Contextualize the Message, Part 1

There is a 100 year old story (legend) told by the great Indian follower of Jesus Sadhu Sundar Singh. (A Sadhu is a Hindu ascetic.) The story is about a Brahman man—a high-caste Hindu—in India who fainted from the summer heat while sitting on a train at a railway station. Someone ran to the faucet, filled a cup with water, and brought it to the man in an attempt to revive him. But in spite of his condition, the passenger would not accept the water because it was offered to him in the cup of a man belonging to another caste. Then someone noticed that the high-caste man had a cup on the seat beside him; so he grabbed it, went out and filled it with water, returned, and offered it to the man, who now readily accepted the water with gratitude.

At this point, Sundar Singh would tell his audience that missionaries from the West had been offering the “water of life” to the people of India in a foreign cup. Therefore, they were reluctant to receive it. However, Sundar Singh was offering it in their own cup, so that they were much more likely to accept it. In other words, as an indigenous member of the Indian culture, Sundar Singh was able to offer up the Gospel in an indigenous form. Now they could understand the message within the context of their lives.

Unfortunately, the American church has mistakenly supposed that she has been communicating the Gospel in the language and the context of the culture. Perhaps, the message and methods of the early twentieth century worked back then, but for the last 50 years the strident call has been falling on increasingly deaf ears. We have not been offering the water of life in their cup. We’ve been offering it up in ours—a cup forged in modernity and revivalism, with words and idioms of a bygone era. I call it a King James message to a Stephen King world.

Meanwhile, the culture has left us in the dust, while we have become more and more culturally incestual. Some who would criticize the Amish practices of isolationist customs and behaviors are just as separatist in their traditions and programs.

The Campus Crusade tract The Four Spiritual Laws depicts a familiar picture to most Christians of an uncrossable canyon between man and God which must be bridged by the cross of Jesus. Unfortunately, before that message will be heard, there is an equally uncrossable and ever-widening gap fixed between church culture and popular culture. And it is a crevasse that must be bridged by the church.

In places and circumstances where people have been less receptive to the message of the Gospel, several scholars have tried to understand and plot the journey to faith. James Engel in his 1975 book What’s Gone Wrong with the Harvest? shares what has become known as the Engel Scale. Expanding on Engel’s work, Paul and Sue Hazelden began working on a modified Engel Scale in 2000 which is a bit more broad. It includes people who have no “God concept” at all. And, finally Frank Gray of the Far East Broadcasting Company developed the Gray Matrix that expands their work. His matrix includes not only the cognitive elements of the Engel Scale but also attitudinal aspects—a person’s receptivity to the message—on a two-dimensional model with vertical and horizontal axes.

These will not be explained here, but they can be studied separately by accessing the links provided. Believe me, they are an invaluable resource for anyone who is trying to understand the progression toward faith and how important life context is in that process. It is also a valuable tool for the church to recognize that most of its efforts will not reach to people any further away than about a negative four on the Engel Scale. And most church programs are designed for people in the “C” quadrant (higher knowledge and receptivity) of the Gray Matrix.

In part two we will include what it might look like to offer the water of life in their cup.

Immerse Yourself in the Culture

One of the mistaken assumptions of early missions from the West to “less civilized” continents was that the countries being conquered, colonized, “civilized,” and proselytized were in some way inferior to Western culture. Anyone who has ever seen the 1980 Jamie Uys masterpiece “The Gods Must Be Crazy” realizes the absurdity of that thinking. Or if you know the story of Gandhi, whose moral superiority brought the British Empire to its knees, you can appreciate the hubris of such belief.

Thank goodness and hindsight that we are now teaching new candidates a better approach to “foreign missions.” At least in most schools we are embracing the worth and the beauty of cultural diversity. And we’re teaching aspiring missionaries how important it is to immerse themselves in the life and culture of the indigenous.

However, we Westerners are slow to learn. It is unfortunate that the same antiquated 19th century kind of thinking still goes on inside the minds of people at all levels in the American church. American Christians believe their way of life to be superior in every way to those outside the church. Therefore, we continue the conquer, colonize, civilize, and proselytize mentality of our forbears.

But what if we—like our foreign counterparts—were to immerse ourselves in the culture around us? What if we were to embrace the culture outside the walls of the church? Here in America. What would that look like? I’m not advocating sin. I’m not advocating promiscuity. What I am advocating is changing the TV channel away from Christian television and to the shows that are exploring spiritual matters. Try listening to NPR instead of Christian radio.

