“Miraculous(?) Movements(?)”

Darren Carlson write’s a helpful review of Jerry Trousdale’s book “Miraculous Movements”. I cannot recommend the review enough and I cannot caution about the book enough.

Here is Carlson’s conclusion:

“I can walk away from this book thankful for the call to pray and read the Bible. I can be appreciative that there is a good chance that some of these stories are true. But, I cannot commend this book. If you read it, think about how one should read the Bible and whether stories of supposed conversions should drive how you read it and methods of evangelism and discipleship. Surely the sixty-two other books in the Bible should play a role in how we do discipleship and evangelism. “

What Could Be Wrong with ‘Church Planting’?

Six Dangers in a Missions Strategy

I agree with this with this article so much it hurts. Read it all at DesiringGod.com

Article by Mack Stiles

Pastor, Kurdistan, Iraq

Every Christian is for church planting, right? How could you be against it? It’s biblical: Paul writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6).

The church is God’s chosen instrument to advance his kingdom. If the Lord tarries, the church will be here long after today’s nations and civilizations have passed into oblivion. No single government existing today has lasted as long as the church. Every missionary I know says they love church planting.

For the record, I love church planting too. I’ve planted churches in the United State and the Middle East. Some have failed; some have grown large; some are the greatest joy of my life — such as the church I now pastor in Erbil, Iraq. Not only that, but by his grace, God used me to start a movement that helped plant churches.

“The church is the chosen instrument of God to advance his kingdom.”TweetShare on Facebook

So, I’m not surprised that a relatively new missions strategy called the Church Planting Movement (CPM) has captured the imaginations of missions-minded people around the world. CPM is tied to examples from the ministry of Jesus, filled with anecdotal stories of success, and presented with the hope of massive worldwide revival. It focuses on house churches, inductive Bible study, self-discovery, ethnic indigeneity, and a journey toward Jesus. The movement is defined by radical indigeneity, and a rapid reproduction of “churches” — in quotes because “church” for many in CPM is merely that “two or more are gathered.”

The vast majority of missionaries who desire to put CPM into practice have an earnest desire to see Jesus known among the nations. But as I’ve lived and ministered in the Middle East for twenty years, and watched missionary strategies come and go, I have concerns.

Strengths in the Strategy

First, let me outline what I appreciate about those I know who attempt to put CPM into practice.

1. Motivation. They are dedicated, sacrificial, and God-fearing. They long for those who are lost and without hope to know the love and mercy and forgiveness of Jesus, and to a person, I like them.

2. Indigeneity. They challenge traditional forms of church that are extrabiblical. Their reaction against extrabiblical and/or sinful practices of the Western church can be a helpful corrective.

3. Scripture. This is the emphasis that most resonates with me. Over the years, the way I have personally seen the most people come to Jesus from unreached people groups is through inductive Bible studies, usually whole-book studies in the Gospel of Mark.

4. Discipleship. I’m alarmed that many missionaries don’t know how to disciple people. They often come from churches that didn’t disciple well (or at all). So, I’m grateful for the emphasis CPM gives to discipleship. It’s no wonder that, when struggling missionaries are given some training on CPM, they latch on to this method. It’s the first tool they have been given for discipleship.

Six Concerning Weaknesses

Alongside the strengths of CPM, however, are several weaknesses I find concerning. Each of them, in one way or another, relates to the first word in the CPM acronym: church. CPM aims to plant churches, but in my judgment the strategy often fails to prioritize biblical structures and standards for churches.

1. Sloppy Definitions of Church

“We don’t want Western church” is a refrain I hear often from CPM advocates. Of course, in one sense I agree; we don’t want an American church. We don’t want to Westernize people into our church culture. On the other hand, however, all cultures are fallen and broken, so just as we don’t want to reproduce American church culture, neither should we want to produce a church that imitates local culture, with its unique blindnesses and brokenness. What we long to see is a biblical culture founded on biblical principles.

Our aim is never to erase our ethnic and cultural identities, of course. But as a missionary friend of mine says, we aim to make these identities “secondary to our new identity as the people of God.” Also, faithful expression of a biblical culture will vary some from age to age in different places, but they will all have the same basic DNA.

When I’ve asked CPM folks to define church — the end goal of their movement — many of them seem to be at a loss. Many respond by talking, ironically, about form: “not a building, but a house church; not pews, but sitting on the floor; not a sermon, but a Bible discussion.”

“What we long to see is a biblical culture founded on biblical principles.”TweetShare on Facebook

What about doctrine? Can a non-Christian become a member? If we’re being rapid about church planting, how do we avoid the unbiblical appointment of young believers to eldership, something forbidden in 1 Timothy 3:6? Frankly, what I hear in CPM is an evangelism strategy, not a church-planting strategy. I love evangelism, but it’s confusing to call an evangelistic outreach “church.”

This inability to define a church is sad because it’s not that hard. In four tweetable sentences, let me try to explain the irreducible, critical parts of church as prescribed in the New Testament.

The church is a gathering of baptized, born-again believers who covenant together in love to meet regularly under the authority of the Scriptures and the leadership of the elders.

Churches do just a few critical activities: They hear the word preached. They sing and pray. They give. They participate in the sacraments of baptism and communion. They practice church discipline.

The overarching mission of the church is the Great Commission: to disciple all nations, teaching them to obey everything Christ has commanded.

The church exists to worship God, to be a visible image of the gospel, and ultimately to give God glory.

In order for a gathering of believers to be a church, these elements must be in place. Some gatherings may be on their way to becoming a church, but they are not yet biblical churches without these basic foundational principles.

