Anglican 1000 Summit - Post #4

Tim Keller on contextualization.


Contextualization is:
- Adapting ministry to culture.
- Giving people God's answers to their questions in terms they understand; the answers are not necessarily the answers that they want to hear.
- Presenting the Gospel in terms that make it accessible/understandable (not the same as making it acceptable).


Everyone lives within a culture. It is difficult to see our own culture until we bump against different cultures.


Biblical resources for understanding contextualization:
-1 Corinthians 9:19-23. How do we keep the Gospel from being received as alien?
- There are several biblical motivations for coming to God in the Scriptures (for example, the fear of judgment, the burden of guilt, the beauty of truth, the promise of fulfilling unsatisfied longings, the desire for freedom, the attractiveness of Jesus' compassion, love, mercy).
- Compare Paul's preaching environments and his message: Acts 13 (Jewish); 14:14-17 (blue-collar pagan); 17 (philosophical/elite pagan).
- 1 Corinthians 1:22-25. Paul understands the baseline narratives of both Jewish and Greek cultures, challenges both, and then declares Christ as the fulfillment of both.


Principles of contextualization
- Getting the Gospel in the right order. Put what resonates with the culture up front. How do you get a pile of logs (truths that resonate) and stones (truths that challenge) across a river, given that you want to get all of them across? Lash the logs together and float the stones across on them. Lashing stones doesn't work.
- Finding the right emphasis. There are many images for sin and the Gospel. For example, sin is slavery, transgression, idolatry, etc. The Gospel is redemption, atonement, forgiveness, etc. Some emphases resonate more readily than others.
- Avoiding over-adapting (which dilutes the Gospel and makes it irrelevant) and under-adapting (which makes the Gospel alien and thereby equally irrelevant).


What would it look like for us to think like missionaries in our churches? Who are the people groups around us that are not part of our church and relatively unreached? What would we need to do to plant a church among them?