Missions Textbook 51 Contextualization and Syncretism

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

Ever since the first Christians began to be witnesses of the Gospel “. . . in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8), there has been a tension between making the Gospel understandable to other cultures and changing it slightly to make it more acceptable. The apostle Paul told the church members in Corinth that he restricted his own freedom in Christ: “that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). What Paul did not say was that he weakened or changed the Gospel by adding or subtracting something from it in order to make it more palatable to those to whom he preached. He was, in fact, doing what cultural anthropologists call Contextualization. Contextualization is wrapping the Gospel in cultural packaging, without changing the message of the Gospel, for the purpose of making it understandable in that culture. Learning the language will help in this process.

Syncretism, on the other hand, is wrapping the Gospel in a cultural packaging that changes the message, for the purpose of making it less offensive in that culture.

The whole book of Galatians is Paul’s rebuttal of a heresy that added something – good works – to the Gospel to make it more acceptable to the unsaved Jews. Syncretism changes the fundamental core of the Gospel. This false gospel is unable to save a person. Galatians 1:6-9 makes this very clear.

I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from Him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to change the good news about the •Messiah. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone preaches to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!

Syncretism occurs when the basic elements of the Gospel are replaced by religious elements from the host culture. This is designed to make the Gospel less offensive and more acceptable to the people of that culture. The missionary has to understand three contexts: the Bible’s context, the missionary’s context, and the target culture’s context. The missionary has to do his best to teach the Bible context, contextualizing it into the target culture’s context, while guarding against filtering the Gospel through the missionary’s context. Not easy! Every generation of missionaries has faced this problem.

The problem with changing the Gospel is that the warped message will not change people. Only the simple Gospel can do that. Human worldviews are inherently wrong. As discussed earlier, a person’s worldview is wrapped like an onion with three layers covering it up. The Core Assumptions built into a person through culture dictate a person’s Beliefs of what is true and false. These Beliefs determine a person’s Values of good and bad. These Values, in turn, affect a person’s Behavior, i.e., visible actions. The Holy Spirit uses the Gospel to challenge a person’s Core Assumptions about God, humanity, sin, righteousness and judgment.

An adulterated Gospel will only affect a person’s Beliefs, Values and Behavior, none of which address the issue of repentance, which is a change in a person’s Core Assumptions. It is possible for a person to change some beliefs and values and actions, but still not repent of sins.

If the message focuses only on an immediate change of action, like “stop sleeping with your girlfriend,” then only temporary identification with “Christianity” is achieved. If the message focuses only on the external forms in the culture, then long-term identification will only affect the rituals and activities in the culture, like what songs to sing and whether they should dance or not. If the unsaved nationals only obey a set of rules advocated by the missionary, then no permanent identification with Jesus has been achieved.

If the message focuses only on the values in the culture, such as women’s rights, then long-term identification will only affect the social life of the culture.

If the message focuses only on what is true or false, based on false assumptions about reality (multiple gods, man is basically good, etc.), then there will be no need for repentance of sin.

If the message is directly related to the worldview, like monotheism and the deity of Jesus and his bodily resurrection and repentance from a person’s sin and shame, then long-term identification with Jesus (not with a vague definition of “Christianity”) will result in regeneration and total identification with Jesus. Anything less than regeneration comes from syncretism.

Examples:

1) Contextualization: Floyd and I attended a church in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the pastors wore black robes and the parishioners could light candles if they liked. Otherwise, the Gospel was preached clearly, and these concessions to the Russian idea of religious culture did not detract from the messages that came from the pulpit.

Syncretism: In her book, Crying Wind makes it very clear that the religious rituals in the Native American religion are to worship spirits other than God. There is no place in the life of a believer or in a Christian worship service for those rituals.[1]

2) Contextualization: Believers in different cultures pray in different ways, some standing, some sitting, some kneeling.

Syncretism: Praying the rosary is an important part of Roman Catholicism. A new believer has to realize that no inherent holiness flows from the beads into the heart. Missionaries might see no problem with a new believer continuing to pray the rosary, but not understand that the younger believer still believes that praying it can save her.

3) Contextualization: New believers need to learn the new name of their God and Savior. But they might have other ways of talking to Him. I learned very quickly that God was addressed in German using the familiar pronoun. After all, He is our Father.