I know of nothing more important right now in modern missions than for indigenous churches to be established on biblical principles. New churches with young believers need to get these basic biblical principles right from the start. We ought not to relax biblical principles for new churches; rather, we ought to be more rigorous about them because of what is at stake for the future.

And here’s the rub: it takes time.

2. Vulnerability to Error and Heresy

The second deep concern I have is that, since mature teachers and preachers are sidelined in the CPM model in the name of indigeneity, the fellowships can be susceptible to wolves and charlatans.

Consistently over time, I have seen indigenous churches and individual believers destroyed by outside cults and inside heresy. As I have watched these train wrecks, I often have thought that with clear leadership and biblical teaching these issues could have been dealt with easily.

The dangers confronting these churches have included heavy-handed, dictatorial indigenous pastors; leadership that accepted outside money for an outside agenda; nasty fights; cultic and legalistic outsiders worming their way into the fellowship; and the importation of Western heresies such as the so-called prosperity gospel. And that’s just a few.

These errors are tragic, but not surprising, since a good chunk of the New Testament is written to combat the threats to new churches. But because CPM calls for an extreme commitment to indigenous leadership, they often leave these young believers open to destruction.

A missionary friend of mine noted that even Paul (a Jew) delayed total indigenous leadership by staying in Ephesus for three years (Acts 20:31). We need rock-solid, biblical teaching by those who have watched their life and doctrine well, regardless of their nationality or ethnicity.

3. Temptations to Pragmatism

CPM can fuel in many missionaries desires for results and numbers and dramatic stories. Although these desires may not always be harmful in themselves, they can easily tempt missionaries and missionary administrators to jettison scriptural principles about the church, and take on worldly models for growth. The result is a missionary fad, and the landscape is littered with them.

Often, the charge from CPM practitioners is that they are casting off the Western principles that don’t work in other cultures. And yet, their desire for growth and numbers and rapid effects sometimes seems like a distinctly American value wrapped in different words.

4. Lack of Clarity

Paul’s prayer for himself was to be both bold and clear with the gospel (Ephesians 6:19–20; Colossians 4:4). But the CPM strategy struggles to maintain clarity on several issues besides ecclesiology.

“Clarity about biblical conversion on the mission field is crucial.” TweetShare on Facebook

Who is a genuine believer, for example? If someone says he loves Jesus, does that mean he is his follower? (I’ve heard Muslims claim they love Jesus more than Christians.) Or what constitutes the gospel, for that matter?

Clarity about biblical conversion on the mission field is crucial, but CPM is often fuzzy at best.

5. Ethnically Homogeneous Congregations

The missionaries I know would give their lives to oppose racism. But we must be very careful here not to slip into valuing some ethnic groups over others by calling for “homogeneous church growth,” which CPM advocates often do.

What would you think if someone came as a missionary to America and said they want to establish a white people’s church? I would hope you would be horrified! No, the church is for all people. Ultimately, all churches should desire to be international churches (as far as they are able) because that is our ultimate end before the throne of God.

Ethnic limits may occur because different groups speak different languages, but to limit based on ethnicity itself is unbiblically pragmatic at best, and wicked at worst. Does it help growth? Sure, I suppose, if the goal is rapid growth. Is it right? No.

6. Over-Contextualization

Many involved in CPM over-contextualize in the name of radical indigeneity. Certainly, there are many ways that missionaries can and should contextualize: food, living situations, clothing, language. But we cannot contextualize the gospel itself.

When we cut and paste the gospel, even giving different interpretations to clear biblical texts so that we can fit the gospel to culture, we are giving up the biblical narrative — we are giving up the story line of the Scriptures that God has carefully woven. To give up the biblical narrative is to over-contextualize.

“Missionary fads come and go. Clear proclamation of gospel truth in the context of healthy biblical churches will last.” TweetShare on Facebook

It’s astounding that there are Christians who think they have the authority to adapt the gospel for their situation based on their own understanding. Do we need to be loving and thoughtful about presenting the gospel message? Absolutely. Do we need to be sensitive to other cultures? By all means. But what is needed more in modern missions are people who understand the gospel, present it boldly and clearly, and know that Jesus promises persecution and even gives instructions about how to act when it comes.

Over-contextualizing the gospel may indicate that the missionary has been converted, rather than the people to whom they’ve been sent.

Dial It Back

My request for those who advance CPM is to dial it back. Speed is not the call. Indigeneity may be helpful, but my experience is that partnership is more fruitful long term. There is much to learn from those who have gone before us in the Western church. The aversion to paternalism denies indigenous leaders time to see Christian leadership modeled for them by missionaries, which departs from Paul and Timothy’s model. Careful and thoughtful theology of the church, the gospel, and biblical conversion is essential.

I’m convinced that gospel proclamation and church planting can come together in ways that address the concerns of those who follow CPM. Our church in Erbil, Iraq, for example, includes believers from a variety of cultures and languages. Together, we see our primary responsibility as living out a biblical church in the middle of an unreached people group. Unbelievers regularly visit and see Christians worship together across ethnic lines — and some of them come to Christ that way. Along with proclaiming the word from the pulpit and individually, we practice one-on-one discipleship and inductive Bible studies, all with the aim of planting more churches pastored by indigenous leaders. Our church is not perfect, and we don’t pretend it is or will be, but we work to grow and teach and model and correct.

I mentioned above that CPM is new — and it is new in the overall history of missions. But in the world of modern missionary methods, CPM (circa 2001) is old. It is already being shelved for something newer. Another missionary friend says, “DMM (Disciple-Making Movement) is a kind of next-generation CPM with a focus on obedience-based discipleship and discovery Bible studies, and with less focus on planting churches.” But this new method only serves the point: Missionary fads come and go. Clear proclamation of gospel truth in the context of healthy biblical churches will last until Jesus returns.

