Deepening Your Focus Through Research (Focus Series 6 of 6)

How am I going to analyze this group well? In missionary work, mission organizations especially those people reaching unreached people groups, they'll send teams of people over to unreached people groups and all these teams will do for sometimes a summer or something a year, they'll just ask questions, and they'll learn their language and they'll ask questions of how they think, why they do what they do, what are their values underneath, what are their beliefs underneath that? What's their worldview?

Often, in world missions, that initial inroad into examining that people group and doing those studies and then developing a people profile that the missionaries can use is just a vital part of cross cultural missions. That's your world now. That's not just the world of the unreached peoples. I'm going to present to you here very briefly, a research process to deepen your understanding of the culture that you're seeking to serve.

Step number 1, demographic inquiry. Step number 2, what I call sociographic inquiry. Your objective is to learn all you can about the characteristics of the people living in your community. Community demographics provide valuable clues to the social life and patterns you will be exploring in step 2 which is the more critical step. You don't have an advanced team from Wycliffe to go in and do this work for you.

You search for demographic data. Population trends, ethnic groups, age distribution, marital status. There's a host of resources here. Time for a pop quiz. Approximately how many people currently reside in this area? Number 2, over the next 5 years, how is the population expected to change? Number 3. What predominant lifestyle groups are in your community? Affluent families, young incoming, rural families, seniors, urban? What ethnic groups are projected to grow the fastest during the next 5 years? What's the average annual household income? What percentage of households with children are headed by a single parent? What percentage of people age 25 and older have completed college? What percentage of households have no religious involvement at all?

If you're like most people taking this training, you'd be doing great if you could answer 50% of these. Scripture says, live with your wives in an understanding way. Husbands, study your wives. Exegete your wives. Live with them accordingly. Exegete your cities. 2, you know these people; God has called you to serve them. You study them. The next one, after demographic inquiry is sociographic inquiry. Beneath all the demographics of your community are the social lifestyles and patterns that are an expression of their beliefs, values, and worldviews.

Sociographic inquiry involves deliberate types of inquiry to uncover those lifestyle and patterns. Here are four examples: observing, asking, listening, and serving. Observing images, lifestyle, social patterns, life and media. What are the geographical barriers? In almost every culture, there's a difference on one side of the river than the other. The old saying in North America used to be what side of the tracks are you from? It transcends culture. What side of the mountain are you from? It's travel patterns used by people in your community. Social barriers. Community ethnic differences. In North America, church planters have often learned what they call the 20 minute rule, that your ministry focus group is a 20 minute travel time. They're willing usually not to go beyond 15-20 minutes it's fascinating for church planters to do that sociographic inquiry even in terms of geography and social patterns. That's observing. 

Asking. The more you ask rather than tell, the more you learn. You move into that culture. You ask people about things you observe. You ask non-Christians and Christians. Compare their responses. Consider doing structured interviews.

Listening. In addition to listening carefully whenever you ask, there are other situations where deliberate listening can be rewarding and insightful. Listening to causal conversations, forms of public media, attending key community events.

This last one that you've heard me talk about earlier, and that's serving. Serving others should be a time of both giving and learning. It's your opportunity to benefit from all the other types of inquiry, via observing, asking, and listening as a way of life.

The word that John uses that he came and he tabernacled among us. He lived among us. This is why I am a proponent of what's called tentmaking. Actually moving to a community, getting a job in that community, getting a good reputation (which is one of the definitions of an elder or a church planter), building meaningful authentic relationships. Not this utilitarian approach, I'm going to build a relationship so you can join my church, but actually having your heart checked that you love people well whether they follow Christ or join your church or not. Then, of course the dream, you do evangelism, you start a small group, that small group grows and develops, it multiplies. Pretty soon you have a core group on your hands with a dream of evangelizing and discipling other people. Dream of gathering together and worshiping and you've got the DNA there. There's no exegesis of a community like entering the community following the model of Jesus and actually taking on that culture and becoming one of them. It's almost unparalleled. The purpose of sociographic inquiry is to help you understand more deeply the behaviors, beliefs, values, and worldviews that dominate and shape your community. Then you're better equipped to develop your new church ministries in light of this understanding, so as to maximize the impact of the gospel on your ministry focus groups 

There are two types of societal sin patterns I would encourage you to explore. One I call diagnosing societal crookedness, and the other one I call diagnosing societal idolatry. You should be able to answer this question. What are the unique ways that this particular culture or ministry focus group has been made crooked? What are the greatest areas of societal darkness that exist in my ministry focus group because of sin? Is it injustice, is it poverty, hunger, sickness, is it materialism, prejudice, oppression, racism, murder, shame, hedonism? What is your sense of the societal crookedness that God has actually called you to bring a gospel centered church, to bring good news in word and deed, in light of this brokenness to bring wholeness. In light of this darkness to actually bring light in word and deed. If you can't tell me what that brokenness is, then you can't tell them what good news you have for them that will actually be spiritually radioactive.

