Dan Kimball wrote a book entitled They Like Jesus But Not the Church. Ed Stetzer has documented that unchurched young adults, twenty something, do not like the church as an institution. Stetzer documents the results of surveying 800 people and 149 churches in his book Lost and Found. Here are some of the statements made by this group disenchanted with the organized local church.
“We don’t believe there is only one way to heaven.”
“The church is full of hypocrites.”
“We will not respond to your invitations to come to church.”
“We want a church that cares about us as a person and not as a potential convert.”
I recently visited a young adult who nearly died from an illness. He never goes to church. I asked him if he knew Christ as his Savior and he assured me he did. Apparently this young man is completely content with his life without church.
Biblically, a person cannot like Jesus and not like the church. How can we love Jesus and not love what He loves? “Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25).
Practically, the twenty something doesn’t like the church because of the imperfections of its members. Is this a recent phenomenon? Did not Jesus have one out of twelve disciples who was full of the devil? That is a 12 to 1 ratio. I know in our church we have a much higher ratio. Our ratio is probably 15 to 1. Just kidding. The other eleven disciples were always bickering about something. James and John were lobbying Jesus to sit on His right and left hand in the kingdom and when the other disciple heard of this politicking, they were livid. I wonder what the twenty something would have thought had they lived when Jesus ministered?
The very first church is described by Luke in Acts 2:41-47. This church had to be the most model church ever. Three thousand had just gotten saved at Peter’s preaching. Three thousand were baptized and three thousand joined the church. No slippage. Not a single new convert did not follow through with baptism and church membership. Furthermore, they all started attending church regularly. For a brief moment in church history the local church and the universal church were synonymous.
There two important principles we observe from this first church.
1. Church is Important.
Luke writes: “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and in breaking bread, and in prayers.” Church was important to these newborn believers. Nothing has changed in the vital role church plays in our Christian growth. The church is like a pit stop in Nascar racing. In a pit spot, the race car is refueled, has new tires put on, and minor repairs are made. After the pit stop, the driver does not ride up and down pit lane. He races back onto the track. At church, we get refueled not so we can hang around the church building but so we can go out into our community to serve. Just as the Nascar driver cannot succeed without the pit stop neither can we believers advance the gospel with out our local church.
2. The Community must know we care about them.
The believers in the early church took their Christianity to the streets of Jerusalem. Luke reports this onslaught in Acts 2:43-47. Sometimes we as a church are more concerned about “foreign missions” than we are “home missions.” Mark Driscoll pointed out this inconsistency: “Their youth spend ten days building a house in Mexico rather than doing repairs on the run-down apartment building across the street” (Vintage Church, page 242).
Lets show the twenty something we care about them as persons and not just prospective church members. The twenty something wants to see our concern for them before they hear our invitations to church. We can’t just be missionaries with a message; we must be missiologists with a passionate insight of our community. To be missiologists, we must contextualize i.e., make the gospel relevant (not relative), as Paul did in 1 Corinthians 9:9:19-23.
Brad House in his Community: Taking Your Small Group Off Life Support defines a missiologist: To be a missiologist “is to be observant, having your eyes open to the values of people in your city and particularly in your neighborhood. It is about discovering where people find their identity, what wakes them up in the morning, where they spend their time, and where they hope to experience community.”
Let’s show our neighbors we are not hypocrites and that we are concerned about them as persons.
In chapter one of The Camel: How Muslims are Coming to Faith in Christ, “It Began in a Village,” Kevin Greeson tells how “a vital church-planting movement of historic size and scope” began among Muslims in South Asia. This Muslim church-planting movement began in a village with a nine year old Muslim boy named Abdul. His devout Muslim parents sent Abdul to a Islamic school, called madrasas, to become an imam. But as Abdul studied the Qur’an, he became sceptical. When he first questioned the Qur’an, he was beaten by the imam. The next time Abdul questioned the Qur’an, the imam expelled Abdul. Abdul’s father was both angry and humiliated and banished Abdul from his house. For three years Abdul lived in a shack beside his home forbidden to have any contact with his family.
While Abdul was walking alone down one of his village roads, a white missionary riding in a rickshaw and offered him a ride. When they arrived at the missionary’s home Abdul learned that the white man was a Christian and the owner of Bibles. Abdul left the missionary’s home with a New Testament. When Abdul returned to his shack, he began reading the Gospel of John and when he got to John 3:17 he was amazed at what he read: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”
Abdul was astounded to read of a God who did not condemn him when everyone he knew in Islam had condemned him. Abdul just assumed that the god of Islam condemned him too. Greeson writes, “That night, Abdul accepted God’s love in the form of Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.”