Current shows like “Lost” or “Heroes” or “Ghost Whisperer” explore spirituality. Even the prime-time cartoon “The Simpsons” poses questions and explores possible answers to the spiritual quest of some of its characters. And has done so for 20 years! In fact, Homer’s next door neighbor Ned Flanders (fictional graduate of Oral Roberts University) made the cover of “Christianity Today.” There are myriad ways to explore the culture without indulging in immoral behavior.

More importantly, what I am advocating is sitting at table with those who will never darken the door of a church. What I am advocating is befriending “prostitutes,” “tax collectors,” and “sinners.” Does that sound vaguely familiar?

What I am advocating is creating opportunities to be a light that is surrounded by darkness. A candle adds very little light to a room brightly lit with hundreds of other intense lights. And a light hidden under the “bushel” of church walls is no light at all.

Then, beyond sitting at table, we must listen to the hearts and the voices of those who find themselves outside our exclusive circle. The inventor of the stethoscope, René Laennec, said, “Listen to your patients; they are telling you how to heal them.” Great advice for the church.

I love this quote from Earl Creps’ book Off-Road Disciplines: “Christian leaders today need to listen for the questions posed by those navigating our cultural perfect storm, regardless of the relationship of those voices to the Church. This sort of humility requires no compromise of orthodoxy but goes a long way toward defusing an often suspicious post-Christian audience, while maturing the Church in its devotion to Christ.” (p. 132)

Learning the language and immersing one’s self in the culture are the first two steps that will allow us to contextualize the message of Jesus for the people outside the church. Contextualization is the next step in the process.

Learn the Language

If you plan on being a missionary, the need for learning a new language when you move to another country is pretty obvious. One can only gain minimum credibility by speaking to natives through an interpreter. Being able to communicate in the language of the people group one is trying to reach is an imperative.

Many missionaries will tell you that about all they accomplish during their first four years in a new country is learning the language. It is a worthy investment of time, however long it takes. I can’t imagine any reasonable person who would disagree with this. Nevertheless, this is apparently only applicable in ministry outside of the United States. I mean, how could there be a language barrier here in America? We all speak the same language, right?

Well, no. We don’t.

Every week in churches all over America, pastors and parishioners are practicing and expanding upon a dialect of English which is not spoken, heard, or understood by the majority of Americans. Some call it “Christianese.” Whatever we label it, it is unmistakably a “foreign” language to the rest of the culture.

The more isolated we (the Church) have become, the more idiomatic phrases and “secret handshakes” have become a part of the common conversation inside and outside the four walls of our churches. Inside jokes and exclusive language with an “us versus them” mentality pervade our speech. It’s as though insiders have the need to develop a code that isn’t breakable by outsiders.

This is just a small example, but we had an incident early on in our experience that was a reminder to us to be diligent in “watching our language.” One week, one of our leaders led a prayer. I think it was before an offering. But he ended the prayer with these words: “And everyone said…”

So, maybe two people said, “Amen.” I was horrified. That is so much an insider secret handshake. The next week we had a leadership meeting.

I used humor and approached the subject of the transgression lightly, so that he didn’t feel scolded. But the disturbing part about pointing it out in that meeting was that not one other person on our leadership team had thought about how “insider” that phrase was. They remembered him saying it, but at the time no one else thought anything of it. But the “outsiders” who were present that day had no idea what “everyone said.”

I have found that there are two things we “churchy” people need to do in order to recognize such insider language and eliminate it from our vocabularies. First, we need to remove ourselves from the source of insider speech. For example, I used to spend 7 days a week in the church. I didn’t have time to even meet an outsider, let alone establish a relationship with someone who didn’t already “know the code.” I will address this later.

Secondly, we need to immerse ourselves in the culture of those outside our circle. That I will address next.

"Missionaries" to Tulsa

Sometimes just thinking gets me in trouble. I guess it’s not really the thinking; it’s when I open my mouth about what I’m thinking. When I was studying for the credentialing process, I started wondering: Why do pastors and missionaries go through a completely different set of courses from each other? (Am I the only guy who wonders about stuff like this?) I know that the Bible materials, the hermeneutics, the homiletics, and other things are the same. But, aren’t these two considered (in most Bible schools and seminaries) different schools, or at least different departments? Pastoral ministry on the one hand and missions education on the other?