Not only diagnosing societal crookedness, diagnosing societal idolatry. Acts 17, "While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols." A good church planter is distressed because he sees that his ministry focus group is full of idols. When you come to your city and you plant a church there, a kingdom outpost in the domain of darkness, you are coming with a simple ancient message. Turn from your idols to the living God. You're drinking water that's sewer water. You need to drink water from a well that never runs dry. Turn from your idols to the resurrected and ascended Christ. He alone can satisfy your thirst.

In order to plant a church that results in gospel transformation of human hearts and surrounding culture, the planter must learn how to diagnose not only the unique social crookedness, but also the unique societal idolatry. What do they look to for happiness in life other than relationship with God through Christ? What is it? Is it pleasure? Is it control? Is it comfort, is it power, is it approval? How are these unique societal idols reflected in their behavior? What does this tell you about their core values? Why they do what they do. Their worldview.

Becoming a student of the people that God is calling you to serve means understanding not just their behaviors and their worldview but understanding their hearts. Basically what are they looking to for significance and security that only Christ can ultimately give them? Can you answer that question? Do not give up until you have answered that question as best you can correctly, and you continue to study and exegete the culture as well as the Scripture.

Clarifying Who You Are Called to Serve (Focus Series 5 of 6)

As you probe to learn more about the cultural context in which you will establish your church, a profile of the people you are seeking to serve begins to emerge.

Normally, people profiles in the past have only been done on unreached people groups, by cross-cultural missionaries. Today, church planter training 101, you need to do a people profile. It used to be that just missionaries would do people profiles. The wider the gap between the culture of your past and the culture of your ministry focus group, the more difficult and the more important it is, for you to have a deep understanding of these people.

Through the people profile, you are finding answers to the three primary questions that are the essence of your mission statement.

1) Who are you called to serve?

2) What are their greatest needs?

3) How will your church help meet these needs?

This is something you do now, but this is something you should never stop doing. It's almost like the person who does scriptural exegesis when they're in seminary and then they never do it again. The person who does cultural exegesis when they start a church plant and they never do it again.

What I've given you here are some sample ministry people profiles from North America that I've just kind of randomly, subjectively chosen to show diversity of people groups in a North American context. Notice the first one, New York City urban professional. Extremely bright. These are highly proficient. These are usually experts they have years of counseling, self analysis. They're very sexually active. They are absorbed in their careers. They have a liberal social conscience. They are commitment weary. They're phobic. Very private, individualistic. They're somewhat lonely. Experienced numerous transitions. Highly secularized if they have two or three religions or spiritual systems. A very deep mistrust of organized religion and especially evangelical Christianity 

Isn't it interesting how negative that people profile is and how positive the impact of this particular church has been on the city? Be sure to make the connection there, because there was great intentionality in understanding who these people are. What they are adverse to, what they are drawn to, what they are repulsed by. That was a key to their own understanding of what would shape their ministry.

Look at Southern California: suburban professional. One is an urban professional, this is a suburban professional. Well educated, likes profession, likes where they live. Health and fitness are high priority. Family. These kinds of things. Notice the next one, a multiracial center city. Then a small center city professional. My encouragement to you is to look over these four. Just as seed thoughts. By developing a first draft people profile, you then need to begin answering the question, what are their greatest needs? You need to be acutely aware of the kinds of the kinds of things that deeply burden the people in your ministry focus group. Do you know their major artery bleeds? Basically, do you know the things that keep them up at night?

As you begin to develop your people profile and determine their needs, I want you to use just this classic grid. What are their greatest physical or economic needs? Don't think that because someone is upper middle socioeconomic that they don't have needs. They're just in incredible debt and it's actually crushing them. It's one of the number one issues that destroys their marriage. There are needs across the spectrum. It's not just food and shelter.