What arrested my attention when reading this story was the fact that this mighty church-planting movement in Islamic South Asia did not begin with the Camel Method of witnessing from the Koran but with a missionary winning a young Muslim directly from the Bible. I was reminded once again that the Gospel really is the power of God to every one who believes and Scripture really is sufficient to present that Gospel message as the case in point with Abdul discloses.
Eventually, Abdul was baptized and moved to the capital city and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. Now it had been eight years since he had seen his family. Even though he was barred from having contact with them, he believed God was leading him back home. When he arrived back home, only a boyhood school classmate welcomed Abdul into his home. Abdul shared the gospel with Bilal and led him to Christ.
Finally, Abdul was permitted to see his dying dad. Greeson describes there first meeting in eight years, “Abdul went to his father and prayed for his recovery in Jesus’ name. The next day Abdul’s brothers came and found him. ‘Father wants to see you,’ they said. Abdul’s father had sent for his son because, to his amazement, he was feeling better. The old man had been praying to Allah for weeks and weeks for healing, but nothing happened. Yet when Abdul prayed for him in the name of Jesus, his condition significantly improved. He asked Abdul to pray for him again each day until he was totally healed! Now fully recovered, Abdul’s father listened as Abdul told him about Jesus and the new life that Jesus offered him. The old man who had so tormented Abdul bowed his head and prayed to receive Jesus as Savior and Lord” (page 28).
Again, what is striking about this story is that Abdul did not pray to Allah but to Jesus and because he prayed in Jesus’ name instead of Allah’s, his father who had been praying to Allah saw the difference between what Jesus could do and what Allah could not do and that the two are not the same.
I found it very interesting in a book that promotes witnessing from the Qur’an and using the name of Allah in dealing with Muslims begins with the very significant story of the beginning of a mighty church-planting movement in Muslim South Asia that started with a missionary witnessing from the Bible and not the Qur’an and the first convert winning his Muslim father by praying in Jesus’ name rather than Allah.
J. Gerald Harris, Editor of The Christian Index interviewed with Southern Baptist International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin. Rankin defends the Camel Method and addresses one of the issues in reaching Muslims:
One major concern has to do with Christians using the name Allah for God. There are those who seem to think IMB missionaries who refer to God as “Allah” are affirming Muslim theology and endorsing the Muslim concept of Allah.
In response to those who hold to that view, Rankin stated, “Such a view is preposterous. In a cross-cultural witness you use the language of the people and you use whatever terminology they have for God. In reality Muslims cannot exclusively claim ‘Allah’ as their name for God. Although [Allah] has been adopted by the Qur’an and by Muslims, it actually pre-dates Muhammad and the religion he established.
The Arab Christians used ‘Allah’ as their name for God in pre-Islamic days. Today ‘Allah’ is still the name used for God in many translations of the Bible where the Muslim religion predominates. For example, in the Indonesian Bible, ‘Allah’ is the name for God.”
Rankin continued, “What our missionaries are doing with The Camel is much like what Paul did when he went to Athens. He saw an altar ‘To The Unknown God’ and stated, ‘him declare I unto you.’ In seeking to reach the Muslims, you start with where they are and with their worldview and bring them to the bridge, to the passage in the Qur’an that speaks of Isa (Jesus) and then take them to the gospels. Of course, the Bible is the inspired Word of God and you pray and trust the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth about Christ to them” (June 7, 2007).
First, the altar to the unknown God is not same as using the Qur’an. The altar to the unknown God in Athens did not deny the deity of Christ, the Trinity, Jesus’ substitutionary death on the crioss and salvation by grace. The Qur’an does declare belief in any of these essential doctrines blasphemy. You can’t equate the two as bridge builders.
It is true that Muhammad adopted the name “Allah” as it was used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians of his day in referring to the true God of the Bible. Imad N. Shehadeh documents this fact in an article entitled “Do Muslims and Christians Believe in the Same God?” He gives textual, lexical, historical, and theological evidence.
While the Muslims use the same name of the God of the Old Testament, they define Him differently. As I just demonstrated from Part Two, in the Qur’an, Muslims deny the deity of Christ, the death of Christ on the cross, and the Trinity. Therefore Muslims and Christians do not believe in the same God nor can Allah be used interchangeably with the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ.
The Koran actually forbids believing or saying that Christ is Allah and considers such a belief or statement blasphemy: “They do blaspheme who say: ‘Allah is Christ the son of Mary” (I quote 5:17).
I agree when Shedaheh writes this statement, “For here lies the big impasse: Allah/God could not have contradictory messages on the most fundamental issues, especially on the nature of God.”
