THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN GOSPEL COMMUNICATION

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A Paper

Presented to

Dr. Daniel Sheard

Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary

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In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Course

GLST 650 Intercultural Communication and Engagement

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by

Allen J. Battle

M.A. Western Seminary, 1997

May 10, 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OUTLINE 1

INTRODUCTION 1

CULTURE AND WORLDVIEW 3

CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW AND CULTURE 4

INCARNATION AND CONTEXTUALIZATION 5

CHALLENGING WORLDVIEWS 8

THE GOSPEL’S EFFECT ON CULTURE 14

CONCLUSIONS 15

INTRODUCTION

We hear a lot today about tolerance. Every religious point

of view is valid and none should be challenged. The arguments of

modern day relativism are designed to coerce Christians into

conceding the spiritual battle for men’s souls. What we believe

about the fundamental issues of life have serious consequences in

this world and in the world to come. For the Christian, the core

of his purpose and the central meaning of life is found in the

Great Commission.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority inheaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I

have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, ESV)

. The Great Commission is about saving men’s souls from an

eternity in Hell apart from the presence and love of God. In

order to fulfill this commission as followers of Jesus, we need

to become “world Christians.” This term has become common

currency in the modern missions movement, but in the 70’s, it was

new. David Bryant defined it this way,

World Christians are day-to-day disciples for whomChrist’s global cause has become the integrating, overriding priority for all that He is for them, in then, and through them. Like disciples should, they have actively investigated all that their Master’s Great Commission means, and then built a way of life that prepares them for action in it.1 (emphasis mine)

This paper will focus one aspect of what it means to prepare

for action. It will show the necessity of understanding culture

in its multitudinous manifestations around the globe in order for

us to communicate the gospel effectively to those people. It

means preparing ourselves to see the world as others see it in

order to effectively introduce Jesus into theirs. It also means

1 David Bryant, Become a World Christian and Stand in the Gap (Ventura, CA: GospelLight Pubns, 1984), 15.

examining our own worldview presuppositions in order to weed out

the un-biblical aspects cling to.

The missionary’s goal is to present a wholly biblical

picture of reality. It is not presumptuous to construct and

spread a biblical worldview—it is the gospel. It is “teaching

them to observe all that [He] has commanded.” This is not meant

to eradicate the various manifestations of culture and homogenize

them. Samuel Escobar, a leading theologian in the area of global

missions, cites the Hong Kong Call which states that the Gospel

“strives to make clear that “conversion should not

‘deculturalize’ the converts. They should remain members of their

cultural community, and whenever possible retain the values that

are not contrary to biblical revelation.”2 Yet, there is a

continuity in the Church throughout the ages. Paul Hiebert

argues,

To say that there is no biblical worldview is to deny that there is an underlying unity to the biblical story, to say that the God of Abraham, Moses, David andJesus are different gods, that the New Testament is discontinuous with the Old, and that Scripture is

2 Samuel Escobar, The New Global Mission: the Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2003), 106.

2

simply the record of individuals and ever-shifting beliefs shaped by history and sociocultural contexts.3

The Apostle Paul said, “To the weak I became weak, that I

might win the weak. I have become all things to all people that

by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the

gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”

(Corinthians 9:22-23, ESV) Therefore, we must learn everything

about the cultures we are sent to evangelize. Paul’s mission was

to reach people from every culture to bring them into one family—

one people of God. This was God’s plan from the beginning. His

promise to Abraham was “all nations” would be blessed through his

Seed. In Isaiah Yahweh asks, “Is it too light a thing that you

should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring

back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the

nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

(Isaiah 49:6, ESV)

CULTURE AND WORLDVIEW

If you were to put on someone else's prescription glasses it

would change the way you perceive the world. Every one of us sees

3 Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: an Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008), 265-7.

3

the world differently. We see it through our own particular set

of mental glasses—a set of foundational beliefs that everything

we experience is filtered through. These glasses are shaped by

our individual personalities, our families, our experiences, and

especially by our cultures. At the core of our culture is a

worldview. Worldview is what gives us our bearings in the world.

Hiebert defines worldview as “the fundamental cognitive,

affective, and evaluative presuppositions a group of people make

about the nature of things, and which they use to order their

lives.”4 These presuppositions are essential to our personhood.