Syncretism: Missionaries might be tempted to tell people that Allah and Buddha are just other names for the Christian God

4) Contextualization: Allowing the new national believers to write their own hymns and praise songs to God. After all, in the early 1900’s, Billy Sunday and Ira Sankey set their new Gospel songs to the tunes that were already familiar to the people – sometimes even bar tunes.

Syncretism: Insisting that the national believers sing the translated hymns and praise songs from the missionary’s home country, with the western melodies.

E. Stanley Jones, who served as a missionary in India, “. . . shunned any effort to align Christianity with Western civilization, believing rather that Christ should be interpreted by the Indian people according to their own customs and culture . . .. One of the greatest detriments to growth of Christianity in India, he believed, was the presumed relationship between Christianity and Western civilization, and missionaries were the culprits in perpetuation of this ill-advised union.”[2]

Adoniram and Ann Judson served in Rangoon, Burma. They rejected the British, out-of-the way mission house that had been provided for them by the agency. They built a Zayat on a well-traveled road. A Zayat was a Burmese open shelter open to anyone who wanted to rest or discuss or listen to teaching from gurus. They attended a nearby Zayat to familiarize themselves with seating patterns, etc. Within a very short time, they were packed out! They baptized ten converts in their first year. The new converts were extremely active in bringing their unsaved friends to the Christian Zayat.[3]

Principles for Contextualization

  • Learn the language, and never stop learning the language.
  • Learn the culture by accepting the good aspects as different, not dumb or wrong. Learn the evil parts of a culture and reject them in order to avoid syncretism.
  • Choose to live between the extremes of the culture. If people live in small houses, do not live in a mansion nor in a tent. Eat the nationals’ food, but do not eat excessively more or less than the nationals. Use their transportation. Don’t drive a Mercedes in a destitute country. Don’t ride a bicycle when everyone else is driving cars. Wear clothing that the nationals expect you to wear. Blend in without disappearing. Moderation in all things.
  • Look for contextualization opportunities in all aspects of the culture.
  • Music. Fall in love with their music.
  • Art. Study it. There are clues to the culture behind art. Look beyond the art galleries, if the culture has them. Even villagers exhibit art.
  • Recreation will reveal aspects of the culture’s worldview not visible through other avenues. Does the country have national teams or tribal teams?
  • Education. How does the culture educate its children? Curriculum? Administration and Teachers? Are there Teacher’s Associations? Can you get involved in one? Extra-curricular activities for the children and parents?
  • Literature. Learn the culture’s myths and fairy tales. How can you explain the Gospel through their literature? The Apostle Paul used secular Stoic literature in his message in Athens (Acts 17: 28). Mark, Paul, and the writer of Hebrews wrote to respond to the literature of their day.[4]

If you are interested in working with Muslims, you need to read about the C1-C6 descriptions of the different approaches to contextualization within the Islamic world. There has been a lot of debate over this issue.

“A Biblical Critique to C5 Strategies Among Muslims.” http://www.edsmither.com/uploads/5/6/4/6/564614/martin_ems_2012.pdf

The E-Scale

Ralph Winter[5] developed the use of the E-Scale and P-Scale to illustrate how believers communicate the Gospel across cultures. These graphs simply show the cultural distances between the believers and the receivers of the gospel and what it requires of each.

The E-Scale represents the cultural distance that Christians need to go when sharing the gospel. The E-Scale moves from the church to the people.

E-0 Evangelism. E-0 evangelism is evangelism that simply takes place within the church. This reaches out to those who already take part in local church activities, like school evangelism, Christmas plays, etc. The Christian does not need to leave his own culture or cultural boundary, because the receiver is already inside his culture. This usually targets children who haven’t heard the Gospel and lukewarm believers to motivate them to get serious about their faith.

E-1 Evangelism. E-1 evangelism takes places outside of the church, but to the same culture. This reaches out to non-church-goers, but those who hold the same cultural views and practices as the believer, and they speak the same language. This usually targets those in their own culture who have not accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. The unbeliever will fit comfortably in the cultures of the churches of the believers who are reaching out to them.