I agree with another statement Shehadeh makes: “For Muslims to claim that they believe in the same God Christians believe in should be conceived by Christians as much more serious than for Muslims to claim that they believe in a different God. For, from a Christian perspective, to speak of the true God, the God of the Bible, that is, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and them to describe Him in unbiblical terms is much more threatening than to speak of a different God” (This is from the first article in a four-part series “The Triune God and the Islamic God” in Bibliotheca Sacra 161, January-March 2004: pages 14-26).
It has been demonstrated from this post that “Allah” does not represent a sound, scriptural view of God but rather a monotheistic god who is not trinitarian and whose Son is not God.
Roy Oksnevad, director of Muslim ministries at Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, said, one point of the camel method—its interpretation of Isa’s knowledge of the way to heaven—bends the gospel too far in its efforts to identify with its audience. “This is sloppy missiology and theology,” he said (Christianity Today,).
Here is how the New York Times weighed in on the Camel Method debate:
On Feb. 3, Ergun Caner, president of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, in Lynchburg, Va., focused attention on a Southern Baptist controversy when he called Jerry Rankin, the president of the denomination’s International Mission Board, a liar. Dr. Caner has since apologized for his language, but he still maintains that the “Camel Method,” a strategy Dr. Rankin endorses for preaching Christianity to Muslims, is deceitful.
Instead of talking about the Jesus of the New Testament, missionaries using the Camel Method point Muslims to the Koran, where in the third chapter, or sura, an infant named Isa — Arabic for Jesus — is born. Missionaries have found that by starting with the Koran’s Jesus story, they can make inroads with Muslims who reject the Bible out of hand. But according to Dr. Caner, whose attack on Dr. Rankin came in a weekly Southern Baptist podcast, the idea that the Koran can contain the seeds of Christian faith is “an absolute, fundamental deception” (Mark Oppenheimer, New York Times: March 12, 2010: A Dispute on Using the Koran as a Path to Jesus).
Greeson quotes the Muslim Proverb that says the one-hundredth name for God is Isa al-Masih (Jesus Christ) which is based on a familiar legend from Islam: every good Muslim knows 99 names for Allah, but there is a 100th name that was revealed only to the camel. According to the Camel Method, the 100th name is Jesus, or “Isa,” the Arabic rendering.
Greeson takes a passage from the Qur’an (13 verses of surah al-Imaran, chapter 3:42-55) that refers to Isa al-Masih (Jesus Christ) as a bridge to introduce Muslims to Christ.
The passage is found in the Qur’an surah al-lmram which declares that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he would do miracles; that Allah (God) would cause Him to die and raise Him again to heaven.
From those passages, Greeson uses an acronym to help believers remember the main points for witnessing:
Mary was Chosen to give birth to Isa;
that Angels announced the good news to her;
that Isa would do Miracles;
that he knew and is the way to Eternal
Life (The Camel, page 41).
The Qur’an Denies the Deity of Christ
The problem in showing that Jesus was born of Mary from a neutral passage in the Qur’an is that the Qur’an as a whole denies the virgin birth and the deity of Christ. In Surah 5 of the Koran, there are three Christological passages that blatantly reject the deity of Christ. The three passages are 5:17; 5:72-77; 5:116-119.
I quote 5:17: “In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary. Say: ‘Who then hath the least power against Allah, if His will were to destroy Christ the son of Mary, His mother, and all—every one that is on the earth?”
How can a passage be used in the Koran that refers to Christ as the son of Mary to prove the deity of Christ in witnessing when the entire message of the Koran is a denial of the deity of Christ?
The Qur’an also teaches that Jesus is a mere human whose miracles were magic (Surah 5:109-110).
5.109 On the day when Allah will assemble the apostles, then say: What answer were you given? They shall say: We have no knowledge, surely Thou art the great Knower of the unseen things. 5.110 When Allah will say: O Isa son of Marium! Remember My favor on you and on your mother, when I strengthened you I with the holy Spirit, you spoke to the people in the cradle and I when of old age, and when I taught you the Book and the wisdom and the Taurat and the Injeel; and when you determined out of clay a thing like the form of a bird by My permission, then you breathed into it and it became a bird by My permission, and you healed the blind and the leprous by My permission; and when you brought forth the dead by My permission; and when I withheld the children of Israel from you when you came to them with clear arguments, but those who disbelieved among them said: This is nothing but clear enchantment.
The Qur’an’s teaching on the oneness of God (that Allah is the only God and not three persons) denies the Trinity and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Surah 4:116 reads, “Allah forgiveth not (the sin of) joining other gods with Him; but forgiveth whom He pleaseth other sins than this. One who joins other gods with Allah hath strayed far, far away.” Surah 5:17 says that Allah is able to destroy Jesus, his mother, and every living creature. In Surah 5:72, Christians are told that they are bound for eternal fire as blasphemers for ascribing deity to Christ.
