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ADVANCING THE GOSPEL INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
Part III : Context sensitive
by Tim Keller, Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church

The following is the third of a four-part article by Tim Keller, based on his plenary remarks at the 2003 annual meeting of the Mission America Coalition. The first two parts were presented in the December 2003 issue, and the fourth will follow in April 2004.

CONTEXT SENSITIVE:
The Principle of Contextualization (Acts 16:1-5) This is the third crucial principle of ministry for the 21st (and the 1st!) century.

1. What does contextualization mean? To use this word could get me into a mine-field. Contextualization can, unfortunately, be used to mean that one's interpretation of Scripture is as valid as any other. Or, it could mean that every interpretive community has a perspective that helps us see aspects of God's self-disclosure that other communities cannot in themselves see or hear. That's better. But as a practitioner of ministry, I see contextualization is adapting my communication of the gospel without changing its essential character.

2. Examples in Acts: Acts 13:16ff and Acts 14:14-17. Examples of how Paul adapts to new cultures abound in Acts. They are literally everywhere. Even Jay Adams, fairly rock-ribbed conservative in everyway, wrote a book Audience Adaptations in the Sermons and Speeches of Paul. In Acts 13 we see Paul sharing the gospel in a synagogue to those who believed in the God of the Bible, and in Acts 14 we see him sharing the gospel to a pagan, blue-collar crowd. The differences and similarities are striking. a) His citation of authority is very different. In the first case he quotes Scripture and John the Baptist. In the second, he argues from general revelation--greatness of creation. b) They differ in emphasis of content. Hard to miss that with Jews and God-fearers he ignores doctrine of God and gets right to Christ; with pagans here and Acts 17, he labors the very concept of God. c) Finally, they differ in even the form of the final appeal--how to 'close' with Christ--is different. In Acts 13:39 Paul speaks of the law of God and says, essentially: "you think you are good, but you aren't good enough! You need Christ to justify you." But in 14 he tells them to turn from "worthless things"--idols--"to the living God" who he says is the real source of "joy"--he, not material things--is the real source. So he is saying, in effect: "you think you are free--but you are not! You are enslaved to dead idols." d) Despite all these very profound differences-- (1) Both audiences are told about a God who is both powerful yet good (13:16-22; 14:17), (2) in both he tells the hearers they are trying to save themselves in a wrong way (moral people by trying to obey the law 13:39 and pagans by giving themselves to idols and gods that cannot satisfy 14:15), and (3) both tell hearers not to turn to some scheme of performance, but that God has broken in to history now to accomplish our salvation. Even the speech of chapter 14, which was a spontaneous outburst, though it doesn't mention Christ directly, still points to the fact that salvation is something accomplished by God for us in history, not something we do.

Acts 16:1-5. Another fascinating example of contextualization is Paul's circumcision of Timothy so as not to offend those he was trying to reach. The juxtaposition can't be accidental. Though Paul has just fought vehemently against mandatory circumcision for believers, he circumcised Timothy out of sensitivity to the culture of the people he was trying to evangelize (v.3) It is a remarkable case of discerning between abiding principle and cultural practice. If anyone would have felt circumcising was intrinsically a wrong thing for a believer to do, it would have been Paul--who just fought a crucial battle for the gospel itself. Yet immediately he shows the difference between abiding principle and cultural practice. He knows that while the gospel of grace is an absolute--the practice of circumcision is culturally relative.

3. There is no 'non-contextualized' 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. So the minute we begin to minister we must 'incarnate', even as Jesus did. Actual Christian practices must have both a Biblical form or shape as well as a cultural form or shape. For example, the Bible clearly directs us to use music to praise God--but as soon as we choose a music to use, we enter a culture. As soon as we choose a language, as soon as we choose a vocabulary, as soon as we choose a particular level of emotional expressiveness and intensity, as soon as we choose even an illustration as an example for a sermon--we are moving toward the social context of some people and away from the social context of others. At Pentecost, everyone heard the sermon in his or her own language and dialect. But since Pentecost, we can never be 'all things to all people' at the very same time. So adaptation to culture is inevitable.

This is not relativism! "No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way--but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture." (D.A.Carson) It is important to keep the balance of this statement! If you forget the first half you'll think there is only one true way to communicate the gospel. If you forget the second half you'll lose your grip on the fact that nonetheless there is only one true gospel. Either way you will be ineffective in ministry. Paul does not change the gospel--but he adapts it very heavily. Sure this opens the door to abuses, but to fear and refuse to adapt to culture opens to abuses of the gospel just as much! The balance is to not, on one hand succumb to relativism nor, on the other hand, think contextualization is really avoidable. Both are gospel-eroding errors.