“Most people maintain that their beliefs are more than useful

fictions. For them their worldviews declare the way things really

are and are true in the ultimate sense.”5 Without a cohesive

worldview we would be lost—unable to function in daily life. Like

Alice in Wonderland, we would never know which way is up or down,

or whether a croquet mallet is a flamingo, or if a baby is not

really a pig. Unlike Alice, who in the fiction is able to

navigate these uncertain waters quite well, a normal human being

4 Ibid., 15.

5 Ibid., 69.

4

would be reduced to a whimpering mess in the fetal position. The

task of the evangelist is to enter the other’s worldview through

a genuine understanding so that the Gospel may be communicated

clearly in that context.

THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW AND CULTURE

Is there a Christian worldview? The answer is no, and yes.

Andrew Walls outlines a view of Church history that demonstrates

a great diversity, and at times, a seeming discontinuity in the

successive ages, which are:6

1. Jewish Age—the nascent Church had its roots in the Temple worship and rites of Judaism. With the revelation to Peter, and the calling of Paul, it quickly ended and spread to the Gentiles.

2. Hellenistic-Roman Age—characterized by doctrinal development in distinctively Greek method logic and rational thought.

3. Barbarian Age—characterized by the collapse of the Western Empire and a diffusion of the faith among previously unreached pagan cultures. This period gave birth to the concept of Christian nations.

4. Western European Age—while the Hellenistic Age persisted in the Eastern Empire, Western and Central Europe developed a new sense of individuality vs. kin-related identity. This took root in both the Roman Catholic Church and among the Protestants.

5. Expanding Europe and Christian Recession—During the Ageof Discovery, the Western form of Christianity went

6 Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996), 16-23.

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into cultures very different from it. This period lasted up into the 20th century and saw the Christian faith retreat in Europe, while it grew in the various colonized areas.

6. Cross-cultural Transmission—there is currently a rapid advance of Christianity into many cultures.

Wall’s conclusion is that if one were to view these ages

from an outsiders perspective, they would seen very different and

unrelated. “there is no such thing as “Christian culture” or

“Christian civilization” . . . There have been several different

Christian civilizations already; there may be yet more. The

reason for this is the infinite translatability of the Christian

faith.” 7 On the other hand, there is a real continuity. There

are several aspects that remain in any age and in any culture: 1)

the worship of the God of Israel. 2) the ultimate significance of

Jesus of Nazareth, 3) that God is active among believers, 4) that

believers across all of time constitute one people of God, 5) the

reliance on the Bible as holy writ, 5) the use of the sacraments

of communion and baptism.

Hiebert uses the terms synchronic vs. diachronic. These are

systems of analysis to explain this dilemma of continuity vs.

7

Ibid., 22.

6

discontinuity. The synchronic approach “looks at the underlying

structure of reality through a slice of time, examining the parts

and how these relate to one another. Its strength is that it sees

the underlying structure of human beings—that which is common to

them all, and how it operates to make life possible.”8

The diachronic approach focuses on the story of each

individual through time. “[W]e recognize humans as real people

with all their particulars and idiosyncrasies, and we hear the

stories that give meaning to their lives.”9 This is true of

cultures as well as people.

The evangelist must use both approaches as he enters another

culture. He must go armed with a foundational synchronic

understanding of humanity rooted in the biblical revelation, and

he must be ready to diachronically enter the daily lives of the

ones he is seeking to reach. He must rise above culture in the

otherworldly sense that Peter speaks of in his first letter. We

are pilgrims and aliens in this world. (1 Peter 2:9-11) Or, as

Jesus said of his disciples in John the upper room discourse,

8 Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 71.

9 Ibid. 72

7

“They are not of this world.” (John 17:16) But remaining in this

world, they are to represent Him among an unbelieving world so

that they may believe. (John 17:21)

INCARNATION AND CONTEXTUALIZATION

Jesus himself is the paradigm for what Walls calls the

“pilgrim principle.”10

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also inChrist Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

This emptying of oneself is requisite for a missionary to

fully enter into the other’s culture. By laying aside his own

culture, the missionary can be in a sense incarnated into the

receiving culture. This incarnation carries with it the idea of

dying to self as well. “The pilgrim is a player in the social

games of culture, but his goals are defined in the cross, and his

10

Sherwood Lingenfelter, Transforming Culture: a Challenge for Christian Mission, 2nd ed.(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 1998), 15.

