a church for the world

Contextualize This

Attempting to contextualize the Gospel is a very acute and sensitive endeavor. Push the envelope too far and you will be lost in the ocean of syncretism, or really just pervert the Gospel until it is no longer the good news of Jesus Christ, but the good news of whatever culture or society you are in. On the contrary, if you fail to contextualize at all, or just contextualize too little, evangelism really just becomes assimilation and or socialization unto the church culture – or Christian imperialism. Stanley Hauerwas seems to insinuate in his book Resident Alien that the first apologists in the early church were inadvertently (it should be noted that Constantinian Christendom was also a major contributing factor) laying the groundwork that would perpetuate into modern theologians fruitless attempts to accommodate or make the Gospel – perceived to be ancient and outdated due to its ancient near eastern Hebraic roots – seem relevant and intelligible to the post-modernity, post-enlightenment, and increasingly anti-Christianity intellectual realm of the current times. (There is obviously more to be said and more to explain, but for the sake of the brevity of the blog post, and retaining your interest, I must go on.) This, Hauerwas goes on to argue, “transforms it [the Gospel] into something it never claimed to be – ideas abstracted from Jesus, rather than Jesus with his people.” read more

Contextualization

In class the other day we talked about how, when sharing the gospel, it is important to communicate the gospel itself, not our culture. This means that we share Jesus with people without trying to also impose our culture on them. To be a Christian doesn’t mean that we worship on Sunday morning, dress a specific way, or listen to only to church-approved music. Those things are cultural, and not necessary to be a Christian. So instead of saying to people, “you’re a Christian now, you should listen to this, wear this and use these words,” we do not hold people to those cultural things but are excited about how their culture will express their Christian walk.

In Padilla’s chapter on Contextualization, he quotes Eugene Ahner that “our understanding of the Gospel will not be complete until people from every nation and every culture give expression to that faith” (90). Not only is this an awesome quote, but it shows how important it is to preach the gospel in a way that allows the message to be understood within the culture of the group that you are trying to reach. The way that their culture understands God contributes something unique to the way that all believers can understand God. This means that if people do not come to understand God within the context of their own culture, then all believers miss out. It’s kind of like the story of the blind people who went to go see the elephant. They each felt a different part of the elephant (one its legs, one its tusks, one its trunk, one its tail, and one its ears) and each got a different picture of what the elephant was really like. When they put their understandings together, they got a fuller picture of what the elephant was like, a much more complete understanding than they could have accomplished on their own. In a similar way, Padilla is saying that the way that each culture of Christians understands God can contribute to the collective knowledge of what God is like.

Suburban Youth

The question came up today about how to be missional in the ‘burbs. This is something that I have been thinking about for a few days. From what I have gleaned of missional churches and missional lifestyle is that it is a city movement. “Let’s move into the city and be urbanites for Jesus.” I think that is great and there is a need for Jesus in cities, but what about the ‘burbs? Are they no longer important enough for mission or for Jesus? read more

Insert Clever, Witty Title here

“The Christ who is presented in Scripture for our believing is Lord over all cultures, and His purpose is to unite all of every culture to Himself in a unity which transcends without negating the diversities of culture.” –Lesslie Newbigin

As someone who wants to go into cross-cultural ministry of some sort, this idea has plagued me for quite some time. It is the idea that, as we relate to people of other cultures (whether that means the homeless in our city or residents of an African mud hut village) we must embrace the differences between cultures, while not allowing one culture to dominate. It seems to me that whatever you do while ministering to people cross-culturally, one culture is always going to take precedence over the other.

The Native Americans discovered this the hard way when the Europeans came and “Christian-ized” them, making them wear European clothes and learn English and go to European-style schools and thereby forbidding them from learning tribal customs and connecting with their natural heritage.

It can go the other way, too, though. In trying to meet people where they are, it is far too easy to go too far and simply become one of the people you are trying to reach, forgetting why you came in the first place.

I guess my question is, What is the happy balance between taking over and being taken over? And how do you find it? How do you reach people with the Gospel of Christ without taking away their identities?

-Diana

New Eyes

Many of us have written about our “exercise” this past Tuesday, having gone into one of Spokane’s many neighborhoods, observing, listening, trying to sow peace, learning, and all the other things we did that day. A few of my classmates might have similar feelings, but one of the strange things for me was the newness of the experience, despite my ties to Spokane. My group visited the South Perry District, a part of Spokane’s south hill. I have grown up in Spokane, and this year has been my first “away from home.” The Perry District is somewhere that I spent an enormous amount of time in for about the last year and a half before I graduated. I had some close friends living in a rather run-down house just a few blocks away from Grant elementary school. The strangest thing for me was feeling as though there were things I ought to have known about a neighborhood I have been so close to. In that sense it did give me a kind of ache; maybe I was internalizing it too much. All the same, there was a slight feeling of irresponsibility on my part. However, much more than that, I received an overwhelming feeling of energy from it. We didn’t walk all of the neighborhood: there was simply too much ground to cover. But we were walking with intentionality. We intended to look, learn, and listen. The whole time all I could think was that I want to walk my whole city with intentionality, and see what I can discover. I was reminded that learning curves exist, and it’s okay that I was experiencing something different. I hadn’t been irresponsible, I just hadn’t been looking in the right way before. And I still won’t always look the “right way,” because it’s difficult to constantly walk with intentionality. But I have made discoveries, and part of the amazing thing about mission is the fact that we get to discover new and exciting things about cities, people, and ourselves, and that, my friends, is what makes it so invigorating.