Missionary strategy then consists of two parts: a) On the one hand, be sure not to remove any of the offensive essentials of the gospel message, such as the teaching on sin, the need for repentance, the lostness of those outside of Christ, and so on. b) On the other hand, be sure to remove any non-essential language or practice that will confuse or offend the sensibilities of the people you are trying to reach. The key to effective mission is to know the difference between essential and un-essential.

If we over-adapt to a culture we are trying to reach, it means we have bought in to that culture's idols. For example, we may take a good theme (e.g. "the freedom of the individual" in the West--which fits with the "priesthood of all believers") and allow it to be an idol (e.g. "individualism" so our church can't do pastoral accountability and discipline).

If, on the other hand we under-adapt to a culture, it means we have accepted our own culture's idols. To the degree a ministry is over or under adapted, it loses culture-transforming power.

The gospel is the key to contextualization. Remember that religion leads to either pride (if I am living up to standards) or inferiority (if I am failing to live up to standards) but the gospel makes us both humble and confident at once. This makes us contextualizers! If we need the approval of the receiving culture too much, it shows a lack of gospel confidence. If we need the trappings of our own culture too much, it shows a lack of gospel humility. Gospel humility directs us to neither hate tradition nor be bound to it. It is proud to imagine that other Christians did not find much grace in past 'contextualizations' and therefore we do not ignore tradition. But it is also proud to think that new cultural trends have no grace in them and that former cultures were all more spiritually pure. Thus we adapt.

[When] the church had lost track of an important element in the saving work of Christ and was teaching that believers are justified not by faith but by being sanctified...as a result it became very easy for the church to revert to an Old Covenant lifestyle....Uneasiness about justification [by grace alone] produced a flowering of asceticism reflecting an unconscious need for lists of clean and unclean activities and a rebirth of Pharisaism. .....Thus [those] who are not secure in Christ cast about for spiritual life preservers with which to support their confidence, and in their frantic search they not only cling to the shreds of ability and righteousness they find in themselves, but they fix upon their race, their membership in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical patterns, and their culture as means of self-recommendation. The culture is put on as if it were armor against self-doubt, but it becomes a mental straightjacket which cleaves to the flesh and can never be removed except through comprehensive faith in the saving work of Christ. Once faith is exercised, a Christian is free to be enculturated, to wear his culture like a comfortable suit of clothes. He can shift to other cultural clothing temporarily if he wishes to do so, as Paul suggests in 1 Cor.9:19-23, and he is released to admire and appreciate the differing expressions of Christ shining out through other cultures. (Richard Lovelace, --The Dynamics of Spiritual Life, (IV, 1979) p. 190-1, 198)

4. Finding the balance. This raises a huge issue--sometimes called the 'homogeneous unit' principle. Are we going to 'target' some groups of people over others? How do we justify that? Paul's example again helps.

On one hand, Paul did focus on groups he thought strategic. Acts 16:13-"on the Sabbath, we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there." Expected! How did Paul know a group of women would be down there? Lots of good studies on this. Paul had enormous success among 'God-fearers' (Gentile adherents to Biblical faith) in every town. They were 'key'. On one hand, they already had rudiments of Biblical world view--you could get right to Christ in a major way without (as Acts 14, 17 pagans) working on the most elementary and basic doctrines of God. On other hand, they were Gentiles, not Jews, with automatic, deep, personal relationships to the majority Gentile pagan population. In short, Jews were culturally distant from the community; the pagans were theologically distant from the Biblical world-view. The God-fearers were thus a great "stewardship" of ministry time. The key place to start, best stewardship, the best way to gather a core--was to find the God-fearers. Why did he go looking at the river. He would have immediately discovered that there was no synagogue in town, which meant that there were not 10 Jewish men in the city. So he looked for female-dominated prayer meeting. He got to town and made inquiries to discover it. He did not simply walk in and raise his voice in the streets. He was strategic.

Yet: Paul was trying to reach everyone. All through Acts 13-19 we see that Paul was clearly after everyone. He went to the synagogues to reach the religious. But he reasoned in the market place with the intellectual elites and he even hired out the Hall of Tyrannus to have open dialogues with pagans of all classes.

Summary: I think the answer is this. Yes, we can 'target'. 'Contextualization' is unavoidable. You yourself have 'incarnated' Christianity into a culture. As soon as you choose a language to preach in and illustrations and humor--you've contextualized. You are 'closer' to some people and 'farther' from others. And it is also right to have a heart for a certain people group and seek to serve and win them over others, in an effort to make sure that the new church's leaders come from this group. But, we must also seek to make our churches as mixed income and multi-cultural as possible. That is the Biblical mandate. At 'intake', as we initially seek to love and win people with the gospel, a certain amount of homogeneity is necessary. It would be nice if non-Christian people would not care about cultural differences, but people cannot be sanctified before they are justified!

To communicate the gospel one click too legalistically or too lawlessly--and to over or under adapt to the culture--is how a ministry becomes ineffective. If you could minister...

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