8

performance is guided by metaphors from the master.” (emphasis

mine)

Historically, even the most sincere Western-style

missionaries have exported their cultures and attempted to impose

them upon the receiving cultures with the paternalistic goal of

“civilizing” them (there have been a few notable examples to the

contrary, such as Raymond Lull among the Arabs and Hudson Taylor

among the Chinese). But if missionaries choose to hold on to

their own worldview and make no attempt to enter the other’s, it

causes conflict and misunderstanding. Lingenfelter recounts

several examples of cross-cultural disconnects and reports, “In

each case, those involved respond with deep emotion. They were

not able to think objectively about the situation or make a

decision based upon the real needs of the people involved. They

responded from deep feelings and emotional values rooted in a

particular worldview.”11

Jesus left His privileged position as a member of the

Trinity in Heaven and joined the human race to the fullest

extent. He was tempted in all things. He hungered and thirsted.

11 Ibid., 59.

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He experienced homelessness. He suffered grief and agony and

finally death. Why then should his followers expect to remain in

their comfortable surroundings? The Gospel will not be

communicated apart from understanding the other’s context, which

requires relationship. If we choose to be incarnated into the

receiving culture this opens the door to the goal of

contextualization. “The idea of contextualization is to frame the

gospel message in language and communication forms appropriate

and meaningful to the local culture and to focus the message upon

crucial issues in the lives of the people.”

At the heart of contextualization is translation. Contrary

to the modern, secular view, it was the Bible that gave birth to

the Church, and not vice versa.12 That this is God’s design for

communicating His Word to mankind is evident even before the

birth of the Church. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the

Old Testament, was completed 250 years before Christ. When the

Church was born, the dominant culture already had a Bible in the

vernacular. Even though the Vulgate translation of Jerome in the

4th century was originally produced so Western Christians could

12 Escobar, 131.

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have the Bible in their vernacular (that is what Vulgate means!),

the Roman Catholic Church adopted it as the only authorized

translation and barred all others. The modern missions movement,

which began in the 18th century, was driven by this conviction

that people must have the Bible in the vernacular. Between 1792

and 1822 more Bible societies and missionary societies came into

being than in any other era in Church history.13 In Lamin

Sanneh’s great work on the impact of translations on missions, he

begins,

The central thesis of this book is that Christianity, from its origins, identified itself with the need to translate out of Aramaic and Hebrew, and from that position came to exert a dual force in its historical development. One was the to resolve revitalize its Judaic roots, with the consequence that it promoted significant aspects of those roots. The other was to destigmatize Gentile culture and adopt that culture as a natural extension of the life of the new religion.14

Since the middle-ages, missions work has often operated on

the basis of what Sanneh calls diffusion15, that is, the faith is

implanted into other cultures retaining much of the original

13

Ibid., 128.

14 Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: the Missionary Impact On Culture (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995), 1.

15 Ibid., 29.

11

cultural identity. This is seen in Roman Catholicism with the

retention of Latin (until Vatican II) and in Islam which regards

the Koran as holy only if it remains in its original Arabic. This

was the error that prompted the first controversy in the history

of the Church in Acts 15. They had to decide whether it was true

that, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of

Moses, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 15:1) They decided that the

Gospel will not be bound by language or culture.

The alternative to diffusion is what he terms mission by

translation. This affords the receivers the opportunity to

assimilate the truth of the Gospel. “[C]onversion that takes

place in mission as translation rests on the conviction that

might be produced in a people after conscious critical

reflection.”16 Escobar says that translation is one most

effective means of guarding against the deleterious effects of

globalization.17

16

Ibid.17

Escobar, 61-62.

12

When we have entered into the culture of the other, then we

earn the right to speak into that culture. Some will listen and

understand; some will resist.

CHALLENGING WORLDVIEWS

We hang on to our particular brand of reality at all costs.

