How We Practice Contextualization In Ministry (Whether We Realize It Or Not)

Photo Credit: DVS1mn

From Timothy Keller's Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City:

"All gospel ministry and communication are already heavily adapted to a particular culture. So it is important to do contextualization consciously. If we never deliberately think through ways to rightly contextualize gospel ministry to a new culture, we will unconsciously be deeply contextualized to some other culture.  

Our gospel ministry will be both overadapted to our own culture and underadapted to new cultures at once, which ultimately leads to a distortion of the Christian message. The subject of contextualization is particularly hard to grasp for members of socially dominant groups. Because ethnic minorities must live in two cultures — the dominant culture and their own subculture — they frequently become aware of how deeply culture affects the way we perceive things.  

In the movie Gran Torino, an older blue-collar American named Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) lives alongside an Asian family in a deteriorating Detroit neighborhood. He finds it impossible to understand the cultural forms of the Hmongs, just as the elderly Hmongs (who cannot speak English and live completely within their ethnic enclave) find Walt strange and inexplicable. But the teenage Hmong girl, Sue, is bicultural — she lives in both worlds at once. So she understands and appreciates both Walt and her own parents and grandparents. As a result, she is able to communicate persuasively to both about the other. Isn’t this the very thing we are doing whenever we present the truth of the gospel to a culture that has alienated itself from it? 

In the United States, Anglo-Americans’ public and private lives are lived in the same culture. As a result, they are often culturally clueless. They relate to their own culture in the same way a fish that, when asked about water, said, “What’s water?” If you have never been out of water, you don’t know you are in it. Anglo Christians sometimes find talk of contextualization troubling. They don’t see any part of how they express or live the gospel to be “Anglo” — it is just the way things are. They feel that any change in how they preach, worship, or minister is somehow a compromise of the gospel. 

In this they may be doing what Jesus warns against — elevating the “traditions of men” to the same level as biblical truth (Mark 7:8). This happens when one’s cultural approach to time or emotional expressiveness or way to communicate becomes enshrined as the Christian way to act and live. 

Bruce Nicholls writes the following: 

"A contemporary example of cultural syncretism is the unconscious identification of biblical Christianity with “the American way of life.” This form of syncretism is often found in both Western and Third World, middle-class, suburban, conservative, evangelical congregations who seem unaware that their lifestyle has more affinity to the consumer principles of capitalistic society than to the realities of the New Testament, and whose enthusiasm for evangelism and overseas missions is used to justify [lives of materialism and complacency]."  

Lack of cultural awareness leads to distorted Christian living and ministry. Believers who live in individualistic cultures such as the United States are blind to the importance of being in deep community and placing themselves under spiritual accountability and discipline. This is why many church hoppers attend a variety of churches and don’t join or fully enter any of them. American Christians see church membership as optional. They take a non-biblical feature of American culture and bring it into their Christian life. 

On the other hand, Christians in more authoritarian and patriarchal cultures often are blind to what the Bible says about freedom of conscience and the grace-related aspects of Christianity. Instead, their leaders stress duty and are heavy-handed rather than eager to follow Jesus’ words that “if anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35). 

An inability to see one’s own enculturation has other results. One of the most basic mistakes ministers make is to regurgitate the methods and programs that have personally influenced them. After experiencing the impact of a ministry in one part of the world, they take up the programs and methods of that ministry and reproduce them elsewhere virtually unchanged. If they have been moved by a ministry that has forty-five-minute verse-by-verse expository sermons, a particular kind of singing, or a specific order and length to the services, they reproduce it down to the smallest detail. Without realizing it, they become method driven and program driven rather than theologically driven. They are contextualizing their ministry expression to themselves, not to the people they want to reach. 

I have been moved to see how churches and ministries around the world have looked at what we do at Redeemer Presbyterian Church and how they have expressed their appreciation and have sought to learn from this ministry. But I have been disappointed to visit some congregations that have imitated our programs — even our bulletins — and haven’t grasped the underlying theological principles that animate us. In other words, they haven’t done the hard work of contextualization, reflecting on their own cultural situation and perspective to seek to better communicate the gospel to their own context. They have also failed to spend time reflecting on what they see in Redeemer and how we have adapted our ministry to an urban U.S. culture. 