Mack Stiles (@mackstiles) is Senior Pastor of the Erbil International Church and author of Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus.

The Gospel’s message – September 2019

My task today is to speak on the Gospel’s Message.

 

Particularly I want to address the biblical faithfulness of our gospel preaching and the clarity of our gospel preaching.

The importance of preaching the gospel faithfully

In order to proclaim the gospel message faithfully we must make sure that what we include is gospel content, and that we include all of the gospel’s content. This means we must know the gospel well.

But we don’t merely need to proclaim the gospel message faithfully in its content, but also clearly in context; meaning contextually in the cultures in which live and minister.

We need to know language and culture well; our own cultures and the cultures in which we reside. Proper contextualization is vital for clear gospel proclamation.

The difficulty in preaching the gospel clearly

It can be difficult to preach the gospel clearly because our audience can vary so much.

[Tell Story]: conversation with a materialist, K-ist, secularist, and alcohol-ist. But all of our identity cards say “Muslim.”

How do we clearly preach the gospel when we have a complicated audience?

We have all read many times Paul’s claim to have “become all things to all people so that I might win some”. But what does it mean to “become all things to all people” in a biblically faithful way that doesn’t compromise the gospel message?

We need to preach the gospel faithfully in content and clearly in context. If we don’t do both of those things well, then we can quickly stumble into using dangerous methods and proclaiming a cheap gospel.

Brothers, the souls of the lost around us depend on us preaching the gospel message faithfully and clearly.

“But isn’t God sovereign in salvation?” You say. “Can’t God use a partial or weak gospel message to open the eyes of the lost and save them?”

We shouldn’t let a robust belief in the sovereignty of God be an excuse for us to be lazy or timid in our gospel presentations.

God-forbid that my love for the doctrines of grace lead me to be a pathetic evangelist.

We should believe in the complete and total sovereignty of God, and believe in the responsibility of humanity, including in the call to evangelize. Like Paul, work hard, by the grace of God.

My goal is to help us build up our ability to proclaim a faithful gospel message and preach it clearly in our cultural contexts.

I believe 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:5 will guide us in building that structure of preaching a faithful and clear gospel message.

We will just look at a few verses.

Key verses:

17 – For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

23-24 – but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

2, 4-5 – For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified… ⁴ and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

“the wisdom of men” spoken of in this passage is addressing specifically the oratory practices and skills that great speakers of the day would use to manipulate the crowds.

They would enter the city a certain way, with pomp and decadence, to build up their reputation; they would speak with great vigor, they would use worldly rhetoric and wisdom.

But Paul was not like this, intentionally; but also, because he wasn’t skilled. He spoke of how unimpressive he was in person.

Even if he could have, Paul refused to use human wisdom, secular rhetoric, or eloquent speech.

Paul knew that intellectual persuasion does not save people. Saving faith is produced by the heart-changing power of the Holy Spirit as the gospel is faithfully proclaimed.

Paul was concerned with the Corinthians’ focus on the showy ability of the preachers rather than the content of their message because this showed that they weren’t living by the power of the cross.

Instead of using these oratorical tricks, Paul says, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

DA Carson points out that it seems Paul “had resolved what the content of his message would be before arriving.”^[1]

And after he arrived, he wasn’t relying on human wisdom, but on the power of the message fueled by the Spirit.

I am not equating things like contextualization to manipulation and mere human wisdom. In God’s kindness it is possible to wisely apply and use contextualization as a tool to help us better communicate the gospel message.

Paul contextualizes in Acts 17, Apollos in Acts 18.

However, this passage warns us against relying on things like contextualization, on “human wisdom”, for the gospel to be powerful and effective.

In this text we are given targets for what the content of the gospel message should be andhow we should approach preaching it in context, in that order.

I say in that order because many workers start with the cultural context and have that determine the content of the gospel’s message; we should do the opposite.

Like Paul, we should start with the gospel’s content, and then seek to clearly communicate it within our context.

Otherwise, the source of the gospel message becomes the culture; rather than the source of the gospel content be the bible and how we communicate it be informed by the culture.

As two Indian brothers who pastor in the middle east put it, “in all articulations of the atonement, indeed in all theology… biblical categories must take precedence over cultural ones.” – Aubrey Sequeira and Anand Samuel

This may seem obvious to us, and I praise God that it is so here, but it isn’t true for the entire M world.

For instance, the argument of one well-known Missiologist in his book on reaching Cousins leads to using cultures, as he puts it, as “the starting point and framework for any expression of the gospel” (p. 39).[2]

I admit I am not stating his arguments with a full explanation, but this sentence alone is worrisome.

Even if he personally has a clear understanding of the gospel message, telling someone to start with the culture is always dangerous.

We must start with the content of the gospel message before we move to the context in which we preach it.

Therefore, in light of 1 Cor 1 and 2: we get our two main points:

First…The aim of a faithful gospel message in content should be: Christ crucified

And second…The aim of a clear gospel message that’s communicated in context should be: For the faith of the hearer to rest in the power of God and the crucified Christ, not the wisdom of men

A faithful gospel message in content

First, Christ crucified should be the content of the gospel message

What the gospel is NOT

In order to understand properly what the gospel IS we must make clear what the gospel is NOT.

It’s interesting, in 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:4, Paul never preaches the gospel. He speaks often of the cross of Christ, he even states in verse 30:

“because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption”

But that isn’t the entire content of the gospel. Gospel truths are not the gospel. They are glorious pieces of the gospel, foundations and fundamentals of the gospel, but they are not the gospel message.

Simply proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” is not the gospel because as sinners we need a way to be reconciled to that Lord.

