to Himself.  And, not only did he enter human existence as both God and human, but he entered it as a baby, born to a teenage Jewish girl, in the collision of multiple cultures . . . Judaism, Greek, and Roman.  He showed us the ultimate way of contextualization, of entering another's context, by leaving his place in heaven to be with us, in our culture, in full vulnerability.  This is the reason why contextualization in mission is so invigorating to those who think and write for a living.  It is so much the truth, the truth of how God works in human lives, that it startled many academics into wondering how we failed to fully understand the incarnation until we first failed at modern mission and then discovered it is because we didn't follow Christ's example.

A Matter of Context? Why Context Matters

I am sitting in a class full of Korean D. Miss (Doctor of Missiology) students.  I don't know the Korean language, but these students have been taught English since they were in 7th grade.  Their individual abilities with the American language is a function of how much they have actually used the language in their life interactions, but they all understand enough language to converse with me on varying levels.  This scene is an example of the class we are all taking . . . Contextualization.  In short, my experience of this class is different because I took the class with Koreans as opposed to American D. Miss students.  The "context" changes the experience, and in some cases, the message received.  

The reason why we are all here, taking this class, is that context matters in all communication, particularly intercultural communication.  If I fail to consider the culture of the person I communicate with, then I will be misunderstood, at best, and disregarded, at worst.  The history of modern mission activities is full of disastrous results because of misunderstanding and disregard . . . the message wasn't received properly because the host culture was never accounted for in missionary cultural interactions.  What is true for the mission field is also true within our broad American culture and within a local church congregation.

A pastor who preaches a sermon every week, in the ideal, will evaluate his cultural history, her congregation's collective culture, and biblical culture together as he or she formulates a message that is relevant to his intended recipients.  I learned a certain amount of this sender/receiver ethic in my educational background that featured English composition, communication, and debate instruction.  The practice of taking the receivers of my communication into account continued in seminary with biblical interpretation, preaching, pastoral care, etc.  And yet, I don't recall having ever been taught that culture matters, at a foundational level.

A few of my seminary professors would likely roll their eyes at my disclosure were they to read this.  They would suggest I had been asleep during the portion of their lecture that discussed the role of cultural in biblical interpretation or preaching and they might be right.  My point is that cultural bias is so primary in how we are educated and how we educate others that contextualization should be immersed within modern seminary education.  It should be the first message a seminary sends, a constant drumbeat throughout all instruction within, and the last message an educational institution imparts to its graduates.  Instead, the matter of intercultural communication is confined to a section of biblical studies, or to more advanced education like I am receiving.  Contextualization should be a forethought of modern seminary education, not an afterthought.

---Disciple of Thomas

NEXT:  Contextualization in the Bible

It's always best to begin at the beginning

I am not a missionary . . . not in the common sense of the word.  I have participated in short-term missionary work (stories to follow in subsequent posts) for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but never accepted a vocational call to full-time foreign mission, which is the classic definition of "missionary."  Even so, anyone following Jesus Christ must come to terms with his missional directive, stated most succinctly in Matthew 28:19-20:  "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Evangelical Christianity, for that matter, all of Christianity is missional.  It derives its purpose for being from the life and example of Jesus of Nazareth.  We must be in mission, available to the Holy Spirit's direction for the how's, where's, and who's of mission . . . yet, we know the why:  He gave us new life so that we might give it to others.  It is in this sense that I refer to myself as a missionary, distinct from those who leave their homeland to serve Christ in foreign cultures, so that some might be saved.

This week I am beginning formal training to be a missionary . . . in the widest possible sense certainly, but with the narrower possibility of foreign service.  I hope that my prior, formal academic training in Greek, Hebrew, biblical studies, systematic theology, church history, pastoral care, etc. will be augmented by inter-cultural studies.  I believe that my education up to this point has somehow been incomplete.  I hope and pray that this education will move me in the direction of God's ultimate use of His servant.  I also hope that you, as a reader of interest, might engage with me in this journey to help us both reach meaningful conclusions about God's intentions for both our lives.  Welcome to the life that never ends!

Humbly God's servant,

---Disciple of Thomas