What are their greatest social emotional needs? What are their greatest mental educational needs? What are their greatest spiritual moral needs? You're beginning to think deeply through different perspectives. I want you to put on the lens of the physical and the economic. Then you put on the lens of the social, emotional needs. The mental, educational needs. The spiritual moral needs.

When the needs of your ministry focus group have been more clearly understood, you should then start exploring practical ways that the gospel in word and in deed could begin helping to meet these needs. How do you learn to weep over your own Jerusalem? Incarnationally, you come alongside them.

I want you to actually be thinking, what is uniquely good news to them? How does the good news of the gospel show itself uniquely to them in light of their specific woundedness? In light of their brokenness? In light of their darkness? In light of their unique crookedness? What is uniquely spiritually radioactive about the gospel to them? What good news do you bring them in light of the things that keep them up at night?

Through the emerging ministry of your new church, you should always be exploring practical ways that the gospel can help straighten that which is made crooked by sin, ways the domain of darkness can be pushed back through the light of the gospel. How is the ministry of the gospel the ultimate solution to all their needs both personal and social? What will be good news, uniquely to them? How will your church help to meet these needs?

What you're doing is seeking to contextualize the gospel in this unique context. The problem is, frankly, most church planters are answering questions that their ministry focus group is not really asking. Most church planters are offering ministries that usually are not connecting with the real needs of the people in the ministry focus group.

What are most church planters doing? They're normally doing what they have had done to them in their church. They're just basically repeating their model that was in another culture, often in another generation or even a previous generation.

The gospel is the ultimate solution to everything, both personal and social, but most of the time that's just a trite slogan. Here is where a church planter says, "Okay. How is this true with these people? One size doesn't fit all." You've got to recognize what is the brokenness, what are the needs.

Yes, you always emphasize prayer and evangelism and those kind of priorities on the upfront. But in terms of the ministries that you have in light of infiltrating, contextualizing, and becoming incarnational, frankly it depends. It depends on what their needs are. It depends on what their brokenness is.

Understanding Your Cultural Context: Part 2 (Focus Series 4 of 6)

2) the Reached Dimension. Are these a reached people, a people with enough churches to reach the remaining people with the Gospel, usually more than 2% evangelical? Or are these an unreached people, a people without enough churches to reach the remaining people within their culture or people group unless there is outside cross-cultural assistance, usually less than 1% to 2% evangelical Christians? These are the less-churched.

This is a very significant question. You need to pass through this doorway when you're doing church planting. Many people don't realize there are about 17,000 people groups. There's another definition of people groups that would take it all the way up to 27,000 in the world today. Almost everyone agrees there are about 7,000 plus unreached people.

Yes, there are believers normally in their midst, but there are not enough believers that without cross-cultural, outside assistance, they cannot reach the rest of their people. They're an unreached people. Japan has about 126 to 130 million people, 36 groups, 23 are unreached, 64% of them are unreached. To put it another way, less than one half of 1%, the largest whole number is zero (if you want to call it a whole number) in Japan are evangelical Christian

The question that everyone I think should wrestle with is, "Am I to plant churches among the unreached?" That was the apostle Paul's passion. He said basically, at the end of Romans, in Romans 15, he said, "My work is finished in the civilized, Mediterranean world." Basically, "I'm on to Spain, where Christ has not been named." I don't want anyone considering going into church planting not to at least prayerfully consider at least one time what their role might be in cross-cultural church planting among unreached peoples. Those are called Paul-type church planters.

There are Timothy-type church planters who are in reached people groups. What they're doing is mobilizing people to be radical goers, and they can have an equal or greater impact on unreached peoples by having a vision for the unreached among the reached. It's not like an A-team and a B-team. It's an issue of giftedness and calling.

3) the Developmental Dimension. By developed, what I mean here, more advanced in industrial capacity, technology, sophistication, economic productivity, and a developing culture is less. Basically, a developing culture is poor. A developed culture is more rich. Most people don't realize that most of the church today is made up of people of color who are poor. The question becomes, "Where are you called? Are these people mono- or cross-cultural? Are they reached or unreached? Are they developing, are they majority, or are they minority world?"

Another classification, 4) the Receptivity Dimension. Are they responsive to the Gospel? Are they considered to be generally receptive to the Gospel, or considered to be generally resistant to the Gospel? In terms of the northeast, in America, most people would say, "The northeast and the northwest, very hard soil. The more south you go, the more receptive the soil often is."