Just because something is true doesn’t make it the gospel. “God is love” is a magnificent, tremendously comforting truth, but it isn’t the gospel message.

Therefore, “Christ crucified” must be explained.

In a similar way, Bridges to the gospel are not the gospel

This is certainly true if, like Paul in Acts 17, we use some other religious, or philosophical, non-biblical text, like the Koran, to bridge to the gospel.

But it is also true of helpful, gospel rich narratives in scripture.

The prodigal Son is an awesome picture of the gospel and perhaps one of the most impactful stories for an honor-shame context, but it isn’t the gospel.

We need and should use bridges to the gospel, but they are not the gospel.

Finally, what the gospel DOES is not what the gospel IS

This means that our testimonies are not the gospel. Praise God for how Jesus has changed our lives, and we should tell anyone and everyone the glorious ways that God is working in our lives and has worked. Testimonies help display the beauty and power of the gospel. But they are not the gospel.

What the gospel does for us is not the gospel. They are splendid implications, results of the gospel, but they are not the gospel message.

When, by God’s grace, we believe in the good news and are converted we know that…

We are adopted as children of God

Our shame is taken away

Our consciences are made clean

We are redeemed

… made members of the kingdom

… part of the body of Christ

… IN Christ

… found

… in the hands of the Father and no one is able to pluck us out

But these glorious, heart reviving gospel implications and effects are not the complete gospel message.

So you ask, enough already, what is the gospel?

What the gospel IS

Foundations helps us with that on page 43: I’m assuming you don’t have your copies in your pocket I’ll read it –

“The gospel is the good news that the only true God, the just and gracious Creator of the universe, has looked upon hopelessly sinful men and woman and sent his Son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin through his substitutionary death on the cross and to show his power over sin and death in the resurrection from the grave so that all who turn from their sin and themselves and trust in Jesus alone as Savior and Lord will be reconciled to God forever.”[3] Amen.

What a helpful, clear definition of the gospel message for us. This is the why, the how, the who, and the what of “Christ crucified”.

But to make sure we know why we must have this content in order to proclaim it faithfully, let’s break it down a little bit with some help from Foundations and from Greg Gilbert’s little book “what is the gospel?”

We will look at it in four parts:

The gospel message IS About God the Righteous Creator, For Human Sinners, In Jesus Christ the Savior, Through our Response—Repentance and Faith

The gospel message IS…About God the Righteous Creator – it is God centered

See all the ways this definition is focused on God:

“The gospel is the good news that the only true God, the just and gracious Creator of the universe, has looked upon sinners and sent his Son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin …will be reconciled to God forever.”

Its about what God did in order to reconcile sinful, rebellious humans to himself. What God did to get humans back to God. The gospel is about God acting to save sinners.

It is summarized in Ephesians 2 as “but God”.

This means we don’t center the gospel’s message around our “brokenness” or “our shame” or our “felt needs”. We don’t center it on humans and our problems. Faithful gospel content starts with and is centered on God.

And it must be the God of the bible – not the god of the Koran, not a God that is palatable, not a God that looks, thinks, and acts like we want him to.

It must be the eternal triune-Creator God, Lord of heaven and earth.

Our gospel presentations should be God-Centered, not man-centered.

But…The gospel message IS…For Human Sinners – all of sinful humanity

“God looked upon hopelessly sinful men and women”.

Not simply broken people, not merely lost, not just people who do sins; but sinners who have rebelled and thus are by nature children of wrath and dead in our trespasses and sins.

We are not simply on the wrong path and need to be shown a better way. We don’t need to follow the law with our own effort. We can’t outweigh our bad works with good works. God won’t be merciful on us just because we are “good people.” We don’t just need our shame to be covered. We are not simply innocent victims under the rule of Satan.

We are sinners; guilty, dead, and hopeless, deserving of God’s righteous and just wrath.

This isn’t just true for Christians, or just those born in the west, or just those who have heard the gospel but not for those who are isolated in some remote place high in the mountains.

This is true for every single human who has ever lived. We are sinners in need of a Savior.

Praise be to God that…

The gospel message IS…In Jesus Christ the Savior

God sent his Son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin through his substitutionary death on the cross and to show his power over sin and death in the resurrection from the grave so that all who turn from their sin and themselves and trust in Jesus alone as Savior and Lord will be saved.

Jesus: fully God, fully man. He lived a sinless life, he suffered and died on the cross, and rose from the grave defeating death, sin, and Satan.

Not only did he defeat Satan and the power of darkness, not only does he wash us clean and cover our shame, but he paid the price we owed because of our sins by substituting himself and absorbing the wrath of God that has been revealed from heaven against ungodliness.

Note: Without the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross to pay for our sins all the other consequences of the gospel are impossible to achieve.

We can’t skirt on the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus.

Now, I want to humbly submit, as pointed out by a good friend, that there is a hole in the definition found in Foundations.

I think we would be greatly served in our cultural contexts, but even more importantly I think it is a more faithful way to be, as Paul says, “according to the scriptures”, to add the phrase “the long awaited and promised Messiah”.

As Elliot Clark recently pointed out, “We can’t simply preach Christ and him crucified as if the gospel exists in a vacuum.” What he means is that the PSA work of Christ on the cross is the center of the gospel, but it is so because it is the aim and fulfillment of God’s promise and plan to redeem His people.

Jesus didn’t show up out of nowhere.

He was promised and awaited, the one in whom all the promises of God find their “yes and amen”. The death of Jesus only makes sense as the long-awaited and promised Messiah.

And as such in life and death he was our righteous substitution.

The gospel message IS…Through our Response—Repentance and Faith

Jesus bore the wrath that we deserve so that all who hear, repent, and put their faith in him will be saved.

“all who turn from their sin and themselves and trust in Jesus alone as Savior and Lord will be reconciled to God forever.”

That means men and women cannot be saved without hearing this gospel message. Faith comes by hearing – not merely by having faith in “what you know” or by being genuine in your faith in a Creator, but faith in the gospel message.

This means men and women must turn from their sin and themselves – including their old way of life, cultural norms that go against God and scripture, practices that are clearly tied to their former religion, “ways of life” that don’t fit in the kingdom of God.

This is the gospel. This message IS About God the Righteous Creator, For Human Sinners, In Jesus Christ the Savior, Through our Response—Repentance and Faith

In order to faithfully preach the Gospel’s message, we must include this content.

Many times, in our tribe, we stop at this point. We get the content of the gospel and work to preach it faithfully, but then we shrink back from the hard work of taking this accurate, biblical, faithful message and seeking to communicate it clearly in the contexts we live in…mainly because we don’t want to mishandle it.

But let’s not let a healthy fear of watering down the gospel keep us from thinking through how to clearly communicate this most glorious news to those around us.

We must work to clearly preach the gospel’s message within our contexts.

1 Corinthians again gives us the aim of faithful and clear preaching.

The aim of a clear gospel message in context: For the faith of the hearer to rest in the power of God and the crucified Christ, not the wisdom of men

That fear we have of watering down the gospel message, or mishandling it, is there for good reason.

First, Paul warns against it in 1 Corinthians and other places.

Second, we’ve seen things called “evangelism and m work” that have little to no resemblance of the gospel message within them; all in the name of “proper contextualization.”

We should contextualize, it is a good and needed thing, and it is something we all do, but as I’ve argued, our cultural context shouldn’t dictate the content of the gospel. But our cultural context can guide our communication of the gospel.

Afterall, what is the purpose of contextualization?

“The purpose [of contextualization] is not to make the gospel comfortable, but to make it clear.” – Foundations

But there are some, in an effort to “remove barriers to the gospel”, who have removed stumbling blocks that, as we have seen, are central to the gospel message.

Things like Jesus as the Son of God, language about the Trinity, the sinfulness of all humanity, God being the one true Creator, the wrath of God, the exclusivity of the gospel, penal substitutionary atonement.

As we have seen, when these things are removed in the name of palatability and contextualization, we no longer have the gospel’s message.

But this dangerous effort to contextualize doesn’t merely result in pieces of the gospel message being removed. It also leads to dangerous methodologies and philosophies of ministry.

There can be hazardous results from poor contextualization.

There are three main errors I have in mind.

…The error of reductionistic theology, or theological minimalism; the error of overreliance on self-theologizing; and the error of not contextualizing.

Dangerous intentional methods and unintentional heresies have crept in all over Central Asia from these three errors.

Regarding Errors from reductionistic theology or theological minimalism

Think of things like…

Insider-movements, false gospels like the prosperity gospel, various forms of syncretism; all of these generate from either careless or intentional methods that warp gospel content by reducing it.

Typically, this comes from zealous over-contextualization which leads to false assurance of salvation, heresy, or at the very least, an uninformed, misunderstanding of the gospel and Christianity.

The scary part of this is that there are many who have unknowingly done this because they didn’t communicate the gospel faithfully in content or clearly in context.

I know of one local K who was dubbed the “leader of a movement” by one GCC in our city. But when a mature K believer spoke with him it was clear he didn’t believe in the deity of Christ or the exclusivity of the gospel or understand what faith was.

It seems there was two reasons for this; first, “their language wasn’t good enough to explain it” and second, the method they hold to allows for unbelievers, like this guy, to teach the bible to others.

These brothers have a good heart, and good intentions, but their neglect of the gospel’s content and clear communication led to a false understanding of the gospel.

The second error I think we are perhaps more prone to is overreliance on self-theologizing.

We want the gospel message, and subsequent biblical teaching, to be done by cultural insiders in their language in a way that communicates biblical teaching accurately. This means they must address issues within their context and communicate the gospel clearly.

But some have taken this too far.

One Indian brother writes: “Some of the more moderate “contextualization” advocates with whom I’ve interacted tell me that they do not want Western understandings of Christianity to be imposed on people in India.” We would agree. But the problem comes with what we do to try to prevent that. “Therefore, instead of teaching Indians what Christian life and worship looks like, they ask them to read the Bible and come to their own conclusions. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Except that Christ has commanded us otherwise. The Great Commission includes the call to make disciples, teaching them to obey all of Christ’s commands (Matt 28:18–20).”[4]

Overreliance on self-theologizing is dangerous and unbiblical.

There is much more I could say about these dangers, but the point of bringing them up is that it is easy to improperly contextualize the gospel to the point that we lose vital points of the true message.

So do all these dangerous things that have come out of contextualization mean that we shouldn’t seek to contextualize the gospel message? No.

The final error in communicating the gospel clearly in context is…

Namely not contextualizing at all, or at least not doing a good job of considering our cultural context in order to communicate the gospel well.

One prime example of this is when we almost exclusively use a guilt-innocent motif in evangelism and ignore honor-shame and power-fear frameworks. Or when we overuse one of them.

I’m going to assume you are familiar with these three types of cultural designations.

Many rightly argue that Central Asia is an honor-shame context;

however, I would agree with those who say that while all cultures have a primary motif, all humans everywhere are affected by guilt, shame, and fear caused by our sin.

It is too simplistic to say that one culture is “strictly” honor-shame, or -power-fear, or guilt-innocent. Cultures are much more complicated than that, and in our globalized world, cultures are affecting each other more and more.

We live in primarily honor-shame cultures, but who here has ever heard of a person going to a Muslim holy man to put a curse on a person who offended them?

Who here has ever seen a bull’s skull hanging over a farmer’s barn to protect from evil spirits?

Who hear has ever heard of the evil eye?

We live in cultures affected by fear.

One might accept that but still hold that only the west fits in a guilt-innocent paradigm.

But consider, we all live in cultures infected by Islamic teaching.

“Islamic Sharia law, the religious judicial framework that governs Islamic society…is manifestly a system of guilt and righteousness.”

I could go on, but I think it is clear that all cultures everywhere are under the curse of sin in a way that intertwines our guilt, shame, and fear.

In light of this reality, we should be aware that there are dangers in over-emphasizing one motif to the point that we either willfully or unknowingly ignore the others; which results in a truncated gospel message.

A danger in truncating the gospel message to present in a guilt-innocent culture is making the gospel too transactional or individualistic.

The gospel is for individuals, but the gospel is not individualistic.

A danger in adjusting the gospel message for an honor-shame culture is making the gospel mostly about restoring our personal honor on a horizontal level in community;

The categories of honor-shame in the bible are God-centered and primarily vertical, speaking to our need to be clean in order to stand before the most honorable Creator of the universe who we dishonored by rebelling against him.

A danger in modifying the gospel message for a fear-power context is we can make Satan out to be our greatest problem rather than our own sinful rebellion against a righteous God.

Not only do we not want to overemphasize one motif over the others, but we want to contextualize faithfully and critically without losing the heart of the gospel message – the PSA.

What is a principle that should act as a barrier to prevent us from going too far while still encouraging contextualization?

The gospel message is not determined by context. The gospel message is presented in context.

So, cultural observations should not yield theological conclusions and thus shape our gospel content and methods.

Our missiological methods should be formed and shaped by our ecclesiological aspirations both of which should be housed inside our theological conclusions that are built upon biblical foundations.

When we let our missiology drive our ecclesiology and evangelism, we are in danger of drifting away from our theological conclusions. It’s not like putting the cart before the horse. It’s like letting the cargo in the cart map out our directions.

We shouldn’t preach a gospel that is palatable and acceptable in a culture but a gospel that is penetrating and piercing into a culture.

This is more akin to Paul’s contextualization than many modern forms we see. Sometimes he purposefully presented a more uncomfortable gospel.

Because “the Christian message is a worldview that transforms all cultures, both East and West” – Aubrey S

The problem is not that the gospel message doesn’t speak to honor – shame or power-fear cultures. Nor is the problem that we can only address one motif at a given time.

Timothy Tennent notes, ‘A more biblical understanding of human identity outside of Christ that is framed by guilt, fear, and shame will, in turn, stimulate a more profound and comprehensive appreciation for the work of Christ on the cross.”

So, we need to take the time to learn how to clearly communicate the gospel message in our contexts while still being faithful to the content of the gospel message.

For instance, JI Packer says that the gospel is “adoption by substitution.”

Notice that adoption, which speaks to an honor-shame context, comes BY substitution. It isn’t possible to address shame and fear without the penal substitutionary atoning work of Christ. It is the first-mover, the initiator of all the other effects of the gospel. Christ covers our shame by paying for our guilt.

We have usually, usually, done well in proclaiming the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. But we often forget of our adoption.

Adoption into the family of God speaks to someone whose family is ashamed of them, whose community has rejected them. Adoption into the family of God means we are co-heirs with Christ. We are seated at the table of our eternal Father.

PSA is the center and the anchor of the gospel message. But there is much we can attach to that anchor to better communicate in our cultures.

The gospel speaks to our shame-fear-and guilt.

What would that look like? Well, we can simply bring out aspects of the gospel message without truncating it that pierce an honor-shame context and say something like:

“The gospel is the good news that the only true God, the just and gracious Creator of the universe

who is holy, pure, and honorable (Isaiah 6:3)[5]

has looked upon hopelessly sinful men and women

who fell from having no shame in the garden (Genesis 2:25) to having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) by dishonoring God through their rebellion against him (Danial 9:5-9; Romans 5:8-10)

and [so He] sent his Son, the long awaited and promised Messiah, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin through his substitutionary death on the cross

where “he humbled himself (Phil 2:8-9) and was despised and rejected by men…Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Is. 53:3)

Jesus endured the cross, disregarding its shame (Heb. 12:2) that he took in the place of shameful sinners

and to show his power over sin and death in the resurrection from the grave

and has “taken his seat of honor at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2)

so that all who turn from their sin and themselves and trust in Jesus alone as Savior and Lord will be reconciled to God forever…

And now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

For “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” (Rom. 10:11; Isaiah 28:16)

But [instead] to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God (John 1:12)

and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ  (Romans 8:17)

And now we can approach the throne of grace with confidence as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. . . . Once we were not a people, but now we are God’s people” (1 Pet. 2:6–10, ESV).

The gospel message speaks to our guilt, our shame, and our fear.

Ultimately, we cannot and should not separate the gospel into truncated, parsed categories, applying only certain aspects to specific cultural settings for the sake of palatability and cultural acceptance.

Rather, with penal-substitutionary-atonement as its epicenter, we should expand our gospel message and boldly believe and proclaim that the gospel fully, completely, and gloriously speaks to and overcomes the brokenness of shame-guilt-and-fear caused by our sin.

This is the message we have to share.

Let’s know the content of the gospel message well so we can preach it faithfully and let’s know our contexts well so we can communicate it wisely, and clearly in the cultures in which we live.

^[1] Bruce Winter, “1 Corinthians,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 1165.

[2] Insider Jesus: Theological Reflections on New Christian Movements by William A. Dyrness

[3] (Isaiah 5:16, 6:1-7; Mark 1:14-15; John 3:1-21; Romans 3:1-31; 1 Corinthians 15:1-8; Eph 2:1-10; 1 Tim 1:15; Titus 3:4-7)

[4] https://www.9marks.org/article/a-plea-for-gospel-sanity-in-missions/ – By Aubrey Sequeira

[5] I was pointed to these texts by Jayson Georges book “The 3D Gospel”, but I would not recommend the book as a model

Key Principles for Disciple Making in Central Asia – by Sam Martyn

What an encouraging article by *Sam Martyn:

In our Central Asian context, we strive to make national disciples who live committed to one another in covenanted community and express gospel obedience by living out the New Testament’s “one another” commands. We want disciples who hold one another accountable for cultivating the spiritual disciplines. We strive to raise up believers who gather around the Word of God to teach, exhort, and correct one another in light of unique Central Asian concerns. We make disciples who make disciples as they travel throughout the region alongside more mature disciples learning to explain the gospel to others and to gather new believers into churches; and who, as they do these things, rely on the power of God’s Spirit to transform people through the gospel.

Read Sam’s full article here.

31 Quotes from “Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global”

MISSIONS: How the Local Church Goes Global
is the latest release in the little hardcover series from 9Marks and Crossway, “Building Healthy Churches.” An extremely helpful book from a faithful brother who has worked tirelessly to send, support, train, encourage, and gently correct churches and missionaries for years. His urgently patient faithfulness is an example too many. This book will be helpful as an introduction to missions, an outline for your missions program at your church, to reshape and reform your view and practice of missions, and an encouragement to those who are faithfully striving to see God’s glory among the nations and the lost hear and believe the gospel. Here are 31 great quotes from the book.

 

1. “Imagine a local church where the congregation’s mission to the nations is clear and agreed upon. Elders guide the congregation toward strategic missions. Missions is held up as a concern for all Christians, not just the niche “missions club.” The tyranny of new trends and demands for immediate, visible results hold no sway. Members see missions as the work of the church together rather than the personal, private activity of the individual.”
2. “Evangelism and establishing Christ’s church is our first priority in missions.”
3. “Any effort on our part to change or broaden the mission, or to substitute our ideas for God’s, runs the risk of trying to rob God of his rightful glory. And trying to rob an all-knowing and all-powerful God of the thing he is most passionate about in all the universe is breathtakingly stupid and ultimately pointless.”
4. “Our confidence in missions and our joy in salvation flow from a knowledge that God’s mission of mercy finds its origin in his desire for his glory, not in our ability or desirability.”
5. Concerning para-church mission agencies, “any humanly invented organizations that assist in missions must remember that they are the bridesmaids, not the bride.”
6. “The heart for God-glorifying missions starts with joy in the gospel. Our churches must first cherish the God who sent his own Son to save sinners like us.”
7. “I’ve seen churches that have tried to get their members excited about missions without being excited about the gospel. The result was pitiful.”
8. “Churches won’t extend themselves to commend the gospel until they deeply cherish the gospel.”
9. “The glory of the gospel–not the neediness of mankind–is the self-sustaining fuel for global missions.”
10. “Despite globalization and mobility, until Christ returns, there will always be a need for churches to train, send, and financially support intentional missionaries.”
11. “Missionaries are not just self-styled free agents. They should be accountable to a specific local church.”
12. “Biblical missionaries are connected to a local church. It’s always been that way.”
13. “Concerns about giving missionaries too much may just show we have done a poor job vetting those we send.”
14. “God’s mission is urgent…Yet God’s mission is not frantic or in danger of failing.”
15. “Sending the wrong people overseas isn’t just poor stewardship. It can encumber the fruitfulness of other workers.”
16. “A trail of conspicuous fruitfulness in other’s lives is one of the grand marks of a good prospective missionary.”
17. “Churches are where faithful missionaries are made.”
18. The core of missions preparation is not missions studies. It is godliness, Bible knowledge, evangelistic zeal, love for Christ’s church, and passion to see Christ glorified.
19. “Extensive travel and international experience are not prerequisites to missionary work. A love for the gospel, a faithful life, an affirming church, and a willingness to go are.”
20. “I don’t know how the notion of equating poor missionaries with godly missionaries got started.”
21. “The best way to make sure short-term work is genuinely helpful is to send teams that your overseas workers request.”
22. “Too many churches view the breadth of their missions commitments, rather than the depth, as the measure of their love for the nations.”
23. “The goal of missions is to gather churches that plant other churches.”
24. “Putting churches into better biblical order also was high on Paul’s agenda, and it should probably be higher on our agenda too.”
25. “We shouldn’t let our good passion to find lost sheep in new pastures fool us into neglecting flocks that have already been gathered, purchased by Christ’s precious blood.”
26. “Often churches and individuals seem hesitant to evaluate too deeply the theology and quality of the workers they might support. This seems entirely wrongheaded to me. If a worker is offended that you want to explore the contours of his or her theology, that should be a huge red flag.”
27. “The cause of the gospel is seldom served by missionaries who lie about their work in order to gain access for the truth.”
28. “Whether great things happen in our time or not is in God’s control. We are called to be faithful in both fruitful and lean times. Success is in the hands of God.”
29. “The gospel is for all people everywhere. Understanding both the urgency of the task–“How will they hear unless someone is sent?”–and the greatness and worthiness of God will fuel a passion that touches a whole congregation. Preaching like this is in fact the most foundational thing a pastor can do to lead his congregation in missions.”
30. “It’s estimated that more than a million North Americans participate in short-term mission trips overseas each year, up from an estimated twenty-five thousand in 1980. During this same period, long-term missionaries from North America have only increased slightly, if at all.”
31. “Many of us don’t have to board international flights to reach people from other religions and cultures. We just need to open our eyes, look around, and engage the nations in our own cites and towns….80 percent of international students never see the inside of an American home during their stay.”