Everyone contextualizes — but few think much about how they are doing it. We should not only contextualize but also think about how we do it. We must make our contextualization processes visible, and then intentional, to ourselves and to others."

Weekly Web Roundup (12/24/16)

Here are some interesting items that I saw across the web over this past week:

Am I a Christian, Pastor Timothy Keller? by Nicholas Kristof (The New York Times)

"But I don’t want to contrast faith with skepticism so sharply that they are seen to be opposites. They aren’t. I think we all base our lives on both reason and faith. For example, my faith is to some degree based on reasoning that the existence of God makes the most sense of what we see in nature, history and experience. Thomas Nagel recently wrote that the thoroughly materialistic view of nature can’t account for human consciousness, cognition and moral values. That’s part of the reasoning behind my faith. So my faith is based on logic and argument."

Why Hillary Clinton Bombed With White Evangelical Voters by Ruth Graham (Slate)

"But she [Clinton] spent little time talking about her own faith on the campaign trail, and even less time speaking explicitly to believers about theirs—the kind of uncomfortable reach that might have peeled away religious voters looking for a reason not to vote for Trump. “It was decidedly different than past campaigns,” said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College in Illinois—and a prominent observer of evangelical culture. She paid little lip service to religious freedom, for example. He pointed out that Clinton’s first campaign rally last year was held at New York’s Four Freedoms Park, named for President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms,” but she managed only to mention three freedoms there—ignoring freedom of worship. “I know a lot of evangelical leaders,” Stetzer said, “and I would say at the end of the day, most who voted for Trump probably voted for Trump begrudgingly, because they felt they had no other choice.”"

Baptist Figure Faces Backlash Over His Criticism of Donald Trump by Ian Lovett (The Wall Street Journal)

"During the presidential race, Russell Moore, the public face of the Southern Baptist denomination, emerged as one of the most persistent and high-profile conservative critics of Donald Trump. He denounced the Republican candidate’s stance on immigration and his moral character, and sharply questioned many of the evangelical Christians who supported him. That message has prompted indignation from prominent figures within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with more than 15 million members. And it has put Mr. Moore in a precarious position, as Baptists argue over the political direction of an organization with a global reach and a powerful impact on American life."

Turkey Is Unraveling by Diego Cupolo (The Atlantic)

"For months, Turkey has been unraveling. Shortly after the attempted coup of July 15, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government announced a state of emergency to remove any lingering threats from supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the exiled religious and political leader who the state blames for orchestrating the failed putsch, as well as people affiliated with the Kurdish movement. Mass purges touched nearly all job sectors, with education and the state judicial system taking the biggest hits. Anyone suspected of a crime could be held for 30 days without charge in detention centers where inmates are reportedly being tortured."

8 Holiday Traditions From Around the World (Mental Floss)

"In the U.S., we set out cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, eat potato latkes during Hanakkuh, and kiss at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. Here are eight ways countries around the world celebrate the holiday season."

Silent Night by Chewbacca

Here is a favorite Christmas Carol from everyone's favorite Wookiee, Chewbacca.

Christians & Justice in Society

Photo Credit: Cikd

As I process the results of the presidential election, the following words written by Tim Keller were brought to my mind. Keller points to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as admirable models who sought to bring about a just society in God-honoring ways, even to the point of death.

Keller says this:

"When Martin Luther King, Jr. confronted racism in the white church in the South, he did not call on Southern churches to become more secular. Read his sermons and "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and see how he argued. He invoked God's moral law and the Scripture. He called white Christians to be more true to their own beliefs and to realize what the Bible really teaches. He did not say "Truth is relative and everyone is free to determine what is right or wrong for them." If everything is relative, there would have been no incentive for white people in the South to give up their power. Rather, Dr. King invoked the prophet Amos, who said, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24). The greatest champion of justice in our era knew the antidote to racism was not less Christianity but a deeper and truer Christianity. 

The famous Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer was pastoring two German-speaking churches in London when Hitler came to power. He refused to stay at a safe distance and returned to his country to head an illegal seminary for the Confessing Church, the Christian congregations that refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the Nazis. 

