I read Ed Stetzer’s book Planting Missional Churches
Ed also has a blog where he devotes Mondays to missiology. Two weeks ago he began a series on contextualization and this week he continued by looking more closely at the danger and the necessity of contextualizing the gospel.
I read Ed’s missiology article after posting the link yesterday to what appears to be a misguided contextualization attempt.
In Ed’s article, he talks about four levels of contextualization approaches that a church can take. Noncontextualization, minimal contextualization, uncritical contextualization, and critical contextualization. He promises to spell out “uncritical contextualization” in more detail in the future, but I think that this is the approach described in yesterday’s article. (it is hard to tell from one USA Today news article what the pastor is thinking).
What I have been “on about” for the last six of seven years is the need to engage in “critical contextualization” as Ed describes it briefly. That approach is what I was talking about here for instance. and here, here, here, and here. There are more, but you get the idea.
Anyway, I love the way that Ed describes the balance between holding firmly to a core set of doctrinal values while at the same time doing whatever it takes to reach the world we live in while swimming in the cultural water in which we swim.
The need to contend is clearly commanded in Jude 3. It says that we are to “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” In other words, central to our mission and our ministry is to faithfully proclaim and defend the Gospel given to us and to people in culture. But, it seems we are also commanded to contextualize in 1 Corinthians 9:22-23 where Paul says, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”
On the one hand we must contend, and on the other hand we need to contextualize. In fact, contending for the faith demands contextualization because in articulating and advancing the truth we are responding to culturally created idols and false doctrine.