The Qur’an Denies the Death of Christ on the Cross
The Camel Method also encourages The Korbani Plan of Salvation. Chapter 8 in The Camel instructs how to use the Korbain Plan. Korban means “sacrifice” in Arabic and refers to a holy day the Muslims observe. The Korbani Plan reads 3:54-55 which quotes Allah saying, “O Isa, I am going to terminate the period of your stay (on earth) and cause you to ascend unto Me.” The Korani Plan instructs the witness to say, “Allah chose Isa for the Korban. This was Allah’s plan from the beginning.” Then the Muslim is taken to passages like John 1:29 and Romans 5:19 (The Camel, page 118). The problem with this approach is that the 3:54-55 does not teach nor imply the substitutionary death of Christ. In fact the entire Qur’an denies the death of Christ.
The Qur’an denies that Christ died on the cross in Surah 4:157-158 which states this clearly: “That they said, ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the apostle of God’; but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow an opinion; for of a surety they killed him not, but Allah raised him up unto Himself, and God is exalted in power, wise.”
The death of Christ has no evidence, according to the Koran, and was only in the minds of those claimed to have killed him. How can the Qur’an be used to preach the gospel of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ when the Qur’an denies His death?
The Qur’an Denies the Trinity
Another reason the Qur’an rejects the deity of Christ is its rejection also of the Trinity. In the second Christological passage, 5:72-77, the deity of Christ is denied because that would support the doctrine of the Trinity which this text also rejects: “They do blaspheme who say: ‘Allah is Christ the son of Mary.’ But said Christ: ‘O Children of Israel! Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.’ Whoever joins other gods with Allah—Allah will forbid him the Garden, and the fire will be his abode. There will for the wrongdoers be no one to help. They do blaspheme who say? Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One God” (Imad N. Shehadeh, “Additional Reasons for Islam’s Rejection of the Biblical Christology,” Part Four of “The Triune God and the Islamic God” Bibliotheca Sacra, 162, October-December, 2004, pages 398-412).
In part 3, we will look at the controversial use of the name “Allah” in “The Camel Method”.
Kevin Greeson promotes a method for reaching Muslims called “The Camel Method”. In his book The Camel: How Muslims are Coming to Faith in ChristGreeson endorses believers using the Qur’an, the Muslim Bible, in witnessing to Muslims.
First, let me say that I appreciate Kevin Greeson’s burden to reach unsaved Muslims. When I read his book my heart was stirred to more fervently pray for and witness to Muslims and also support missionaries who have targeted Muslims. I have the privilege to minister in the 10/40 Window and know the great potential. I also believe God has and is using The Camel Method to win Muslims to Christ and even though I disagree with the method, I can “notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yes, and will rejoice” (Philippians 1:18).
This method, however, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the hot topic of contextualization.
Before I discuss specifically The Camel Method, I need to give the big picture of the contextualization debate in witnessing to Muslims. In 1998, John Travis, a pseudonym for security purposes, a veteran missionary to Asian Muslims for 20 years wrote an article in Evangelial Missions Quarterly in which he provided a guide for contextualizing the gospel with Muslims. Here is how John Travis, described his guide. He states that he “presented a model for comparing six different types of ekklesai or congregations (which I refer to as ‘Christ-centered communities’) found in the Muslim world today. These six types of Christ-centered communities are differentiated in terms of three factors: language, cultural forms, and religious identity. This model, referred to as C1-C6 spectrum (or continuum), has generated much discussion, especially around the issue of fellowships of ‘Muslim followers of Jesus’ (the C5 position of the scale). Parshall (1998), an advocate of contextualization, feels that C5 crosses the line and falls into dangerous syncretism” (Contextualization among Muslims, Hindus, and Buddists: A Focus on ‘Insider Movements” Mission Frontiers. September-October 2005). Phil Parshall’s article in Evangelical Missions Quarterly is entitled: “Danger! New Directions in Contextualization.”
Here is how Joseph Cummings describes and summarizes the C1-C6 spectrum:
In technical terms this is known as the “C4-C5 debate,” drawing on a scale designed by Travis to describe various Christ-centered communities (Cs) with which Muslim-background believers in Jesus (MBBs) identify, and the ways they understand their identity.
Joseph Cumming and his family lived fifteen years in a Muslim community in North Africa. He currently directs the Reconciliation Program at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, Yale University, and meets regularly with senior Muslim leaders around the world. More info at http://www.josephcumming.com. (The Global Conversation ChristianityToday.com/go/conversation). There are a series of different perspectives on contextualiztion with Muslims in the last web-site mentioned.
John Travis describes his C1 to C6 Spectrum in Evangelical Missions Quarterly. I, Dr. White, will add my comments:
C1: “Traditional Church Using Outsider Language. A huge cultural chasm often exists between the church and the surrounding Muslim community” (John Travis, Evangelical Missions Quarterly, 407).
Their worship is in a language other than their mother tongue. These churches use “outsider language” or a language foreign to the Muslim culture. There is basically no contextualization in C1.
C2: “Traditional church Using Insider Language” (Travis).
Same as C1, but worship is in the MBBs’ mother tongue. These churches use “insider language” or language not foreign to the Muslim culture. These churches also use non-Muslim names such as God, Jesus, and Christian.
C3: “Contextualized Christ-centered Communities Using Insider Language and Religiously Neutral insider Cultural Forms” (Travis).
These churches adopt much from local Muslim culture, such as dress and customs, without adopting Islamic customs such as prayer postures. These churches meet in traditional church buildings and not mosques.
C4: “Contextualized Christ-centered Communities Using Insider Language and Biblically Permissible Cultural and Islamic Forms” (Travis).
These churches adopt some other Islamic practices, prostrating in prayer, and using Allah instead of God, and do not meet in traditional buildings. They call themselves “followers of Isa the Messiah” but not Christians.
C5: “Christ-centered Communities or ‘Messianic Muslims’ Who Have Accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior” (Travis).
These believers call themselves Muslims and continue to identify culturally and officially as Muslims. About this group, J. D. Greear says, “Those parts of Islamic theology that are deemed incompatible with the Bible are reinterpreted or quietly discarded” (Breaking the Islamic Code. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2010, page 151).
I believe this is what The Camel Method does. I will demonstrate in my next post that the Qur’an very aggressively rejects the deity of Christ and yet The Camel Method uses a neutral passage about Jesus to witness to Muslims about Jesus. This is giving credence to the Qur’an which rejects the Trinity, Jesus as God, Jesus’ vicarious death on the cross, salvation by grace through faith alone in Christ, and the Scriptures as God’s Word.
C6: “Small Christ-centered Communities of Secret/Underground Believers. Many come to Christ through dreams, visions, miracles, radio broadcasts, tracts, Christian witness while abroad, or reading the Bible on their own initiative”(Travis).
Where does The Camel Method fit in the C1-C6 spectrum?
J. D. Greear in his book Breaking the Islam Code writes that “Kevin Greeson’s ‘Camel’ method, a popular tool among C-5 advocates, argues that the Qur’an should be used as a ‘gospel tract’ pointing Muslims to Jesus” (J. D. Greear. Breaking the Islam Code, 154). In a footnote Greear writes that “Greeson’s 2007 edition of the Camel manual, however, makes a substantial movement toward a more C-4 approach, suggesting the Qur’an be used more as starting point than an authority.”
I agree with Phil Parshall that “C5 crosses the line and falls into dangerous syncretism.” I would put The Camel Method in the C5 even in the 2007 edition.
In my next post, I will detail the Qur’an’s rejection of the major doctrines essential to the gospel which makes the Camel method invalid as a witnessing tool.
Apparently the shortest route to relevance in church ministry right now is for the pastor to talk about sex in garishly explicit terms during the Sunday morning service. If he can shock parishioners with crude words and sophomoric humor, so much the better. The defenders of this trend solemnly inform us that without such a strategy it is well-nigh impossible to connect with today’s “culture.” (In contemporary evangelicalism that term has become a convenient label for just about everything that is uncultured and uncouth.)
Mark Driscoll has boldly led the parade down this carnal path. He is by far the best-known and most prolific popular proponent of handling the Song of Solomon that way. He has said repeatedly that this is his favorite passage of Scripture, and he has come back to it again and again in recent years, culminating in a highly publicized series released on video via the Internet last year.
This debate illustrates the point seen in Galatians 2:11-21 that engaging the culture can go to far or not far enough. Paul’s three principles help keep us in check.
1. We Do Not Change our Message to Engage our Culture (See Part 1)
2. We Do Adapt our Methods to Engage our Culture (See Part 2)
3. We Cannot Allow Moralism to Limit our Methods
A. Peter had contextualized in Antioch and was eating Boganles’ Country Ham Biscuits with the Gentile believers.
B. When the Legalists from Jerusalem came, Peter gave up his Christian liberty and ministry to the Gentiles and started eating bagels with cream cheese with the Jews. Peter who was properly engaging culture withdrew and lost his ministry. There are two extremes in engaging culture. One is go too far into syncretism. This is where many in the Emergent Church (Brian McLaren and Spencer Burke) are today with its Social Gospel. The other is not to go far enough with isolationism. This is where many of our conservative churches are. Our critics say our only social involvement is condemning abortion and homosexuality.