Bonhoeffer wrote the classic The Cost of Discipleship, in which he critiqued the religion and church of his day. In echoes of Jesus and the prophets, Bonhoeffer revealed the spiritual deadness and self-satisfied complacency that made it possible for so many to cooperate with Hitler and turn a blind eye to those being systematically marginalized and destroyed by the Nazis. Bonhoeffer was eventually arrested and hanged. 

In his last letters from prison, Bonhoeffer reveals how his Christian faith gave him the resources to give up everything for the sake of others. Marx argued that if you believe in a life after this one you won't be concerned about making this world a better place. You can also argue the opposite. If this world is all there is, and if the goods of this world are the only love, comfort, and wealth I will ever have, why should I sacrifice them for others? Bonhoeffer, however, had a joy and hope in God that made it possible for him to do what he did."

Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

How Idolatry Leads To Spiritual Slavery

Photo Credit: Leslee Mitchell

I'm currently reading Tim Keller's book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters. Keller does a brilliant job of unpacking how often the good things in our lives can subtly turn into ultimate things in our hearts, usurping God's rightful place in our lives.

In the second chapter entitled "Love is Not All You Need", Keller shares the story of a beautiful woman he met while he was a young pastor and makes the correlation between idolatry and slavery:

"In the early days of my pastoral ministry, I met a woman named Sally, who'd had the misfortune of being born beautiful. Even in childhood she saw the power that she could wield with her physical attractiveness. At first she used her beauty to manipulate others, but eventually others used it to manipulate her. She came to feel that she was powerless and invisible unless some man was in love wither her. She could not bear to be alone. As a result, she was willing to remain in relationships with men who were abusive. 

Why did she endure such treatment? She had come to look to men for the kind of deep affirmation and acceptance that only God can provide. As a result, she became a slave to love. Nowadays we may hear someone say, "Oh, my boss is a slave master," but that is only a loose metaphor. Some bosses can make things hard on you, but real slave masters know no boundaries. They can literally do anything they want to you - beat you, rape you, or even kill you. In the same way, we know a good thing has become a counterfeit god when its demands on you exceed proper boundaries. 

Making an idol out of work may mean that you work until you ruin your health, or you break the laws in order to get ahead. Making an idol out of love may mean allowing the lover to exploit and abuse you, or it may cause terrible blindness to the pathologies in the relationship. An idolatrous attachment can lead you to break any promise, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance, in order to hold onto it. It may drive you to violate all good and proper boundaries. To practice idolatry is to be a slave."

Anything in our life can become an idol when it gets elevated from just being a good thing into an ultimate thing. Whether its a relationship, work, money, food, comfort or any other host of things, idols are those things that take God's place in our lives. And once something becomes an idol in our heart, we then become a slave to that idol.

How The Gospel Radically Affects Our Relationships

Photo Credit: Gerry Balding

The men's small group Bible study that I'm a part of through our church is nearing the end of our time in Tim Keller's Galatians study. Pastor Keller has the ability to help the biblical text come alive in a way that speaks right to the heart. I also think his understanding of what the gospel (good news of Jesus) represents is unparalleled.

Look at what he has to say about how a true understanding of the gospel will affect how we view ourselves and our relationships with others:

"The gospel creates a whole new self-image (Galatians 5:26, 6:3-5) which is not based on comparisons with others. Only the gospel makes us neither self-confident nor self-disdaining, but both bold and humble. Because of the gospel, we neither earn our worth through approval from people nor through power over people, so we are neither overdependent on others, nor afraid of commitment and vulnerability. That works itself out in relationships with everyone. 

The gospel is the only thing that addresses conceit, the vain-glory. To the degree I am still functionally earning my worth through performance (i.e. to the degree I am still functioning in works-righteousness), to that degree I will be either operating out of superiority or inferiority. Why? Because if I am saved by my works, then I can either be confident but not humble (if I am living up) or humble but not confident (if I am not living up). In other words, apart from the gospel, I will be forced to be superior or inferior or to swing back and forth or to be one way with some people and another way with others. 

