A Not-so-normal Dinner Conversation on Contextualization in Mission

Recently we had dinner at our home with long-term workers in a limited access country of central Asia. As we talked about the ministry in their setting, the conversation turned to the growing emphasis on "contextualization" in missions--the belief that success in penetrating Muslim and other strongly resistant cultures with the Gospel will involve allowing the creation of culturally appropriate forms of faith. Hence, "Jesus followers" may choose to create "Jesus mosques" in Islamic settings, choose to pray 5 times a day toward Jerusalem, choose not to call themselves "Christian," and in all other ways adhere as closely to the outward practices of Islam (this is a VERY abbreviated description of what is a complex approach).

While I have always felt that the church will look different in many ways in different cultures, I have been more uncomfortable with a contextualization that opts not only to be an "insider movement," but to be something other than a manifestation of the church that is linked to historic Christianity.

The husband/dinner guest became very animated in discussing this. He argued that in the areas of his world where the gospel is spreading most rapidly, there is not only an identifiable church in distinction to the majority culture, but the church is ready and willing to suffer for its open identity with and loyalty to Jesus. He says that the lack of an identifiable, visible church throughout his host nation's history has been a detriment to gospel witness, and that a heavily contextualized approach would continue that deficit.

Over two millennia, reception of the gospel and the establishment of the church has brought drastic change to cultures wherever it has gone. Western culture itself went from tribal violence to something very different. Look, for example, at the impact of the gospel on the Vikings: they gave up their violent ways and became a farming people. Yes, some elements have remained and been "redeemed," but core practices of other religions have not found a welcome in church life generally among evangelicals, and we have rightly labeled past Roman Catholic attempts to do so among tribal groups as "syncretistic."

Any thoughts?