C. Peter knew better because of his experience with Cornelius in Acts 10. But Peter caved under the pressure of his legalists. His fear of man supplanted his fear of God and became his snare.
D. Paul rebuked Peter for compromising the message of salvation by his actions.
Peter’s actions preached: “You must please God by your rules, not eating pork, etc. By your works.” Paul’s message was this: “You cannot please God by what you do but by accepting what Jesus has already done in His death, burial, and resurrection.”
E. Moralism or Legalism is the enemy of the Gospel in
1) Justification which Paul will elaborate on in Galatians 3 and 4.
2) Sanctification which Paul will expand on in Galatians 5 and 6.
Conclusion. At Advance 10 Conference, Tullian Tchividjan, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, told the story of Donald Grey Barnhouse who pastored 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA. In a sermon Barnhouse asked this question, “What would Philadelphia look like, if Satan took over? What would any city look like if Satan took complete control? Here is his answer, “All bars would be closed. There would be no drunkenness. All pornography would be banished and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing and all of the children would say ‘No sir’ and ‘Yes ma’am.’ And the churches would be full every Sunday where Christ is not preached.”
Most of us would be satisfied if our cities, lives and churches looked like what Barnhouse described. The moralists and legalists would be happy. So would Satan. Satan would have succeeded in convincing us that salvation is earned by our morality: what we do not do and what we do practice. Satan would also have succeeded in brainwashing Christians into thinking that a life of not breaking the rules of our particular church equal spirituality. In Galatians 2:19 and 20, Paul tells us what is the life that pleases God. I am dead to thinking that pleasing others by keeping their rules is spirituality. I am dead to that thinking because “I am crucified with Christ.” But now I can live because I have by faith been justified i.e., been declared righteous, based on what Jesus did not what I did. But now I live as a believer because Christ is in me and by faith in Christ who loved me and gave Himself for me I live for Him out of love for what He has done.
I was recently asked by a church member about Bob Harrington, who was named “The Chaplain of Bourbon Street” by the major of New Orleans in 1963. I had almost forgotten about him. Billy Graham said Bob Harrington was “bringing a witness for Jesus Christ to the middle of hell.” Bob Harrington engaged a wicked culture for 20 years until that culture overtook him and he fell into immorality. His daughter gives her perspective on this sad episode in her family’s life. She writes about her “Prodigal Father.” Engaging the culture is like trying to stand on a razor’s edge. You can easily fall to the left into syncretism or to the right into isolationism. Paul’s three principles will support us to maintain our balance.
1. We Do Not Change our Message to Engage our Culture. See Part 1
2. We Do Adapt our Methods to Engage our Culture.
We want to observe three Biblical examples of our second principle (Timothy, Paul, and Jesus).
A. This is what Paul did with Timothy in Acts 16 when Paul had Timothy circumcised. There are two differences between the circumcision of Titus and Timothy. Paul would not allow Gentile Titus to be circumcised by Jewish Judaizers because the issue was salvation. Paul did permit Timothy who was half Jew and half Gentile to be circumcised in order to witness to Jews. Timothy was to be circumcised because the men in his Jewish audiences were circumcised. This is called “Incarnational missions.”
J. Hudson Taylor lived among the Chinese and became one with them to win them. Without changing his message he dressed like the Chinese and cut his hair like them because he was one of them. He shaved his head except for a long pony tail. He engaged their culture without compromising his message.
If you are going to reach unsaved motorcycle gangs you don’t wear a three piece suit and drive a BMW. You wear boots, blue jeans, a leather jacket, with your wallet chained to your belt and ride a Harley.
B. Paul gave guidelines on how far we go in adapting to the culture we are seeking to reach in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 . We do what we do for “the sake of the gospel.” We have gone too far when the Gospel message has been diluted.
1. To the Jews Paul became like their Jewish culture. This is why Paul had Timothy circumcised. Paul in Acts 18:18, after observing a Jewish Nazarite Vow, cut his hair.
2. To the Gentiles Paul became like their Gentile culture.
When Paul preached to Jews, he preached from the Old Testament. When Paul preached to Gentiles, he did not preach from the Old Testament. In Acts 17:22- 27, Paul built bridges to the pagan culture. He refers to the altar of the unknown God and told them that he was going to inform them who that unknown God was. I had a student one time who was witnessing to a Jehovah’s Witness and used her Bible to prove the deity of Christ and to win her to the Lord. This is not the same as using the Koran which declares belief in the deity of Christ blasphemy. The altar to the unknown God was not a denial of the deity of Christ. The New World Translation is the Bible mistranslated in key verses pertaining to the deity of Christ, however, with other verses that can be used to prove the deity of Christ.