I am continually caught between these two ways, because of the nature of my self-image. But the gospel creates a new self-image, as we have seen previously. It humbles me before anyone, telling me I am a sinner saved only by grace. But it emboldens me before anyone, telling me I am loved and honored by the only eyes in the universe that really count. So the gospel gives a boldness and a humility that do not eat each other up, but can increase together. 

We have seen previously that there are two equal and opposite errors that oppose the gospel: “legalism” and “antinomianism” which we can call here “moralism” and “hedonism." How does the gospel provide a “third way” in relationships?  

Moralism often makes relationships into a blame-game. Why? The moralist is very consciously trying to earn salvation through performance, and that includes relationships. Moralists must maintain a self-image of being “a good person.” Now some moralists do so by laying the blame on others, by being very judgmental and by always insisting that they are in the right. There is a lack of teachability, humble admission of error or listening. But moralists can also play the blame-game by laying the blame on themselves. Moralists can “earn their salvation” and convince ourselves we are worthy persons through being very willing to help others. This kind of self-salvation superficially makes the moralist look very open to listen, very humble, very teachable. 

But this can be co-dependency, a form of self-salvation through severely needing people’s approval or through needing people to need you (i.e. saving yourself by saving others). So moralism works through either blaming others or blaming yourself. Either way, it makes relationships torturous.  

On the other hand, hedonism reduces relationships to a negotiated partnership for mutual benefit. Hedonism says: “A relationship is fine as long as both people are helping each other reach their goals.” But as soon as a relationship entails major sacrifice, the hedonist labels it dysfunctional and bails out. (There are dysfunctional relationships but only when the sacrifice is being done out of needy selfishness and not out of fullness of love.) So, for the hedonist, you only relate to another as long as it is not costing you anything. So the choice (without the gospel) is to selfishly use others or to selfishly let yourself be used by others. But the gospel leads us to do neither. We do sacrifice and commit, but not out of a need to convince ourselves or others we are acceptable. So we can love the person enough to confront, yet stay with the person when it does not benefit us... 

Outside the gospel we are either confident (if achieving) or humble (if failing), but in the gospel our new self-image produces a bold humility that changes all relationships. Without the gospel, your self-image is based upon living up to some standards — whether yours or someone’s imposed upon you. If you live up to those standards, you will be confident but not humble. If you don't live up to them, you will be humble but not confident. Only in the gospel can you be both enormously bold and utterly sensitive and humble, for you are both perfect and a sinner! Paul shows us that this new, unique self-image changes all relationships. “Don’t be conceited — provoking or envying each other.” (Gal.5:26). 

Because we are humbled by the gospel, we don’t “provoke” or approach anyone with a sense of superiority. Because we are powerfully loved in the gospel, we don’t “envy” or approach anyone with a sense of inferiority. The gospel keeps us from being either codependent on, or independent of, people. Both approaches are essentially selfish ways to earn our value through relationships. Now we do not need to have people serve our needs nor to serve theirs. So we are free to sacrifice and commit, but also to love the person enough to confront."

This gospel is the good news that "we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” (Tim Keller)

Tim Keller On Understanding Old Testament Law

Photo Credit: Brett Jordan

In this post, Pastor Tim Keller offers a good perspective on how we can best understand the Old Testament as it pertains to moral law, human sexuality and its relationship to the New Testament. In viewing the Bible  as a consistent story, the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament begin to become more clear in light of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross.

Understanding this helps to explain why Christians are not necessarily being inconsistent when certain laws of the Old Testament are followed and others are not.

A highlight:

"Once you grant the main premise of the Bible—about the surpassing significance of Christ and his salvation—then all the various parts of the Bible make sense. Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed. Because of Christ the church is no longer a nation-state imposing civil penalties. It all falls into place. However, if you reject the idea of Christ as Son of God and Savior, then, of course, the Bible is at best a mish-mash containing some inspiration and wisdom, but most of it would have to be rejected as foolish or erroneous.

So where does this leave us? There are only two possibilities. If Christ is God, then this way of reading the Bible makes sense and is perfectly consistent with its premise. The other possibility is that you reject Christianity’s basic thesis—you don’t believe Jesus was the resurrected Son of God—and then the Bible is no sure guide for you about much of anything. But the one thing you can’t really say in fairness is that Christians are being inconsistent with their beliefs to accept the moral statements in the Old Testament while not practicing other ones.