Challenges to it are threatening down to our very core. This is

true on the corporate level as well as the personal level. It

holds everything together. “Culture, like a slot machine, is

programmed to ensure that those who hold power win and common

players lose; when or if the organized agenda is violated, people

frequently resort to violence to reestablish the programmed

agenda.”18 Every culture is tainted with sin. As evangelists, we

do not have the right to impose our culture on others, but we do

have the right and responsibility to bring God’s Word to bear on

all cultures. The Christian has three enemies: the world, the

flesh, and the devil. Inherent in the world is the spirit of

rebellion that opposes God. We must expose that spirit in every

cultural context we encounter. When you take the supernatural

18 Lingenfelter, 16.

13

realm into account, the stakes become ultimate. Satan is the god

of this world (2 Cor. 4:4) and will use his power over people’s

lives to maintain that power. “We must also take spiritual

systems seriously. Satan seeks to blind people by keeping them

bound by false ideologies. . . . On one level, spiritual warfare

is a battle between and for worldviews.”19

As evangelists (defined here as any Christian who attempting

to share the gospel with non-believers) we face two dangers. One

the one hand, we must be careful to avoid dislodging people from

their cultural moorings without transforming their worldview into

a solidly biblical one. An example at this can be found in the

U.S. government’s program of “Christianizing” Native-Americans in

the 19th century. Christian ministers cooperated with the

government in establishing schools for Native-American children,

which removed them from their culture and immersed them in a

white European culture. The devastating results are evident today

in the form of widespread poverty, alcoholism and drug abuse.

Andrew Walls cautions against this:

19 Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 87.

14

Conversion to Christ does not isolate the convert from his or her community; it begins the conversion of that community. . . . This means that the influence of Christ is brought to bear on the points of reference ineach group. The points of reference are the things by which people know their identity and know where, and towhom, they belong.”20

On the other hand, we must be careful not to settle for a

presentation of the Gospel that only manifests on the surface of

a culture because we have not gotten to the roots of their

worldview and shown them how Jesus can become the center and Lord

of all of life. The Roman Catholic doctrine of implicit faith21 has

been a major culprit in this phenomenon. While the original

intent may have been laudable and theologically justifiable, it

became an excuse for a lack of discipleship. The congregant

merely had to confess, “I believe what the Church teaches,”

without ever coming to an understanding of what the Church

teaches. This is most evident in the syncretism found in the

Philippines, South America and other places where the Roman

20 Walls, 51.

21 Aquinas taught, “Therefore, as regards the primary points or articlesof faith, man is bound to believe them, just as he is bound to have faith; butas to other points of faith, man is not bound to believe them explicitly, but only implicitly, or to be ready to believe them, in so far as he is prepared to believe whatever is contained in the Divine Scriptures.” Summa Theologica, Second Part, question 2, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3002.htm#article5, (accessed online, 5/6/2013).

15

Catholic Church has imposed an outward structure without seeking

an inward transformation.

The remedy for both of these pitfalls is to immerse oneself

into the receiving culture. As evangelists, we must get to the

heart of their worldview to determine if those deep meanings

coincide with, or contradict Scripture.

Culture is like an onion whose core is worldview. Hiebert

posits three levels: behavior, beliefs, and worldview.

“Conversion to Christ must encompass all three levels: behavior,

beliefs, and the worldview that underlies these.” The surface

manifestations in any given culture are the manifestations of a

hidden, often unrecognized set of assumptions. Hiebert

illustrates this with the Indian concept of cleanliness,

In India several matters of daily living are related to their deep-seated concern for ritual cleanliness. It is manifested in their personal hygieneand cleanliness and concern for nice clothing. India’s concern for purity and its disgust of pollution goes much deeper than surface dirt that can be washed off. The people are concerned about deep, inner pollution, the defilement of self.22

22 Paul G. Hiebert, “Clean and Dirty,” in Perspectives On the World Christian Movement: a Reader, 4th ed., ed. Dr. Ralph D. Winter and Steve Hawthorne. (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library Publishers, 2009), 424.

16

These are the kinds of things that we must learn if we are

to impact another culture. Before we can be qualified to

challenge the other’s worldview, we must first challenge our own.

