Lausanne World Pulse – Before Contextualization: Critical Incarnational Living

June 2007

By Bryan Galloway

Critical incarnational living teaches cross-cultural workers the deeper meaning of

cultural forms.

Therefore, we need honesty in our task. We need introspection, learning to compare and contrast our own cultural baggage with the essence of what is Christian. Learning to compare and contrast happens best by living in a cross-cultural setting. This is the beginning of contextualization; that is, critical incarnational living.

Paul Hiebert’s classic article entitled “Critical Contextualization”3 offers much help for missionaries. His critical contextualization model involves three steps. Step one is to “study the local culture phenomenologically.” He insists that “here the local church leaders and the missionary lead the congregation in uncritically gathering and analyzing the traditional beliefs, and customs associated with some question at hand.” Step two requires exegesis of the scripture. In this second step, “the pastor or missionary leads the church in a study of the scriptures related to the question at hand” (1987:109). Step three involves a critical response, requiring “the people corporately to evaluate critically their own past customs in the light of their new biblical understandings.”

It appears that Hiebert’s model presupposes two things: (1) the existence of a church among the people or a particular culture and (2) that missionaries are living among and already actually in a position of knowing the culture at hand to assist others in the critiquing process. With that in mind, Hiebert’s model raises several questions.

  1. What if there is no church among the people or culture?
  2. What if cross-cultural workers are planting a church in an area or among a people that have a distinct culture separate from any existing church?
  3. What if there are many co-cultures side by side?
  4. Do cross-cultural workers first call in the existing church to minister to the people?

This might be one approach. However, this article proposes another approach.

It proposes that the first step is not critical contextualization with a local body of believers. Nor is it to work alongside a group of Christian believers who have close cultural affinity with the focus people. Instead, it proposes critical incarnational living.

Critical incarnational living teaches cross-cultural workers the deeper meaning of cultural forms. It teaches cross-cultural workers how to act and behave. More importantly, it tells cross-cultural workers how people interact, what they value and treasure in life. Hence, critical incarnational living and contextualization of the gospel go hand in hand. George Hunter words it this way,

“The gospel’s ambassador is called to adapt to the cultural forms of the target population. All of ‘us’ have received the gospel ‘wrapped’ in the clothing of our particular culture….But when we too closely identify the gospel treasure with earthen vessels in which we received it, its communication to people of other cultures or subcultures is frustrated. Our task is to ‘rewrap’ the gospel in the clothing of their culture, to convey it in a vessel that will transport the gospel meaning to them.”4

Without critical incarnational living, cross-cultural workers can easily fail at contextualizing the gospel. It would be a tragedy if cross-cultural workers traveled twelve thousand miles and failed to walk the last twelve inches—not knowing the cultural context and not striving to become an in-group member of the people. Consequently, critical incarnational living becomes the first task for contextualization. In so doing, cross-cultural workers are in a better position to help the people understand what is worth borrowing and what is not.

Endnotes

1. Ziff, Bruce and Pratima V. Rao. 1997. Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation. New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA: Rutgers University Press.

2. Yellen, John E. 1990. “The Transformation of the Kalahari !Kung.” Scientific American. 262 (4):96.

3. Hiebert, Paul G. 1987. “Critical Contextualization.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research. 2 (3):104-11.

4. Hunter, George G. 1987. To Spread the Power. Nashville, Tennessee, USA: Abingdon Press.

Bryan Galloway has served in roles such as church planter and regional administrator in cross-cultural missions for twenty years with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Church. For the past eight years, he has served as the regional research coordinator for the IMB-SBC Pacific Rim region.

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