E-2 Evangelism. E-2 evangelism reaches out to people of similar but different cultures. The target people may or may not speak the same language, but they have different cultural backgrounds. This usually includes people the believer might meet in a short-term mission trips. The believer will stumble across the fact that his culture differs from the culture of those he is attempting to reach. The believer needs to recognize that some aspects of his culture have nothing to do with the Gospel, and that some of those aspects of his culture could get in the way of properly presenting the Gospel to his target people. Some examples could include food, clothing, language, etc. The focus of this approach will be to help the target people build their own church within their own culture.

E-3 Evangelism. E-3 evangelism take the Christian message to cultures very different from that of the believer’s culture. This reaches out to those who have never heard of Jesus or who have a cultural resistance to Christianity. Local churches are seldom able to carry on this type of outreach, except in the sending out of missionaries to those cultures. These missionaries need to strip away their own culture that is attached to the Gospel and attempt to present the Gospel solely through the culture of their target people. The culture of the planted church will reflect the culture of the target people.

Most churches today, of any culture, never go beyond E-Zero evangelism. Some E-0 churches do make forays into E-1 evangelism.

The P-Scale

The P-Scale moves from the people to the church. It reverses the E-Scale. The P-Scale represents the cultural distance potential believers must move in order to join a church.

P-0: People who are “at home” in a local church setting. There are no cultural barriers to belief. These people have not repented and trusted Jesus for forgiveness and eternal life. Their social culture, however, exists within the church. P-zeros would feel out of place without their church culture. John the Baptist reached out to p-zeros (E-0 evangelism) when he told them to produce fruit that demonstrated their repentance. These people needed to change their hearts, not their culture.

P-1: People who could “fit in” at a local church with some adjustment. (1 barrier to belief, the micro-culture of the churched). These people do not know or use church vocabulary. They are seldom familiar with church life and church activities. They are, however, of the same cultural framework of the local churches and likely speak the same language. They have many common points of interest and concern: sports, food, clothes, entertainment. Usually, p-ones are unfamiliar with the church, and some have some antagonistic feelings towards church culture.

P-2: People who would have to sacrifice themselves culturally to belong to a local church, requiring a significant loss of friendships and family ties. (2 barriers to belief; culture itself, and the specific church culture as well). These people would have to cross cultural barriers of race and identity and language in order to join a local fellowship of believers. They are very unlikely to do that. When a p-two hears of Jesus, he may even develop high regard for Him, but he cannot become Jesus’ disciple without being rejected by his own natural community. Faith in Jesus will mean immediate and possibly life-threatening persecution.

P-3:  People for whom there is no local church they could understand or in which they could reasonably participate. (3 barriers to belief; language and communication, culture itself, and the micro-culture of the local church). The most obvious and immediate example of p-threes are indigenous tribes who have never heard the Gospel and whose culture has never developed a local church.

How is this important to obeying the Great Commission? Because there are so many different cultures in America today, a local church simply cannot effectively reach out to all of them. The churches within a culture need to focus first on reaching their own people in their own culture (E-0 and E-1), and second, on reaching out to one other different culture (E-2). If the church has the resources, they should send out a missionary to an E-3 culture. E-2 ministry will include having believers learn the language and culture of their target people, and eventually helping the target people start their own church with their own culture. Working with other churches in an E-2 ministry could be advantageous to everyone.

Questions to help clarify the distinctions

  • Why do churches get stuck in E-0 paradigms?
  • How does your local church fit within these E & P paradigms?
  • What needs to be improved or what opportunities are there for improvement?
  • What cultures exist within the reach of your church?
  • Is there anybody in your church who feels drawn to any specific people, language or culture near your church?
  • Is your church leadership open to an E-2 ministry developing from your church?
  • How can YOU influence such a ministry?
  • How you would teach John 1:29 in an Eskimo culture.
  • Define the Gospel, then ask yourself: how many-unorthodox beliefs does Jesus allow someone to hold before allowing them to enter heaven?

[1] Crying Wind, Crying Wind, (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1980), 175-176.

[2] Ruth A. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 330.

[3] Tucker, 135.

[4] Floyd E. Schneider, Mark Challenges the Aeneid, (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 182-184.

[5] Ralph Winter, “Finishing the Task: The Unreached Peoples Challenge,” https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/19_4_PDFs/winter_koch_task.pdf

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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