One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question—“Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?” If you are asked, “Why do you say that?” you could respond, “If I believe Jesus is the the resurrected Son of God, I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice, and I can’t offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.”

To read the rest of Keller's post please click here.

Christianity and Justice in Society

I am taking a seminary class this summer on the subject of Apologetics, which is essentially the defense of the Christian faith through rational thought. I've been reading a number of books and articles in conjunction with the class and one of the authors I've enjoyed the most is Rev. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York.

I appreciate Keller's thoughtful and sincere thinking as it pertains to doubts about the Christian faith and highly recommend his book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. I've already quoted him on this blog a couple of times recently but I just finished the chapter entitled, "The Church is Responsible For So Much Injustice," and appreciated Keller's response to this legitimate question.

Keller argues that the greatest critique of so-called Christians that have done evil in the name of Christ has not come from those outside the Church but has come directly from Christianity itself. In formulating his response to this question, Keller offers several examples of Christians who actively led in the crusade against the injustices of their day and even gave their lives as a result.

Notable are the models of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"When Martin Luther King, Jr. confronted racism in the white church in the South, he did not call on Southern churches to become more secular. Read his sermons and "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and see how he argued. He invoked God's moral law and the Scripture. He called white Christians to be more true to their own beliefs and to realize what the Bible really teaches. He did not say "Truth is relative and everyone is free to determine what is right or wrong for them." If everything is relative, there would have been no incentive for white people in the South to give up their power. Rather, Dr. King invoked the prophet Amos, who said, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24). The greatest champion of justice in our era knew the antidote to racism was not less Christianity but a deeper and truer Christianity."

"The famous Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer was pastoring two German-speaking churches in London when Hitler came to power. He refused to stay at a safe distance and returned to his country to head an illegal seminary for the Confessing Church, the Christian congregations that refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the Nazis. Bonhoeffer wrote the classic The Cost of Discipleship, in which he critiqued the religion and church of his day. In echoes of Jesus and the prophets, Bonhoeffer revealed the spiritual deadness and self-satisfied complacency that made it possible for so many to cooperate with Hitler and turn a blind eye to those being systematically marginalized and destroyed by the Nazis. Bonhoeffer was eventually arrested and hanged.

In his last letters from prison, Bonhoeffer reveals how his Christian faith gave him the resources to give up everything for the sake of others. Marx argued that if you believe in a life after this one you won't be concerned about making this world a better place. You can also argue the opposite. If this world is all there is, and if the goods of this world are the only love, comfort, and wealth I will ever have, why should I sacrifice them for others? Bonhoeffer, however, had a joy and hope in God that made it possible for him to do what he did."

In order for injustice to be addressed, we don't need Christianity to be abolished. What we need are more followers of Jesus that are fully devoted to living as He lived with love, truth, compassion, courage and grace. The Christian faith is not tied to a particular political party or the exclusive property of a specific ethnicity or culture. It is not a hateful, arrogant faith. Jesus himself said that others could tell who His true followers were by the fruit that was produced in their life. And the fruit that he said should be most evident? Love.

Tim Keller on Suffering

From the chapter, "How Could a Good God Allow Suffering", from Tim Keller's book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism:

"For the one who suffers, the Christian faith provides as a resource not just its teaching on the Cross but also the fact of the resurrection. The Bible teaches that the future is not an immaterial "paradise" but a new heaven and a new earth. In Revelation 21, we do not see human beings being taken out of this world into heaven, but rather heaven coming down and cleansing, renewing, and perfecting this material world.

The secular view of things, of course, sees no future restoration after death or history. And Eastern religions believe we lost our individuality and return to the great All-soul, so our material lives in their world are gone forever. Even religions that believe in a heavenly paradise consider it a consolation for the losses and pain of this life and all the joys that might have been.

The Biblical view of things is resurrection - not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater."

Tim Keller on the Miracles of Jesus

From Tim Keller's book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism:

"Jesus's miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: "See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!" Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order.

The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus's miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming."