Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

My friend wishes he had a contextualized screwdriver, one that would fit the screws where he lives. He learned the hard way that his American tool kit lost its value when he moved to a different country. Of course, he tackled the first thing most foreigners do—fix up the new apartment, hang some pictures, and so on. Off he scuttled to the local hardware store. To his dismay, he found the place stocked only square head screws.

“Most people here use only this new design screw,” the sales clerk told him. So my friend trudged home to a toolbox full of useless Phillips head and straight blade screwdrivers. “I wasn’t prepared for such a cross-cultural experience,” he told me. “We’re going through the classic stages of culture shock: novelty, criticism, adjustment and so forth. I’m into the criticism stage at this point.”

All for want of a contextualized screwdriver. But what about a contextualized gospel? Do we export a one-size-fits-all gospel? That’s the impression I get from some church leaders in Asia, Africa and Latin America. One of them called it “McDonaldizing” the gospel.

This problem predates us by about 2,000 years or so. Remember the Jerusalem Council, which grew out of the hot debate between Paul and Barnabas and a group of conservative Jewish converts (including some Pharisees)? In their eyes, Paul had veered from the accepted standards when he had refused to require that his Gentile converts be circumcised and keep the laws of Moses. The council concluded, in the words of James, “that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”

Is there one standard gospel that fits all cultures, or do we allow for some variations when we take the gospel to the Greeks, so to speak? Our American assumption is that there is only one screwdriver and you people have to change your screws to fit our screwdrivers. We’re certainly not going to change (or contextualize) our gospel to make it work in your culture.

At this point, this discussion usually hits a brick wall, because all of us know there is only one gospel, as Paul so clearly stated it: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” He bluntly declared, “By this gospel you are saved.”

Doesn’t that gospel fit every person in the world? Yes and no. It fits in the sense that it is God’s unique, final revelation of how we come to know him. It doesn’t fit in the way some missionaries try to make it fit, assuming that their hearers bring the same assumptions and categories of thought as they do to their religious aspirations.

Take sin, for example. The notion of what constitutes sin varies greatly from people to people. Or what about “saved”? That means nothing to many people whose concepts of the next life do not carry great peril.

Consequently, many of our American gospel tool kits seem irrelevant, or even nonsensical, to people not familiar with our Western theological constructs and doctrinal affirmations.

When I look into the cultural heritages and beliefs of some of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, I am astounded that the church has taken root and flourished in the face of such enormous barriers to clear, understandable communication. I am also deeply appreciative of the patient seed sowing and loving winsomeness of Christians who have engaged people over weeks, months and years to help them make the leap from their own spiritual values to those of Jesus and the gospel.

But my heart sinks when I hear stories about Americans trying to use Phillips and straight blade screwdrivers in cultures where they don’t work. While we must insist on the facts of the gospel, we must not insist on delivering the message in the same American format everywhere we take it. Rather, we must work hard, do our homework, and learn the keys to using the right screwdriver for the right screws.

May 10, 2002