Half-Empty Vision of Global Missions

Elliot Clark writes a helpful article at the Gospel Coalition encouraging reformed Christians to avoid wallowing in a “pious resignation of failure” as we speak of suffering, weakness, frustration for lack of fruit or health in the global church. Rather, he encourages us that “whenever we consider our role in that glorious missionary narrative, when we look at the state of the church globally, we should look with the eyes of the Bible. Despite all the real problems and challenges, I’m convinced a biblical perspective doesn’t focus as much on our failure as it does on God’s fulfillment. All over the world the gospel is advancing and bearing fruit. Jesus’s words are true. The kingdom is at hand. The glass is fuller than we realize.”

He starts…

Perhaps you’ve noticed a certain tone when we, particularly in Reformed circles, talk about global missions. At times we slip into categories of desperation or even defeat. Some approach missions with a pious resignation to failure—after all, we were promised the world would reject us. Even those with a more hopeful outlook, who would rouse us to great missionary endeavors, sometimes motivate with past failures and the disgrace of an unfinished task.

When we look at our collective world and consider the missionary mandate, we note all we’re not doing, all the unengaged peoples we’re not reaching. We criticize the lack of giving and subsequent lack of resources, human and otherwise. When we turn to the global church, we become cynical, bemoaning shallow theologies and rampant false teaching around the world. Thus we label the missions glass half-empty. As a result, our global Christian perspective tilts toward melancholy.

But if we consistently approach missions from the standpoint of all we’re not doing, of all that’s yet to be done, we miss the glory of what has already been fulfilled. If Christ’s mission, as far as we’re concerned, remains largely unaccomplished, then we don’t have a fully formed biblical perspective, one that recognizes all that God has done and is now doing in the world.

Click the quote to read the entire article.

Silver Bullet in Global Missions?

9Marks constantly encourages mission and evangelism while warning of being extra-biblical, or even unbiblical, in our methods and practices. This is another example as a pastor living in the middle east warns of pursuing the “silver bullet” in our evangelism and church planting.

Of course, methods aren’t wrong. They’re inescapable, and we all have them. But when finding the perfect method or “the key” becomes the focus, we’re in danger of sacrificing present-day, imperfect faithfulness on the altar of future, “perfect” success. We sometimes fail and even refuse to evaluate the downsides of this so-called “miracle” method. When this happens, we’re inhibited from discerning real fruit from faux results.

Read the entire article at 9Marks.

Any 3: the answer to our EV problems?

OVer at Training Leaders International, Elliot Clark does a wonderful job of reviewing the “Any 3 method”. I give away his final analysis, but this is a helpful summary.

Mike Shipman’s short work, Any-3: Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime, addresses this situation by providing a handbook for evangelistic conversations with Muslims. His work seeks to inspire action but also to normalize and simplify the act of sharing the gospel. In many ways, the book emphasizes the urgency and attainability of this goal as demonstrated in its subtitle: Lead Muslims to Christ Now!…

…New believers within the Any-3 strategy strangely gather around a short vision statement on the essentials of reproduction. They also recite a statement of faith which is incredibly brief and tilted toward a commitment to evangelism rather than the typical, objective truths of a creed (126-27). These statements are divorced from Christian history and tradition, and they fail to represent the values of the new covenant community beyond a commitment to rapid growth. As such, Any-3 has the potential to propagate a movement that is not sufficiently grounded in the Scriptures.

Undoubtedly, many Muslims are coming to faith in Christ, and probably a good number through the committed method and simple presentation that is Any-3. However, the inspirational stories of decisions for Christ throughout the book ultimately leave us wondering what the hearers have actually decided, and to what they have been converted.

Head over to TLI to read his review.

Is Every Christian a Missionary?

The quick answer? No. Is everything the Christian does mission? That is slightly more complicated. But these two issues are addressed by Denny Spitters (vice-president for church partnerships with Pioneers USA) and Matthew Ellison (a missions pastor turned parachurch president and missions coach) in their forthcoming book When Everything is Missions,

It is not too late for the North American church to reassert that missionaries are sent-out ones—to cast aside the notion that everything is mission and everybody is a missionary, or that the debate is only a semantic one. We believe the future health of the Church and the advancement of the gospel in our own context is directly linked to thinking clearly about the mission task and missionary roles. To go and make disciples of all nations and send out those whom God has called for specific purposes is not only a command, it is the very lifeblood of our task—of advancing the gospel and joining in the work of Jesus to build His global Church. (80)

Kevin DeYoung gives a helpful, quick overview of the book and subject here.

I already preordered the book myself and look forward to passing it on to pastors, missionaries, and other Christian friends.

Longevity: The highest calling in missions?

“Longevity is not our ultimate goal in the work of church planting.” This was shocking when I heard it recently at a time of training for church planting team leaders. It seems like longevity was always being preached. “Language and culture acquisition for the sake of longevity”; “taking time off for the sake of longevity”; “they are an example of longevity”. It seems like one of the main tasks of a cross-cultural church planter is longevity.

Are we are prioritizing longevity over everything else, including gospel proclamation? The sad truth is that many place priority on longevity to the neglect of gospel clarity. Paul certainly spent years in different locations, but he also was forced to leave certain cities after very short periods. What was the difference? Why at one place was he committed to longevity and at the other he left in a hurry? The answer is gospel proclamation. Paul always emphasized gospel proclamation over longevity. Sometimes he still made it long term in a city. Other times, because of his gospel clarity, he was forced to leave.

Here is a more thorough discussion on the topic of longevity over at IMB.org