Lausanne World Pulse – WORLD PERSPECTIVES – Contextualizing Western Workers—Gifts from the Muslim World

By Don Heckman

Contextualizing our message, methods and ministry to Muslims may overlook our greatest asset: the impact of Muslims upon Christian workers. Call it a gift from the Muslim world.

I first noticed this impact on my life when I started to counsel workers who were in ministry to Muslims. One couple made the comment that I had always been a gentle, retiring person, but no longer. My counsel to them was to the point, quick and almost bold-faced in its directness. The couple graciously received the counsel and said, “You are a changed person, radicalized and very direct from your ministry to Muslims!”

Muslims are virtually transforming Christian workers, making them radical. They are turning our discrete “Western” sharing into a more integrated lifestyle of speaking the word and life into an oral, Eastern context. Oral communication with Muslims will radicalize you.

Contextualization of the Western missionary is an acute need. When someone needs to change to make the gospel understandable, the person who needs contextual change most is the Christian missionary.

The Apostle Paul affirmed that cultures and peoples will find Jesus in their culture. Acts 17:26-27 reads, “So that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him, although he is not far from each one of us.” Is Paul trying to contextualize the gospel? Is he contextualizing culture as a path to the gospel? More than ever, I see Paul himself becoming contextualized, if you will, by finding a place in his heart for people of very different beliefs. I am all for contextualization. But much of the talk about contextualizing the gospel for Muslims forgets that it is incumbent upon us to open our hearts wider to people, not just to find a place for dishdasha robes and salat prayer rituals in a Christian context.

Muslim interaction can give us at least four contextualized gifts.

1. The Gift of Community
Community will radicalize Western missionaries. What we know about community as Westerners needs to be “ratcheted up” to where Muslims live. Muslims have keys to the Kingdom of God already within their cultural expression called the Umma. Umma is an Arabic word that means “community of believers,” a deeper meaning of community when compared to what we know in the West.

The most powerful example of public, oral communication is thus the Umma. Muslims are part of this Umma, the “underground railroad,” so to speak, of a “global Islamic community allegiance.” Muslims in London feel literally welded to and a cloned part of oppressed fellow Muslims in Palestine, for example. A rumor that the Quran was dishonored in one country caused a riot in Pakistan, an entirely different country.

Don Heckman and his wife Evey work with Muslims in North Africa and Southeastern France. Previously, he was involved with planting disciple training centers with YWAM. He also planted a bilingual French/English church, a Tamil church for Sri Lankans and two French churches. He is the author of Christ Loves My Muslim Friend. He can be reached at [email protected].