Many of the problems experienced in the history of missions have

been due to a confusion of some of the missionary’s basic

assumptions with the biblical perspective. “Most Christian

workers have so overlearned their cultural values that they

confuse them with the teaching of Scripture.”23 Examples of this

are Jesus plus the sword in the Age of Discovery and the

Crusades, or Jesus plus commerce in the 19th century. Today it is

Jesus plus consumerism. Since the First International Conference on

World Evangelization in Lausanne in 1974, there has been a

heightened awareness to this. Globalization has brought the world

community together in such a way that it is difficult for people

to maintain tunnel vision that saw the world solely in relation

to their own perspective. Escobar is optimistic that this is a

significant trend:

The new global dimension of Christianity has brought a new sensitivity to the fact that the text of Scripture can be understood adequately only within its own context, and that the understanding and application23 Lingenfelter, 172.

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of its eternal message demands awareness of our own cultural context.24

This self-awareness is not just important for reaching

foreign cultures, but it is essential in reaching those in our

own culture as well. The modern worldview of Western

civilization has been steeped in ways of thinking that most are

unaware of and take for granted. Much of this modern worldview

is now the basis for the phenomenon of globalization. “Modernity

is the first truly global civilization to emerge in human

history.”25 Consumerism is the driving force of this modern

global perspective. It has been exported into the farthest

reaches of the third world through the media and international

corporations, and has produced an individualistic, results

based, managerial model in the churches and missions. Hiebert

sees this as a direct result of the individualism spawned in the

Enlightenment26, and finds it deeply concerning in regards to the

ability of leaders to care pastorally for the Church:

24

Escobar, 21.

25 Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 143.

26 Ibid., 167.

18

This stress on individualism has also led to a weak understanding of the church as a family of families of faith. Because salvation has become a personal matter between the self and God there's little emphasis on the foundation of a new community of shalom in Christ.

Modern Christians tend to organize their churchesthe same way they organize corporate action in other areas of lives. Consequently, many churches are religious clubs. . . . . There are attempts at building deeper fellowship through small groups and church dinners, but few members are willing to pay theprice of real community: involvement in members daily lives and willingness to bear one another's burdens through sharing and financial assistance. . . . Their primary reason for joining us to get something personally out of participation, not because members have a lasting commitment to others in the congregation. They tend to overlook the fact that the center of the church is worship – what they bring to God, not what they get out of the service.

As churches grow and organize into denominations,the increasingly become corporations modeled after modern management structures. They are characterized by a professionalization of rolls, paid staff, construction of large buildings with offices, establishment of bureaucratic rules and regulations, creation of budgets, organization of meetings, and long-range planning. . . .

The processes described in the preceding paragraph are essential to running a successful bureaucracy, but they make it difficult for members tofeel they are part of a single covenant community in which all are equal in Christ is the center of life. Some see the church in terms of social engineering: subjected to the right formula of social and cultural laws, churches will grow. Others use an economic modeland see the church as marketing the Gospel. While these approaches may work in modern contexts, the

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question remains whether the gospel is transforming the culture, or whether it has become captive to modernity.27

Escobar has also observed this corporatization of the

church: “Managerial methods adopted by their leaders in their

missions office at home bring pressures, because numbers of

conversions are viewed as the standard of correct missionary

practice.”28

This individualism comes from the focus on man-

centeredness. “The shift from theocentrism to humanism is a

Copernican revolution that radically changes the way modern

humans view the world. The very essence of humans changes

because they now are the epicenter of the universe.”29 Western

Christianity is often focused on the individual and what he or

she can get out of it. The extreme of this is seen in the

prosperity gospel being spread by T.V. evangelists around the

world. It is a consumer-based faith.

27

Ibid., 173-74.

28 Escobar, 57.

29 Ibid.,149.

20

Another Enlightenment principle, dualism, brought a radical

change in thinking. In his books Escape from Reason and The God who is

There Francis Schaeffer shows that they divided the natural and

the supernatural worlds into what called the upper and lower stories.

The lower story is the rational, logical world of empirical

facts. The upper story is the non-rational, non-logical world

faith. This thinking has crept into Western Christianity so that

the spiritual realm is often downplayed or forgotten, while the

focus becomes doctrine and practice. Hiebert points out the

danger of this in his article on the “excluded middle30,” which

is the neglect of recognizing the very real presence of angels

and demons in our present world. Here he describes the

“spiritual schizophrenia” caused by this dualism, “This internal

tension increases when Christians read the Bible. There they

find God at work in human history with no sharp distinction made

between super and natural phenomenon. The biblical worldview

does not fit modern secular explanations that deny spiritual

30 Paul Hiebert, “the Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” in Perspectives On the World Christian Movement: a Reader, 4th ed., ed. Dr. Ralph D. Winter and Steve Hawthorne. (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library Publishers, 2009), 407-414.

