In God’s redemptive plan, He intentionally created cultural distinctiveness. God is on the side of culture!  Ethnicity and cultural diversity will transcend all eternity.

The goal of God’s mission today is not to eliminate cultural distinctiveness. 

We’re called instead to appreciate the uniqueness and diversity of cultures as a reflection of His image and for His glory. 

But God also calls us to influence and transform the sinful behaviors, values, beliefs and worldviews within a culture. 

That’s Contextualization 101.

Let’s take a moment to consider what this means. As stated in the Lausanne Covenant

“Because man is God’s creature, some of his culture is rich in beauty and goodness.  Because he is fallen, all of it is tainted with sin and some of it is demonic.”                                

There is a tendency in some church traditions to emphasize the depravity of man and the depravity of the world, over and against the dignity of man and the beauty of the world.

In other traditions it's just the reverse. Both of these dynamics are normally at play. Some of mankind’s culture is rich in beauty and goodness. Some is tainted with sin.

There are some who downplay any cultural differences, saying that they want to practice a de-contextualized, pure form of Christianity free of cultural distinctives that differ from culture to culture. But, as Tim Keller has said;

 

“There is no universal, de-contextualized, a-historical form or expression of Christianity.  Jesus didn’t come to earth as a generalized being.  By becoming human, He had to become a particular human.  He was male, Jewish, working-class.  If he was to be human, he had to become a socially and culturally-situated person.”     

There is no such thing as Christianity apart from a culture. There is no such thing as an a-cultural Christianity. It's not possible!

If it were, the eternal son of God, when he took on humanity, would have become an a-cultural being. Not black. Not white. Not Asian. Not Latin American. But a-cultural.

But he took on humanity through the culture of a Middle Eastern working class Jewish man in the first century—speaking Aramaic, dressing in that unique way, eating that food, worshipping in the synagogue in Nazareth.

The Incarnation of the Son of God was a contextualized act.

Divine Genius of Christianity
And so, Contextualization is unavoidable in church planting and development. In fact, every form of Christianity must adapt to aspects of its surrounding culture in order to understand it and communicate with it.

This is what has been called the Divine Genius of Christianity, which is modeled for us by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9.23

“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

So unlike other religions that must impose their unchanged ministry styles from a foreign culture and age on people today, Christianity is able to adapt its ministry styles to the unique culture and age of the Ministry Focus Group they are trying to impact—all the while preserving the one unchanging gospel that is true for all generations.

But in Christianity you can have a biblical church, a healthy church, faithfully manifesting the five biblical purposes, and the styles you use for these purposes can be so dissimilar in one part of the world that you wouldn't even hardly recognize it in another part of the world.
This why church ministry styles often look very different according to cultural context.

A church plant in city-center Tokyo, Japan will have very different Ministry Styles from a church plant in rural Senegal, Africa. 

And a church plant among the elderly poor in rural Bangladesh will have very different Ministry Styles from a church plant among wealthy, young people in urban Sao Paulo. 

The beauty and genius of Christianity is that, although churches may have dramatically different Ministry Styles, they can all faithfully carry out the same biblical purposes of the church – Worship & Prayer, Learning & Discipleship, Fellowship & Community, Outreach & Evangelism, and Mercy & Concern. 

Our goal is to contextualize without compromise…to be catalysts and facilitators for the development of these biblical purposes among a particular people group, without compromising the gospel.

 

Contextualize without Compromise

Church leaders need to be aware of two opposite and equally dangerous errors:

under-adapting or they over-adapting to culture…toward what's called ethnocentrism or syncretism.

<We introduced this basic concept in the earlier Philosophy lesson and described it there as the two Ministry Stances of “Cultural Embrace” where we risk losing the message to Sycretism and “Cultural Defiance” where we risk losing the audience to Isolationism.>

Ethnocentrism (Cultural Defiance) is the belief that one's own culture race or nation is superior to all others. The view that one's cultural ways of doing things is the correct and only way. The tendency to judge the behavior of people in other cultures by the values and assumptions of our own.

As Sociologist Charles Kraft has stated;

“Historically, westerners (like nearly all people) have tended to treat culture like we treat the air we breathe. We simply assume its existence and ignore it. Those who have taught and written on our relationship with God have, therefore, usually made little or no overt reference to the cultural waters in which humans exist.”

The other danger is Syncretism.

Syncretism (Cultural Embrace) is “The mixture of meanings from the respondent culture with new meanings from Scripture in such a way that the essential nature of each is lost.  The contamination of Christian faith, ritual, or beliefs through incorporation of inappropriate cultural components.”

Again, as Charles Kraft has written: “It is possible to go too far to the relativistic extreme advocated by most secular anthropologists...Our commitment to Christ requires that we see culture as context and instrument rather than as an end in itself.”   

Between these two dangers lies the very difficult goal: Contextualization without Compromise. Contextualization of the gospel to a culture always involves two things, Adapting and Challenging.

•       Adapting certain aspects of the culture into your ministry.  This involves embracing and learning from the culture as you seek to adapt to it (I Corinthians 9:22-23).

•       Challenging certain aspects of culture by your ministry.  This involves contending for the truthfulness of the gospel in the culture (Jude 3).

Ministry Styles must be developed in a way that is consistent with the principles and assumptions of the indigenous culture while remaining true to the foundations of Scripture.

In the rest of the articles you’ll be developing these ministry styles for your church.

Reminder of Earlier Discussion:

•       Which of these two extremes is the greatest danger to you?

•       What is one practical example of something that could help your church better engage the culture but might make them (and you) feel uncomfortable? Are you more at risk here of Cultural Embrace or of Cultural Defiance?