Dominoes

Remember when you were a kid and you spent all afternoon setting up every domino you could find throughout your house, just so you could have the satisfaction of knocking them all over and watching a seemingly endless trail of dominoes fall? ….Okay, maybe that was only me. But when I did that, I noticed that whenever someone walked around in the house, it would make the floor vibrate, and often that vibration would be enough to knock down a domino, and before I knew it, half my line would be demolished. Pretty soon, I would forbid my entire family from moving at all, so I could finish setting up my miles of dominoes. When I had to move, I would take the lightest steps possible and I barely allowed myself to breathe.

Dominoes are a wonderful (and I realize, overused) metaphor for life. If you knock over one domino, they all fall down. But people don’t often think about walking near the line of dominoes. That can make them fall down, as well.

We talk a lot in class about intentionality, and I am beginning to realize just how crucially important it is. We can’t just be intentional about our relationships with new people. We have to be intentional about everything while living a missional life. We have to realize that even making loud noises in the general vicinity can knock over the line of dominoes.

Living with that much intentionality can seem daunting and difficult. Luckily, when it comes down to the actual moment of falling dominoes, the Holy Spirit has to be the one to tap the first one, and He knows what He is doing.

-Diana

No Fear

Countless times in the Bible God calls us to not fear, but how many of us actually invest our lives completely in God? Fear controls people and their decisions many times will be based on the possibility of failure. How many Christians want safe Churches? Environments where they are in control and there are no challenges. We all heard sermons on if God is for us, then who could be against us, but how many of us actually take that in mind when we plan our futures. Why do we easily let fear drive our lives and not Christ? Is the Gospel something to be feared? I believe that God does not abandon us. I believe God has designed each and every one of us for a purpose. It is easy to waste time being paralyzed by fear, and it is difficult to actually be in a relationship with God. Faith is not meant to be easy. Faith is true belief. Without confidence in the person God designed you to, you become nothing more than fear. Jesus commands us to not fear more than any other commandment. There is something to be said about this. Fear is and always has been a deterrent from faithfully following God. Worrying wastes time and places faith in your own ability and not your relationship with God. We can only control our actions for the present day. God will provide us with the strength for the challenges he puts in our way when the time comes. Worrying and being fearful never changes the outcome, but distracts people from true belief in God. I am not suggesting that people should not have plans, but those plans should be prayerfully thought out. We should be always in line with what God has planned for us and believe that he will provide for us.

The $outh Hill

Sargent Shriver’s “Love Affair with God”

This is actually quite beautiful. An amazing testimony of someone who seemingly got it right. He obviously understood, at some profound level, the concept of the Imago Dei – that every person has God's stamp on them and is incredibly valuable.

Conversion as a Process

In The Gathered AND Scattered Church, the authors write of the time Jesus spent with his disciples saying, “Their process of conversion was simultaneous to their process of discipleship.” They point this out as an example of the missionary flow functioning in the discipleship process, as contrasted with a traditional ministry flow that moves from evangelism to conversion to discipleship. Similarly, Rob told us a story one day in class of a person, not a believer, who began attending the church he pastored. They joined a small group, took part in ministry, and became involved in the life of the church. And one day, after some time, they remarked, “Oh, I guess I’m a Christian now.” For this individual, like the first disciples, they gradually came to a place of full and real conversion – belief in the Gospel – as they lived out the life of one who believes. The discipleship they experienced was the catalyst for their conversion, perhaps providing the structure and sense that enabled them, with the work of the Spirit, as well, to believe. Such an understanding of the relationship between discipleship and conversion is helpful for me personally. Furthermore, I think that it offers something valuable to the greater church. For many who were raised within the church, myself included, our experiences of coming to faith are not something that can be clearly demarcated or dated. To be sure, there are various points in my journey of faith that are distinct and memorable, seismic shifts in my understanding of our God. But, looking back on it, I have realized that I cannot remember a time when I did not believe…it is so distant in my past, so ambiguously defined. Once I was unsure and a bit uncomfortable with this, in the face of a culture that values personal testimonies and dramatic conversions. However, it now seems natural and normal, especially for one whose process of discipleship began almost as soon as I was born. Halter and Smay’s words affirms my experience of coming to faith in Christ, alongside the testimony of others with different experiences. Certainly God does bring individuals to faith in any manner or within any timeframe. Perhaps, however, the paradigm in which they two are seen as simultaneous and linked is more reflective of actual human experience and nature. – Adrienne

imagining how the church can reorient around mission