Why?

Now, I know that I didn’t go to a Bible college or a seminary, but I have a lot of friends who did. A lot of friends. Close, personal friends. Plus, I had to take a miniature version of “Bible school” at the institute level in order to become ordained. We’re talking 33 courses on everything from church history to church polity, from Roberts Rules of Order to the most basic of doctrines—orthodoxy, and orthopraxy—with a little preaching, a little administration, and a little leadership thrown into the mix. So I have a clue.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not foolish enough to think of my education as an equivalent to that of the greatest American seminaries. I am well aware that I drew the short stick there. But, I was only required to take one course on cross cultural communications and another on world religions. And according to my unscientific surveys of friends, that’s not too far off from “real” Bible schools.

In the last 10 years, I’ve done quite a lot of self-educating in the study of missiology. (Once again, the short stick, on the short bus.) And I have been surprised at what I have learned. Your experience may be different from mine. However, after a childhood of observing shaky 16mm movies of missionaries who had turned naked African “savages” into Americanized “Christians” wearing shoes, long pants, white shirts, and ties, it wasn’t hard for even a child to see what was wrong with this picture. Needless to say, many years ago I bought into a more indigenous method. At least with regard to “foreign” missions—a method that did not violate the “Prime Directive.”

But more recently, in the starting of a new church, I came to the conclusion that while this method is being used all over the world (hopefully), it hasn’t been tried in America—at least not in the last 50 years, if ever. And, with church attendance at less than 20% of the American population on any given Sunday, it might be time to appropriate indigenous mission methods on American soil.

You can take this or leave it, since I am the “short stick” guy. But I have been working on a five step summary of the indigenous method. So, at the risk of over-simplifying, here are the basics of how one might accomplish such an endeavor. I will merely list the steps here, but I will attempt to explain each one with a succeeding blog chapter.

1. Learn the language.
2. Immerse yourself in the culture.
3. Contextualize the Gospel into the language and the culture of the indigenous.
4. Allow the Holy Spirit to draw the indigenous.
5. Empower and send the indigenous to reach their own.

I don’t like the verbiage of “strategy” when it comes to the Gospel. It objectifies the “target audience” and has militaristic overtones. But, these simple steps could certainly qualify as a broad guideline and a methodology for rethinking our approach to church and to mission in America.

Culture

It is my experience that the culture of a group of people is far greater than the sum of its parts. Now by culture I don’t mean the group’s level of sophistication. I’m not talking about its art, its combined knowledge, or its cultural anthropology. What I am referring to is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize a community. Thus, a group’s culture is more than the combination of individual personalities in the crowd. It involves their interactions with each other—their relationships. One may have a bond with another, but how is that relationship affected by the introduction of a third, a fourth, and/or a fifth person.
Interestingly, I’ve found that the larger the group, the more likely it becomes that a certain hierarchy will naturally begin to appear. And such a perceived pecking order may be determined by the simplest or the most complex of means. Things as diverse as money, beauty, position, power, and personality may affect one’s place in such an unsanctioned caste system. It is an extraordinary sociological pattern. But it is so much a part of who we are that we seldom notice or acknowledge its occurrence. However, when it is pointed out, we recognize it immediately.
For example, the wealthy get listened to. The beautiful hang together. Smart people get together to talk about smart stuff. While the shy, the plain, and the average give mental and sociological assent to the perceived worth of the perky, the beautiful, and the exceptional. And the higher up the ladder one goes, the more influence he or she wields in the shaping of the future attitudes, values, and practices of the larger group. In other words, the people at the top of the heap have the most influence on the culture.
But what if a culture could be established that would do away with the natural order of things? What if it were possible to begin with everyone in the group at the same level of influence and worth? What if money, beauty, position, power, and personality were no longer forms of measurement? And what if the poor, the plain, the lowly, the weak, and the introvert were valued as equals with them? And what if it were possible to maintain that kind of altruism? What would that look like?
I think it might look like the church that Jesus intended for us to be—without hierarchy, rank, or privilege. It might look like a people who are united despite ethnicity, socio-economic status, or gender. (Galatians 3:28) And that might lend itself to producing a citizenship which embraces everyone, regardless of their status, influence, or behavior.
What would a church be if everyone looked like priests, all with equal access to God? And what if everyone in the community were equal partners in leadership and had an identical empowerment for service? And what if the community’s meeting spaces looked more like real life places than specialty buildings constructed exclusively for the use of “Christians?” But that’s getting away from culture…sort of.
This is the premise upon which Agora was started. It was and is intended to be a foundation of love, mutual respect, and understanding.
We have found that everyone has a story. And that we have no right to judge someone if we don’t know their story. And then once we know their story, we have no need or desire to judge them. This is the power of authentic relationships. True relationship not only brings judgmentalism to an end, it also takes away the power of gossip. Because we are all invested in one another.
When a community shares attitudes, values, goals, and practices, a culture is formed. But if that culture is to be perpetuated, it must faithfully carry out its values and practices, embrace new members, and thoroughly train its progeny. That also sounds like church.
Thus, for the above reasons and some others we will enumerate, I have found that an effective ecclesiology begins with a culture, more than a doctrine.