Examples of how Paul adapts to new cultures abound in Acts. They are literally everywhere. Even Jay Adams, fairly rock-ribbed conservative in everyway, wrote a book Audience Adaptations in the Sermons and Speeches of Paul. In Acts 13 we see Paul sharing the gospel in a synagogue to those who believed in the God of the Bible, and in Acts 14 we see him sharing the gospel to a pagan, blue-collar crowd. The differences and similarities are striking.
a) His citation of authority is very different. In the first case he quotes Scripture and John the Baptist. In the second, he argues from general revelation–greatness of creation.
b) They differ in emphasis of content. Hard to miss that with Jews and God-fearers he ignores the doctrine of God and gets right to Christ; with pagans here and Acts 17, he labors the very concept of God.
c) Finally, they differ in even the form of the final appeal–how to ‘close’ with Christ–is different. In Acts 13:39 Paul speaks of the law of God and says, essentially: “you think you are good, but you aren’t good enough! You need Christ to justify you.” But in 14 he tells them to turn from “worthless things”–idols–”to the living God” who he says is the real source of “joy”–he, not material things–is the real source. So he is saying, in effect: “you think you are free–but you are not! You are enslaved to dead idols.”
d) Despite all these very profound differences– (1) Both audiences are told about a God who is both powerful yet good (13:16-22; 14:17), (2) in both he tells the hearers they are trying to save themselves in a wrong way (moral people by trying to obey the law 13:39 and pagans by giving themselves to idols and gods that cannot satisfy 14:15), and (3) both tell hearers not to turn to some scheme of performance, but that God has broken in to history now to accomplish our salvation. Even the speech of chapter 14, which was a spontaneous outburst, though it doesn’t mention Christ directly, still points to the fact that salvation is something accomplished by God for us in history, not something we do.
3. Paul adapted to his audience without changing his message.
C. Jesus adjusted to His culture according to John 1:1, 14.
1. The Son of God not only became man but He became a Jewish man. Jesus was circumcised, attended the synagogue, ate Kosher food, and keep the Sabbath. He perfectly kept the Jewish Law (Matthew 5:18-18).
2. Jesus adjusted to his culture without compromising His message. It was because of His clear claims to be the Messiah and God that His Jewish culture perfectly understood. They just disagreed and crucified Him as a false prophet.
3. Jesus was also criticized for going too far in His associations with sinners. Jesus was accused of being a glutton and binge drinker (Matthew 11:19). Martin Luther said if you are never accused of antinomianism you are not preaching the gospel.
4. Engaging the culture, however, can go too far and lead to syncretism. King Solomon in his exposure to the surrounding cultures, succumbed and added the gods of the pagan cultures to Israel’s religion (1 Kings 11).
The SBC International Mission Broad (IMB) Principles of Contextualization says, “The theological construct represented by the term “Allah” in the Quranic system is deficient and unacceptable. However, the primary issue is not the term. The same name is used by devout Christians and it represents a sound, scriptural view of God. In fact, historically, the Christian use of “Allah” predates the rise of Islam. The missionary task is to teach who “Allah” truly is in accord with biblical revelation.” Even though Ed Stetzer approves this method I have some problems with the extent of this contextualization. Why not just teach the Muslim culture a new word, “God” or “Jesus?
Another example is provided by John Hammett. “Phil Parshall, one of the leading advocates of contextualizing the church in Islamic culture, has recently written of the danger of contextualization crossing a line and becoming syncretism, a harmful blending of Christianity with other teachings. He examines the strategy of a Christian missionary joining a Muslin mosque for the purpose of becoming a Muslim to reach Muslims, and concludes that the practice is open to the charge of unethical and sub-Christian activity” (John Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches: A Contemporary Ecclesiology. Grand Rapids: Kregal, 2005, 345).
I like this example from David Sills on the contextualizing the gospel without compromise: Many missionaries provide a biblical worldview by teaching the grand narrative of God’s revelation through chronological Bible story telling. Some detractors of contextualization believe that we need only preach the gospel as we do back “home,” and this will be sufficient. However, in matriarchal societies, for instance, the mother is the most important figure. Women run the home, serve as rulers, and inherit from their female family members. If the father is even known, he is viewed as a biological necessity and not as an important person in life. When there is an important male figure, it will be the mother’s brother. How will we present the gospel here? Without studying to know the culture to contextualize the gospel, a sermon on God the Father would leave the hearers with a deficient view of God. In such cases, should we allow the culture to contextualize at will and preach God the Mother? Or, should we strike a compromise and preach God the Uncle? Of course, none of these would result in a biblical understanding of the gospel. The missionary preacher who has studied the culture must recognize the challenges and teach the culture the biblical view of God as Father. While such a practice flies in the face of modern anthropology, it is the biblical approach to properly contextualizing the gospel and Christianity among a people.
