Introduction to the Missional Church Movement

Contextualization

Everyday Theology

Every culture proceeds from, embodies, and tries to reproduce a certain worldview.

Culture is a testimony to what we think important (our values, our beliefs, our loves) and to what we think is more important than anything else (our ultimate concern, our first

love).

TrialogueA three-way conversation between

Scripture, Church & Culture.

Missional

“Christendom was in part, about the church at the center of the

conversation.”

“When we engage Scripture and our cultural contexts, it isn’t a dialogue,

the church is always holding up a mirror that reflects back its own

image. This ecclesiocentric obsession means that primarily we mine both Scripture and culture for our own

needs.”

“We’re so preoccupied with church questions that neither biblical

narratives nor culture can become the places where God addresses us and

challenges us to be converted.”(Missional by Alan J. Roxburgh)

Ken Shuman D.Min.

We must learn to separate the gospel from our culture.

Real “Jesus” ministry is only possible when we believe we are not moving into a void, that we go expecting to

meet the God who has preceded us. We don’t have God in our pockets and we don’t take God to others.

Transforming Mission by David J. Bosch

We should never have transplanted Christianity

without breaking the pot in which the plant came.

“From the beginning of his time in India, Newbigin knew he was an

outsider who needed to listen to and learn the cultures of that vast

country’s people.”

“He would do this by sitting in villages with local religious leaders and they

would read each other’s sacred texts. Then Newbigin made a discovery: he

needed to relearn the gospel itself. He realized he hadn’t come to India just to

convert the Indian people…”

Missional: Joining God in the Neighorhood Alan J. Roxburgh

“As he lived among these people, he realized that the gospel was converting

him; it was questioning some of his most basic assumptions.”

Missional - Roxburgh - page 43

“Newbigin understood & modeled the engagement between Scripture,

gospel, & culture in ways most church leaders still have difficulty

recognizing.”

Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder

The gospel is always conveyed through the medium of culture. It

becomes good news to lost & broken humanity as it is

incarnated in the world through God’s sent people, the church.

Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder

To be faithful to its calling, the church must be contextual that

is, it must be culturally relevant within a specific

setting. The church relates constantly & dynamically both

to the gospel & to its contextual reality.

Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder

It is important, then, for the church to study its context

carefully and to understand it. The technical term for this

continuing discipline is contextualization.

Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder

We must learn the skill of exegeting both the scripture

& culture.

Everyday Theology

“Paul Tillich, a leading theologian of culture, said that the best way to understand a particular culture or

even epoch is to discover its greatest anxiety (i.e., the focus of a negative concern) and its greatest hope (i.e.,

the focus of what Tillich called ‘ultimate concern,’ or simply ‘religion’).

Everyday Theology

“We begin to understand others and groups of others, then, when we begin

to understand what concerns them and why.”

What are their hopes and fears?

Cultural hermeneutics is the art & science of interpretation.

Interpretation is not an exact science.

Everyday Theology

“The vocation of the church is to perform the practices of Christ in ways

that are both appropriate to and transformative of our particular place

and time.”

Transforming Mission by David J. Bosch

Our hope lies not in trying to create (for instance) just an Indian Christianity but a

Hindu Christianity.