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Q:How did you get involved in missions?
A: While a student at Cambridge, I was president of the Cambridge Intercollegiate Union. After graduating, I was involved in an outreach in London designed to reach young professionals working in finance, law and insurance. During this time, I felt a hunch that I was to be in the ministry. Several detours later, my missions involvement developed while I was vice-principal of a seminary in north London. While working there I took over 100 teams of students on week-long missions to present the gospel in Britain and other countries.

Doing missions has made me see the changes taking place in British culture. Britain is at least 10-20 years ahead [of the United States] in the onset of a post-Christian culture.

Q:What causes this difference between British and American culture?
A: Less than 10 percent of Britons would identify themselves as regular church attenders today—a huge difference in numbers between Britain and the US. We are losing touch with our Christian heritage.

As a result, in Britain the ability to count on people on the street being able to understand theological and biblical vocabulary, and having some grasp of Christian concepts is disappearing. Recent statistics indicate that less than 15 percent of people under the age of 15 are involved in anything church-related.

Thus, in a European context we have to relearn how evangelism and mission works when you cannot take anything for granted except spiritual ignorance.

Q:What does it mean to contextualize the gospel in a particular culture?
A: We should not think of the gospel as something to be contextualized before we take it to another culture, but as something that has taken place already in our own culture. The church has bought into ways of thinking that owe more to culture than to the gospel, and in the process the gospel has been watered down. We need to take care not to confuse biblical principles with contextualized practices.

The question about how to engage culture presupposes that we know enough about the culture to know what the questions are. We need to listen to what culture is saying. Culture is desperately important, but it is not the determinative. We need to meet culture’s questions in light of the gospel and encourage a self-reflective attitude within the church. The question people need to ask themselves is whether what they believe is actually supported by the New Testament.

Q:How can we understand culture and formulate a good response to it?
A: With mass media, especially television, culture now arises from the bottom instead of coming from philosophy. This is more complex and makes engaging a person’s worldview more difficult. World-views are developed more in relationship to other people or things they are interacting with. The questions a person asks are not necessarily part of a coherent belief system.

To respond to the current culture, we need to rediscover the evangelism of the Gospels. Using a formulaic approach is increasingly ineffective. The primary evangelistic method in the New Testament is retelling the story of Jesus—what he said and did. The summaries came much later. We have reversed the process. Where in the New Testament do you see something that looks like the four spiritual laws?

In Britain, less than 15 percent of people have ever even heard of the resurrection. People don’t know how to process evangelistic information. Jesus often started from within the truths of the gospel and showed people how those truths intersected with their lives. He began with a particular question and moved to grand statements at the end. We need to recover this.

Evangelism needs to focus more on the narratives of Scripture, letting Jesus’ own words bear witness to himself. That gets to the core of the matter much more rapidly.

But, we also have to be prepared for the longer haul. The average length of exposure for someone to become a Christian in Britain is two years.

Q:What should American missionaries be aware of when they go to the field?
A: As soon as we think we are more than servants of the local church of Christ, the whole idea of missions starts to crumble. We have to be quick to learn and slow to speak about the evils we see in other cultures. Americans have an enormous amount of self-confidence. Be aware that God is building a local church in that culture that looks different than what you’re used to. The missionary’s job is just to let the Bible loose and allow the believers and the local culture to dialog with it.

People tend to think pragmatically without thinking theologically. It’s not the job of the missionary to reach a person’s friends and co-workers, but the responsibility of that person. The theology of the New Testament answers the question of who should do evangelism—everybody! We’ve put too much emphasis on individual people doing evangelism on behalf of the church.

Outsiders need room to reflect culturally on what they find odd and fantastic about the local enculturation of the gospel. When this does not happen, the church can rapidly lose touch with culture as people isolate themselves within homogenous groups of people. The diversity arising from this needs to be recognized as a gift from God.