The Big Shift

This blog entry marks a shift in focus. Previously, I have attempted to tell of the circumstances and the serendipitous events which brought about our beginnings—our “Origin of Species.” But now I will attempt to shift the focus from the past to our current condition and methodology. No doubt I will use the occasional flashback for a better perspective on various discoveries.
I have been writing this blog for two major purposes. The first is to explain to the Agora community why and how we came to be. Every family needs to know its family tree. We know better where we are, when we know from whence we have come.
The second reason I have put this to “paper” is to report to anyone who is curious how the grand experiment is going. I see it as a way to make a more legitimate “progress report” to constituents as well as onlookers than the classic format. You see, at the end of every year, I have to file a rather detailed account of our numbers—people and dollars. And, although I agree that there should be an accountability where progress—success or failure—can be measured, people and dollars (or nickels and noses) are not the best way to do it.
I have found that the only accurate way to report progress in this paradigm is for us to tell our stories. So, from this point forward it will be an ongoing report—a telling of our stories both collective and individual.
The one thread that you will see appearing both in the larger narrative as well as the smaller ones is relationship. Everything we do is geared toward developing, maintaining, and experiencing relationship—with God, with each other, and with real people. And, it is the priority of relationship that has helped us to develop the one characteristic of Agora that flavors everything else (like salt flavors food/the earth): our culture.

The Plan

On Sunday, October 31, 2004, Pastor Phil gave us the whole day to make a presentation to the church at Carbondale. On Sunday morning, we announced my resignation and provided the people a dialogue about the next generation. Our primary text came from the Old Testament book of Judges. It is an accurate description of many who live in our city today. “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10) We talked about the need to reach to people in our church-rich city who would never walk into a building full of “Christians” any more than a robber would go strolling into a police station.
That night, we talked about how we might strategize to accomplish this task. At the time, I had formulated a few ideas. By that I mean, I had read some books. So I shared some fancy power point pictures and diagrams that I had probably copied from either Ed Stetzer, Ralph Moore, or Frost / Hirsh. And we told the people of Carbondale that in the coming days they would all be invited to go with us—anyone who felt so led.
By January of 2005, we had already begun to meet weekly with a launch team that had been assembled. We also held Q & A meetings at Carbondale every Sunday night in January one hour prior to the evening service for anyone who was curious about the new endeavor. Carbondale also sent us to a church planting “Boot Camp” that helped us to clarify our vision, our mission, and our strategies.
Now, if I had it to do all over again, we would have taken a lot more time to plan and to prepare before a launch date. But we didn’t know any better. So, on Sunday morning, February 6, at 10:00 am, we gathered for the first time in the Zarrow Regional Library meeting room right across the street from Carbondale. It was, all in all, rather inauspicious. I probably sucked. I often do. But we had a couple of things going for us.
First, we had already answered “yes” to the big question: “At the end of the day, did God call us to do this?” So, there was that. But second, out of the 40 or so people who had decided to come with us, there were more than a handful of us who were determined to figure this thing out.
So maybe that’s another thing we had going for us. We never claimed to know for sure what to do or how to do it. What we found out was that we had a group of people—some of them any way—who were willing to suspend expectations and to dive into this grand experiment together. What we had was an assortment of folks who would become a community which was willing to help us develop the culture, the values, and the praxis that would become Agora.