In terms of globally, there are two missionary graveyards out there globally. One would be the hard soil of a nation like Japan. Japan has been historically called the Missionary's Graveyard. Then there would be the Islamic resistant cultures.

The question becomes a question of calling, "Am I called to go or am I called to send?" Remember there are three kinds of questions: Radical goers, radical senders, and the disobedient. If you're not going, then where you do go, you are committed to sending. I pray if you're in a church that's not among the resistant peoples of the world that you would not devalue reports that come back that say, "Not one baptism this year." It took people willing to continue to seed and pray, and seed and pray, and seed and pray, and guess what happened in Korea? It became one of the major sending nations of the world. Our vision is not for Japan to be reached for Christ. Our vision is for Japan to become a sending nation to all the nations. That's the vision.

How about 5) the Geographical Dimension? Are you called to a city center, the central part of a city, to an urban area, a city or intensely developed area, suburban, situated on the edge of a city, ex-urban, lying beyond the suburbs, often inhabited by the wealthy, rural, the countryside, as opposed to the city, or other? It is true that the apostle Paul did have a strategy to go to major metropolitan areas as areas of influence.

There is a wisdom in going to the city centers, but there is also a great danger of actually not even knowing… I've seen this, I've seen people get caught up in this, not even knowing how they're trusting in their city platform, and in their arts, and in their cultural influences. They're actually less Christ-dependent than when they began, because of their strategic platform.

Capitalize on general revelation and truth like the concept sociologically that cities influence cultures profoundly, but do it with great wisdom. Do it with an acute awareness of its danger. Do it without devaluing those who go to the little cities and towns as somehow being out of the true will of God. People just get really excited, and they go right to the city. There's only one problem. They weren't born in the city. They weren't raised in the city. They don't understand the city. But man, are they excited about a city vision.

Okay, lastly, 6) the Generational Dimension. It is fascinating, whatever culture you go to, you can see the younger generation, you can see the middle-aged generation, and you can see the older generation. The question becomes, "Which one are you in, and which one are you seeking to reach?" As you look at the sixth dimension comparisons here, the wider the gap between the ministry focus group that your church is or will be and the context from which you have come, the more deeply you need to understand these dynamics.

One of the greatest mistakes that church planters make is not understanding these kinds of dimensions and these kinds of dynamics, Gospel, church, culture, not understanding these six dimensions.

What I want you to do with this information now is I want you to have a sober reflection on your gifts, your calling, your background, and the uniqueness of your ministry focus group, and the degree of similarity and dissimilarity, and be able to answer the question whether or not you have been gifted and called to this degree of cross-cultural ministry that you've listed.

Understanding Your Cultural Context: Part 1 (Focus Series 3 of 6)

Most church planters are gifted and called to start churches in a cultural context that is recognizable because it is similar to the culture from which they've come. Most church planters plant churches in cultures that are similar to the culture they've been raised in. When called to plant a church in a dissimilar culture, developing an integrated understanding of the gospel church and cultural contexts becomes a much greater challenge.

It almost comes, we might say naturally or intuitively. It's like they know the culture and they might not be able to write it out, or describe it, or have terms for it, but they just intuitively know it. It is very natural and very organic, but it's when you're moving into the cross-cultural dimension you need to be more alert and aware of the specific components that we're speaking of.

In particular, you need to understand what we call 6 dimensions. It is almost like an assessment of yourself and your ministry focus group in 6 particular areas or dimensions in order to help you recognize the extent of your similarity and dissimilarity with your ministry focus group. You need to be aware of these 6 dimensions. Let me name them for you.

1) Is your ministry mono or cross-cultural?

2) Is your ministry to reached or unreached people?

3) Is your ministry to developed or developing people?

4) Is your ministry to responsive or resistant people? 

5) What is the geographical limitation or dimension of your ministry.

6) What is the generational dimension of your ministry in terms of the 3 to 4 generations in a particular culture?

One of the top mistakes church planters make is not being aware of the similarities and the dissimilarities that exist in these six dimensions.

Let's look at them one at a time, and you use this as a time of personal assessment. After each dimension, I want you to select a description that best defines the ministry focus group your church plant is or will be serving, and that best describes the culture from which you have come. "The ministry focus group my church plant is or will be serving is..." and then you talk about which aspect of that dimension. 

