There is a trendy new buzzword floating around our mission and church-planting circles these days that I hope is more than just a trend.  As you probably guessed from the title of this article, the word is “contextualization” and it is often misunderstood. 

     Opinions about contextualization range from those Christians who criticize it as nothing more than a selling out of the Gospel through cultural conformity to those who are all too eager to jump on the contextualization bandwagon because to them it represents the “cutting edge” of church growth and missions.  In reality, contextualization should not be simply equated with the notion of “seeker-sensitivity” and it unwise to blindly reject it is under the label “worldly compromise.”

     A deeper understanding of the concept of contextualization is needed if we are truly to appreciate its value to church-planting missions and embrace it in our mission fields.  It is not just about how we do outreach or how we package Christian spirituality.  Rather, contextualization is profoundly connected to God’s plan to receive eternal glory through His redeemed Church.

What is Contextualization?

     Missiologist Dean Gilliland says that the goal of contextualization “is to enable, insofar as it is humanly possible, an understanding of what it means that Jesus Christ, the Word, is authentically experienced in each and every human situation” (2000, p. 225).  Alluding to John’s Gospel, chapter one, he goes on to explain that the “Word must dwell among all families of humankind today as truly as Jesus lived among his own kin.”  The question we must ask as church-planting missionaries is what would Jesus look like if He were incarnated in our mission fields?  What would His first followers be like?  The earliest first century churches tended to bear a strong resemblance to Jewish synagogues; if Jesus had started the Church in your neighborhood, what would it have looked like?

     Of course, incarnating Christ and Christianity in your mission field is more than just a matter of external packaging or style.  Not only the form but also the content and practice of Christian spirituality must be shaped by church-planting missionaries and new local believers into a truly indigenous, or “home-grown”, expression of Jesus Christ, His Church and His message.  Writes Gilliland,

The gospel is Good News when it provides answers for a particular people living in a particular place at a particular time.  This means the worldview of that people provides the framework for communication, the questions and needs of that people are a guide to the emphasis of the message, and the cultural gifts of that people become the medium of expression.

     Who is your mission field?  Are you trying to reach African-American youth, new Hispanic immigrants, postmodern young adults, white-collar professionals, Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims?  What are the questions they are asking?  What would they say are their deepest needs?  How do you see the image of God uniquely reflected in their lives and culture right now?  How can you help them to understand the Gospel as truly Good News in light of their situations?  What should it look like for these people to follow Jesus, the Word made flesh?

     In short, contextualization is about making Christianity the spiritual heritage of a particular people.  In some sense, the Christ-follower is always a foreigner (Phil. 3:20), but too often non-believers view Christianity as simply not for people like them.  In my own mission field, which is made up primarily of South Asian Hindus and Muslims, Christianity is seen as the religion of the West.  Indians or Pakistanis who become Christians are often thought of as betraying or turning their backs on their cultures and families.  This, of course, presents one of the greatest unnecessary barriers to reaching the unreached anywhere.  To be sure, the new believer should turn away from sin and false gods and turn to the Lord Jesus, but as a church-planting missionary I believe that one of my divine mandates is to demonstrate that a person can be truly Christian and truly Indian or Pakistani. 

     As we work in the Lord’s harvest field, our prayer should be to see whole cultures and peoples coming to Christ and reflecting His glory in their own unique way.  Christianity is not a product of 20^th century suburban-America or post-reformation Europe or even of first century Palestine.  Christianity is the result of the eternal Word taking on flesh and dwelling amongst us.  Today, Jesus longs to make His dwelling among every people and nation, tribe and tongue (Rev. 5:9).  He longs to take on flesh in your mission field.  This is the business of contextualization, and contextualization is the business of church-planting missionaries.

References:

Gilliland, Dean.  “Contextualization.” In The Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, edited by A. Scott Moreau.  Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000.