In my next post, I will give the third principle for engaging our changing culture without compromising our message.
“Through urbanization and the vibrant growth of southern cities and towns, the South is becoming a center for innovative, intellectual and cultural growth”, reports Advance the Church.Advance the Church also provided some of the following information.
This will greatly impact the way we do church.
Right now the South is the fastest growing region in our nation. In the 30 year period between 1995 and 2025, according to the US Census Bureau, the South will be the most populated region in our country. For example, North Carolina will grow by 1 million.
The Hispanic population is projected to increase rapidly over the 1995 to 2025 projection period, accounting for 44 percent of the growth in the Nation’s population (32 million Hispanics out of a total of 72 million persons added to the Nation’s population).
“In one generation’s time, there won’t even be the nominal Christianity in the South that there is now. The mega-churches will flounder and people will just stop going. They are only going now because it is somewhat expected—part of the culture—or as some moral exercise” -Tim Keller
We are not only growing in numbers but in age.
The first of the Baby Boom generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) reach retirement age in 2010. The percentage of the population that is elderly will increase rapidly in the South. The South is predicted to have 32 million deaths before 2025.
The South is also growing younger. The South will see 43 million births before 2025. How will our church respond to these cultural changes?
Paul in Romans 10:14 asked this question, “How shall they hear without a preacher?” He then added in verse 17, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” From these statements, we know we must not only witness and preach the gospel, but we must witness and preach so our culturally changing listeners will hear, understand, and respond.
We must communicate our message so our culture comprehends what we are saying without changing our message.
This is called contextualization which is “communicating the gospel in a more understandable, culturally relevant form”
We have already allowed our culture to influence not only what we teach and preach but how we teach and preach. I’m preaching in English not the Biblical languages of Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. I have contextualized the medium not the message.
Multinational corporations market their products according to their cultures. For example, McDonalds sell hamburgers in Malaysia. Over half of the population in Malaysia is Muslim. But the female cashiers in Malaysia behind the counter wear their little paper hats on top of their head-coverings and they call their products “beefburgers” not hamburgers. If they call their Big Macs “hamburgers” their Muslim customers would not eat there. Has McDonalds changed their product? No! Has McDonalds changed the way they market their product? Yes! Because of their Muslim culture who is offended at eating pork, McDonalds has contextualized without compromising. reachingandteaching.org/ by David Sills.
In Galatians, Paul is confronting a similar issue. The Jews wanted to force their Jewish regulations on Gentiles. The Jews wanted to coerce Gentile believers to be circumcised according to their Old Testament Law and culture.
How Paul responded to this cultural pressure provides us with three principles for engaging our culture without watering down our gospel message.
1. We Do Not Alter Our Message to Engage our Culture.
George W. Peters identifies the problem with contextualizaton. There is a legitmate and nonlegitmate, that is, a biblical and liberal contextualization (David J. Hesselgrave & Edward Rommen. Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models.Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989, x). The nonlegitmate and liberal contextualization changes the message of the gospel.
Paul used Titus as an example who was a Gentile believer that the Judaizers wanted circumcised. Paul refused to condone works of the Law as a means of salvation. Paul refused to change the content of his gospel message (Galatians 2:1-10).
David Sills also provides this example. Secular anthropologists see each culture as a separate entity with its own set of relative morals. If a culture believes in killing the second twin, then, it is not murder. This issue is relative with each culture. There are no absolutes according to the secular anthropologist. God, however, wrote an absolute when He commanded, “Thou shalt not kill.”
We do not change our message because it is politically incorrect to preach Jesus is the only way to heaven. Those who believe in Pluralism will call us intolerant of other religions.
Even among Evangelicals, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2007 US Religious Landscape Survey, only 36% believe their religion to be “the one, true faith that leads to eternal life.” This means that 64% of Evangelicals do not believe in exclusivity. This means culture has impacted the church and instead of the church impacting culture.
What about Jesus’ claim of being the only Son of God (John 10:30) and also the only way to Heaven in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, the life, no man comes unto the Father but by me.” In this arena, we are counter-cultural.
In Part 2, I will discuss the second principle for engaging our culutre without compromising our message.