Then notice "the culture from which I come is..." which aspect of that particular dimension. There is nothing wrong with having a different answer. "The church is this but my culture is this." It just makes you aware of those areas where you need to focus with more specificity in terms of having an impact. Being ignorant of this dissimilarity is very dangerous.

1) Is your ministry going to be mono-cultural? Is your ministry focus group is more of a single homogeneous culture or will it be cross-culture? More of a mix of two or more cultures? Examples here would be different ethnicities, languages, socioeconomic, education. Think for just a moment about your ministry focus group. Is it more mono-cultural or is it more cross-cultural. Now, we've got to be very careful when we start talking about the different between multicultural and multi-ethnic.

We talk about this more under philosophy of ministry, but let me just give you a quick heads up. The old line is, I had been in search for decades for the multi-cultural church. I haven't found it yet. Most churches that are considered to be multi-cultural, when you examine them closely they are mono-cultural but multi-ethnic. Meaning they are different ethnicities but they share a common cultural ethos that is not necessarily one of their ethnicities.

For instance, Redeemer Church in Manhattan when you go to Redeemer Church you will see a lot of Asian people, a lot of Anglo people, you'll see different ethnicities. And people say, ah it's a multi-cultural church. No it's not. It is a mono-cultural church that is multi-ethnic.

In other words, no matter what ethnicity you find in that church they're almost all Midtown Manhattan educated types. They are just different ethnicities, so they share a culture that is not tied to their ethnicity, so they're mono-cultural although they are different ethnicities. What you need to understand, as soon as possible, is what do you see as the make-up of your church. Will it be multi-ethnic? Or will be more monolithic? What we're not saying here is that anyone is ever excluded from any church. Every church shows the welcoming love of God to everyone who comes near the church, either gathered or scattered.

The question is, who are those people who will have the minimum number of barriers to the gospel in light of who you are and who the people are in your particular church plant? We want one barrier. We want the barrier to be the cross. We don't want any other barrier.

I have a friend named Doug who does church planting in the hood up in North Eastern United States. It is a total African American area and it is Afrocentric, and it's very different than a lot of African Americans who are not Afrocentric.

The idea of accusing Doug because he understands that his ministry focus group is primarily Afrocentric African Americans who love their heritage and don't want to go to a multi-ethnic church, and there is not even one available to them; to say that he is guilty of the sin of prejudice or favoritism is wrong. It is just like saying that would be wrong of a missionary going into a culture where you don't even have the capacity to reach beyond these people and God has planted you here.

I want you to be thinking right now, what is your answer to that question? What does the cultural dimension look like?

Transformational Ministry Dynamics (Focus Series 2 of 6)

You must become a lifelong, in-depth student of three things. Here I want you to see three new concentric circles regarding this concept of contextualization. I want you to see the culture component, that's one circle, then I want you to see the church component, and then I want you to see the gospel component.

Being an in-depth student of the gospel, an in-depth student of the culture, and an in-depth student of who you are, and what is the makeup of your church in that particular culture.

Sometimes there is a shocking dissimilarity when a third-party comes into a church and the pastors or the church leaders jaws just drop open when they realize the radical dissimilarity between their little subculture that’s like an island in that geographical area, and the surrounding culture is radically dissimilar much more than they realized.

When these three areas are properly understood and converge in ministry, normally the result is transformation of both people and culture.

Church planters are often activists by nature, and they tend to ignore or neglect the serious study of the unique culture to which they been called to serve. This seems to be especially true of church planters in the Western world. Through my studies at Fuller School of World Mission, I became familiar with Charles Kraft’s teaching on anthropology. Here's the key quote where he drives home this concept: “historically, Westerners [and is true frankly is true of all people, all people are by nature the technical term is ethnocentric]. 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 a relationship with God have therefore usually made little or no overt reference to the cultural waters in which humans exist.

The key is not only to pursue a greater understanding of your culture, the gospel, and your church independently of each other, but also to integrate those understandings so they converge in transformational ministry. So let me show you how this has worked itself out in frighteningly scary ways, and is still happening today and you will have a propensity to fall prey to one of these particular classic errors in church planting or in pastoral ministry if you're not on guard.

