Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – What Does It Mean to Be the Church in Specific Cultures?
On the one hand, there are those who view the universe atheistically and mechanistically as an accidental consequence of Impersonal Energy + Time + Chance. That view of the universe will generally produce behaviour and action in direct contradiction to everything the Christian stands for. On the other hand, there are those who see the universe and everything around us as the result of a creator’s hand and ultimately having a transcendent God as the author and explanation of everything. The Christian will go further and affirm that our own worldview involves understanding Jesus Christ as the incarnation of the living God and the Bible as his written and expressly declared word, will and self-revelation. The cultural, moral and spiritual clash between those holding these different worldviews is obviously going to be real and fierce.
The criteria and principles by which we make cultural judgments must be objectively located in biblical principle and in the authority of the Judeo-Christian scriptures.
All of this places a tremendous responsibility and challenge upon Christians at this time.
As Cape Town 2010: The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation approaches, programmers of the Congress will need to work diligently in helping all participants, not only those in Cape Town, but those hooked up by satellite and Internet feed around the world, to struggle with these issues of gospel contextualisation and cultural application. If we do not, we risk serious irrelevance. We cannot do our evangelism and mission in the twenty-first century as we have done it in past centuries or even decades. The situation is new. The contexts are profoundly challenging. Contemporary cultures are involved in massive and rapid change and by and large moving into greater and greater moral and spiritual lostness.
The Christian Church accordingly has a word for the world about our Lord Jesus Christ, his atoning death on the cross, his resurrection and his offer of eternal life and meaning to all who repent and believe. This is a matchless message that can meet the needs of humans everywhere. But we have to work on making it contextually relevant and culturally comprehensible. Being in the world but not of it, we will tackle its needs and challenges while not being seduced by its presuppositions, worldviews or moral behaviour.
The challenge, exciting and overwhelming, is before us all.
Endnotes
1. Taken from The Gospel in the Modern World—A Tribute to John Stott. 1991. Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 40.
2. Ibid.
3. Hunter, James Davidson. 1992. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books.
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Michael Cassidy is the founder of African Enterprise. Author of a number of books, he has also played a key role as a Christian leader involved in reconciliation in South Africa. |