21

realities.”31 This mechanistic view of the world leaves the

Church vulnerable by not taking seriously the injunction in 1

Peter 5:8 to be alert to the presence of the devil who wants to

destroy the Christian.

This modern worldview is being embraced by an increasing

global community and is the greatest competitor of the Gospel

today. It is part of the “world’ that John speaks of in 1 John

4:5. But, John also reminds us, that we have “overcome the

world.” (1 John 5:4-5)

THE GOSPEL’S EFFECT ON CULTURE

How do we go about overcoming the world? It is done by

embracing the good in cultures and by bringing the Gospel to bear

on the bad. If you consider that any groupings of humans produce

unique cultures (down to relationships between two people), then

cultures are almost infinitely varied. Yet the task of the

evangelist is to transform culture into a recognizable unity

under Christ. This must be done carefully. “No group of

Christians has therefore any right to impose in the name of

31 Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 154.

22

Christ upon another group of Christians a set of assumptions

about life determined by another time and place.”32

Throughout the history of the Church the dominant

expressions of the faith have varied, but there is one

integrating factor—Jesus. Walls explains,

There is, in all the wild profusion of the varyingstatements of these differing groups, one theme which is as unvarying as the language which expresses it is various; that of the person called the Christ has ultimate significance. In the institutional sphere, too, they all use the same sacred writings; and all usethe bread and wine and water in a special way.33

The universality of Jesus means that every culture responds

differently. There is no ideal Christian culture. “The theme of

Scripture is not the restructuring of social environments into an

ideal kingdom type but rather the application of metaphors of

ministry or kingdom principles to ordinary working

relationships.”34 When the Gospel enters, it will change the

culture for the better.

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,32 Walls, 8.

33

Ibid., 6.34 Lingenfelter, 19.

23

and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.(Isaiah 55:11, ESV)

CONCLUSIONS

Considering culture in accomplishing the mission of

evangelization by the Church is essential. We do not want to

repeat the mistakes of the past. We must avoid the old mistakes

of paternalism and cultural imperialism, but also be cognizant of

the temptation to ride the coattails of globalization. In an

increasing globalized context, if we present Christianity as an

aspect of the glittering commercial world promulgated by

international corporations from Beijing to Bali, we will be

guilty of the Jesus plus gospel.

I once heard Rick Warren preach from Acts 13:36 “For David,

after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation,

fell asleep . . .” His point was that God has called us to serve

him in the time and place that He has chosen. Warren said, “You

may wish that you lived during the Reformation, but you don’t.”

No matter how much we like our own particular brand of

Christianity, our theological bents, our church polity, or our

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worship styles, we must be willing to adapt to the cultures where

God has placed us, or may be calling us. While always remembering

and presenting the synchronic truth of the Church Universal, we

must allow for the diachronic working of the Spirit into the

multiplicity of cultural subplots that He is weaving together to

make the epic story of the redemption of mankind and the

establishment of His kingdom.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bryant, David. Become a World Christian and Stand in the Gap. Ventura, CA:Gospel Light Pubns, 1984.

Coleman, Robert E. The Master Plan of Evangelism. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids,MI: Revell, 1994.

Elmer, Duane. Cross-Cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christlike Humility.Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2006.

Escobar, Samuel. The New Global Mission: the Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2003.

Hesselgrave, David J. Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2000.

Hiebrt, Paul G. “Clean and Dirty”, in Perspectives On the World Christian Movement: a Reader. 4th ed. edited by Dr. Ralph D. Winter and Steve Hawthorne, 423-424. Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library Publishers, 2009.

_________. Transforming Worldviews: an Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008.

Lingenfelter, Sherwood. Transforming Culture: a Challenge for Christian Mission. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 1998.

Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: the Missionary Impact On Culture. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995.

Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996.

Yohannan, K. P. Revolution in World Missions: One Man's Journey to Change a Generation. 35th ed. New York: GFA Books, 2009.

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