The first one, classic example, someone who really knows the gospel, someone who really not just knows the gospel, but somebody that knows and has the pulse of the culture, has exegeted Scripture well, and exegeted culture well, but they don't have a church-centered ministry paradigm. The church, defined as the Protestant Reformation defined the church, where there is the preaching of sound doctrine, the proper administration of sacraments, and the key, the concept of discipline, meaning elders who have spiritual authority to oversee the purity of the doctrine and who is admitted to baptism and the Lord's Table. You can have the gospel down, you can have the culture exegeted well, and you can have a churchless form of Christianity and actually tragically miss the mark.

Our secular cultures are not atheistic, they're very, very spiritual, and the church is actually not a part of this, it's very Western rugged individualism advocating a new form, which is basically knowing the gospel, and knowing the culture, and living it out individually. That is churchless Christianity. That is a danger.

I'm a big advocate of organizations like Wycliffe, and Campus Crusade, and Young Life, and these kinds of groups, but para-church can become so set apart from the church that it’s not alongside, it’s totally independent. “Para” means alongside, and those organizations normally are alongside. It's a church-centric mission, it’s a church-centered vision that is often at risk today. So that would be Gospel and culture minus church, equals churchless Christianity.

Number two, church plus gospel. Very committed to the church, very committed to the gospel, just clueless as it comes to understanding culture. We know the gospel, we love Jesus, we lift him up, we love Christ’s church. Understand the world? Are you kidding? That would be worldly to even understand the world, just clueless in terms of understanding culture. This breeds what's called cultural fundamentalism, often in evangelicalism. It's the sense that the world is like a building on fire, that the culture’s like a building on fire, and the only the only relationship we would have with the world is running in there like good firemen and snatching people from that world that’s going to ultimately burn up while we are disembodied spirits forever worshiping Jesus. There's a disengagement with the culture that breeds an isolationism, a separatism, sometimes called cultural fundamentalism. And notice the dynamic: the first dynamic, we got gospel, we got culture, we don't have church. That's a risk. Second risk: we've got the church, we’ve got the gospel, we don't really get culture. That's fundamentalism, isolationism.

Then there are those who really get the church, who really understand the culture, they just don't understand or get the gospel. Quite frankly, it's just like another religion. Earn your way to heaven by good social works and come to church, and this is classically called liberalism, whereas, the other one is called, traditionally, fundamentalism.

And of course, the task before us is a radical commitment to understanding the gospel, the church, and the culture, the result of that is transformation. Transformation not only of human hearts but transformation of culture.

I'll bet you if we had time, I could ask every one of you listening to this to tell me a story, tell me a story of one of these categories. But what’s most significant here and terms of the old Greek axiom, “know yourself,” is which one of these three areas is your heart and soul compass more prone to than the others.

If you can't say, “I am more prone to this,” then you’re at risk. In this training module, our primary focus is to help you gain a better understanding of the unique culture of your ministry focus group, and yourself. In the next training modules, we’ll go into depth regarding ways the church and the gospel can and should transform the surrounding culture. But this module is an introduction to the philosophy module where we’ll study contextualization in much more depth.

Focus Introduction (Focus Series 1 of 6)

This is our module on focus, and the key question in this module is: how well do I know my focus group? Another question to help you understand the essence of this module is, what are my ministry focus group’s greatest needs.

A previous professor of mine, David Hesselgrave, wrote a book called Planting Churches Cross-Culturally. I would like to have you look at this quote: “Before we can get on with the task [meaning the task of church planting] we must decide on definite areas and peoples that will become the foci of our immediate attention and labors.”

One of the fundamental problems with much of our study concerning church growth is that principals are studied without incorporating them into a plan for reaching a specific target area. In a very real sense, the task does not become clear until we decide the questions of whom and where.

Now in this church planting collection up to this point, you could have coasted in terms of a lot of the applications, but from this module all the way to the end of the collection, it is critically necessary for any of this to make sense or to apply, for you to have either a real or a hypothetical church plant in mind in a particular geographical area among a particular ministry focus group, as the rest of the principles and the concept we’ll be talking about won't make sense unless you have a particular ministry focus group or context and culture into which you can apply the principles.

This article will address the church planters need to have a deep understanding of the unique culture into which the church is being planted. Historically, this has been the problem of a large degree of Western missionaries who have gone to plant churches among other nations and other cultures and people groups, in that they have either imposed Western values and Western behaviors on to the culture at a superficial level, or they have attempted to develop incarnational ministry and not gone deep enough.

That's been one the most serious problems with the Christian missionary movement. There was a propensity for them to not be as aware as they needed to be of how much Western cultural baggage they were carrying with them into these other cultural contexts.

The concepts that we're studying in this particular session called “Focus” used to be for people who were preparing for cross-cultural ministry and not mono-cultural ministry. In other words, this material used to be for missionaries and there was another set of material that was used for church planters. There is no such dichotomy anymore; the materials are exactly the same.

With the insurgence of postmodernism, and with the secularization of the Western culture, all church planting by its nature is cross-cultural. The concept that used to be critical or you couldn't make it in a cross-cultural missionary context, if they're not understood you don't make it in almost anyplace in the world today.

If you could picture in your mind concentric circles and the outer circle is what we would call the “behaviors of the people” in your ministry focus group: what they eat, how they dress, how they wear their hair, how they talk, what their customs are, etc. There's the behavior circle, and the essence of the focus module is how do we have truly incarnational ministry in terms of our identification- to the Jew, I’m a Jew, to the Greek I’m a Greek, to those under the law, under the law, to those not under the law, I’m not under the law that I might win some.

And how do you contextualize without falling prey to syncretism, without compromising the gospel? And so we’ve got this dichotomy of a commitment to sound doctrine, and a commitment to contextualization. If there is ever not a tension, then you're probably a risk; you’ve gone to one side or the other.

Hudson Taylor, for instance, when he went to China, he dressed like the Chinese. So that's the contextualization- I'm going to eat like they eat, if they go to coffee shops, I’m going to go to coffee shops, if they dress a certain way, if they wear their hair a certain way, that's the behavioral. I don’t want to minimize it, but it's the superficial. It's the external. It's the concept of behavior.

The question then becomes: what is it that drives those behaviors? The next concentric circle are certain values. People dress a certain way, eat a certain thing, follow a certain custom, because they have certain values that drive the behaviors.

Why do people have certain values? They have certain values because there are some core beliefs that are truths or what they perceived to be truth, that shapes the values that actually shapes how they act and react in their behaviors in life. And a huge breakthrough in missions in this last generation is recognizing that beneath beliefs is a core set of beliefs that has actually been set apart from within beliefs called worldview.

There is a worldview that is at the core of our beliefs, and the concept of worldview is basically the answers that every culture gives to what we call “ultimate questions of life” that transcend every generation, that all human beings in any culture developing or developed are asking. They are questions origin, they are questions of evil and suffering, they are questions of what is our hope for the problem of evil and suffering, and there's the ultimate question of what lies beyond. Is there anything that lies beyond?

And so a worldview is at the very core of our beliefs about the ultimate questions in life, and our beliefs affect our values, and our values drive our behaviors. If you're going to be having a ministry of the gospel that goes beyond mere external behavioral modification but it's truly transformational, then your task as a minister of the gospel is to understand that culture way beyond their behaviors, but their values that drive the behaviors their beliefs the drive their values, and their core worldview underneath their beliefs, and how the gospel actually applies.

When you think of it at the very core, the question of origins, where did everything come from, in the Gospel, that's the doctrine of creation. There's an infinite personal God who exists, he's created everything that is. Why is there evil and suffering? Why are things the way they are? Things are not the way they're supposed to be because of the fall of humanity into sin. What is the hope? The hope is that God has solved the ultimate problem of the ages in Jesus Christ, and that hope is found not in a set of propositions that people seek to keep to earn God's favor, but that hope was found in a resurrected and ascended person who will one day make all wrongs right.

That’s the hope of redemption, and what lies ahead is not a neo-Gnostic disembodied experience in the afterlife but a very earthy experience of this ascended Christ is returning and he's going to make all things new. Where there is injustice, there will be no more. Where there is pain, there will be no more suffering, and our bodies will be united with our souls where we will worship and we will serve forever on the new earth with a new body.

That's good news, and that actually speaks to the ultimate questions of every culture, and out of that come beliefs and values that have a profound impact on behaviors. At the very heart of church planting ministry is infiltrating a culture and seeking to exegete not just the word that’s what church leaders are normally trained to do. They’re trained to exegete the word but not the world. Exegeting God's word is important, but if you don't have it exegete God's world and then apply God's word to God's world in a way that shows the preeminence of Christ over humanity in every sphere of life and answers the fundamental questions of every race of humanity in every generation, then you've lost the battle from the very beginning.

We are not only interpreters of God's word but interpreters of God's world.