pat loughery

Earlier I jotted out this quick blog entry:

Interesting article on contextualizing the Gospel for Russian youth here, PDF.

Sitting at Red Robin and watching the Sonics – Spurs game 5, I was able to go through it and make some notes. But first an introduction.

At the Vineyard pastor’s conference I heard an excellent comment from my friend Mark when we were discussing the emerging church. I can’t quote him now, but it went something like this (feel free to correct me, Mark, if I misrepresent your thoughts).

“The danger of the emerging church is to take itself too seriously and try to be the latest and coolest thing. But if you are just talking about how to contextualize the Gospel for people with postmodern world views, then that’s great.”

My initial reaction was, “of course that’s the goal – contextualizing the Gospel for pomos. I’m not concerned about being hip and cool. But there’s a lot of work to be done to express the gospel and the church in ways that resonate with pomos”. I still believe that’s true – while there may be people in the emerging church whose main concern is to do something different for the sake of uniqueness, or being cutting edge, I think that’s a tiny minority. In my reading and talking, I see a much greater focus on utility: what can we do to invite people with pomo world views into dynamic relationship with God in Christ?

So, between that excellent pencil-sharpening dialogue and the ongoing evangelistic re-evaluation that God’s taking me through, I’ve spent more time thinking about and studying how we can contextualize the gospel for my neighbors and my nieces.

The reason that I thought the above-linked paper is that, as we examine how westerners and primarily Americans need to deconstruct their own evangelism styles and goals in order to be effective in the target culture, we can see how we can do that within our own nation to another target culture. (The fact that I’m probably more embedded in the pomo culture than the modern culture is another perspective to keep in mind)

This paper was very helpful for me, both in understanding how a long-term missionary examines the target culture and explroes how to communicate within it, and in terms of understanding modern American approaches to evangelism in other cultures.

So, on to the summary of the paper.

At the time of the paper’s writing, the author had been living and ministering in Russia since 1993. His insights come from that long-term commitment to the Russian people, plus his reading of ethnographies of the culture, and interviews with young Russian people.

The paper begins at the abstract level, describing the need to contextualize the Gospel.

To “contextualize” in evangelism is to communicate the truths of the Gospel message in such a way that the hearers will understand what is being said and will see the relevance of the message to their lives. This sounds like common sense, but is much easier defined than practiced. proper contextualization must be concerned with proper terminology, order of presentation, knowledge of audience worldview and preconceptions of the gospel, and must also anticipate causes of opposition. […] It should be stressed at the outset and constantly repeated: this is not a simple task.

The author identifies six factors for contextualization: understanding central cultural issues; building truth systematically; tearing down error carefully; allowing proper cultural variation; disallowing improper cultural contamination; and removing personal cultural preconceptions.

He then continues with a set of basic issues in Russian contextualization.

In contemporary (in 1999; has it changed now? I’ll keep assuming “contemporary” to mean “1999”.) Russian culture, the Russian Orthodox church enjoyed a cultural platform similar to that of European Christendom: “To be Russian is to be Christian, and to be born in Russia is to be baptized as an infant by an Orthodox priest.” Even during the years of Communism, the Orthodox church was the official state church and had no competitors. It considers itself the One True Church. There is an extremely high proportion of nominal Christians in the culture; people see themselves as part of the church by virtue of baptism and submission to the Church’s authority.

In contemporary Russian culture after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Western culture has invaded Russia with particularly strong influence on the youth. Youth culture is seeking Westernization in a variety of ways: language (English), clothing style, music, thought.

There is still a high amount of peer pressure to be like others. So one of the greatest challenges to conversion to faith is calling people to a daily walk with Jesus following him in the way of the cross. “It’s generally acceptable to wear a cross, carry an icon, or occasionally visit a church service – as long as it does not affect his or her everyday life.

American-Russian relations are interesting in this context. Russians commonly mention how friendly Americans are – but only to a point. They’re friendly, but “are they sincere?”. Russians who have visited America often say, “everybody is nice and open, and they say, ‘come visit us’. But when you drop in on them (unannounced – the Russian way) they say, “it is nice when you come by, but what do you want?” [..] ‘They miss what Russians call dushevnost – “the quality of having an open soul’”.

Americans who come to Russia tend to isolate themselves with other Americans except for religious settings. Then, since their knowledge of the people is not deep, their religious messages are simplistic. “For an American to truly connect with and impact a young Russian for the gospel, he or she will need to invest much time, listening and observing more than speaking.”

In the early 1990s, many American Evangelicals came to Russia for evangelistic crusades. Curiosity about westerners drove many young Russians to the meetings to learn about the West and its culture. A common response afterward was, “well, the Americans came… they gave out Bibles and talked about God… they stayed a few days and then they left. Funny Americans.”

The question of “what is conversion” is particularly important. Orthodox teaching on the subject is that the central meaning of salvation is the growing participation in the nature of God by the means of Orthodox rituals and mysteries. In contrast to this, the Western focus is the legal justification of the individual believer with GOd. Western Evangelical missionaries need “a much stronger theology and demonstration of divine indwelling a nd transformation […] in order to communicate the gospel in all its glory to the Russian mind.”

“Westerners often don’t realize the wealth of context that the American culture and media provide for people about Christianity.”

There is a strong danger in misappropriating conversion rituals. By far the most common Western conversion ritual is the use of a “sinner’s prayer” in both public and private settings. Russians tend to see prayer almost as an incantation to satisfy a divine demand. This has resulted in countless fake conversions. Multiple thousands have been reported as converts having prayed the sinner’s prayer, and yet the churches have very rarely grown as a result of campaigns that use these approaches. “Thus the all-too-common pattern: a quick, flighty response to an incomplete explanation of the gospel (focused primarily on God meeting a person’s needs, and seldom on the new believer to live life in the way of Jesus), a shallow response to an equally shallow rejection….”

[Pat’s notes: The danger of seeing the Sinner’s Prayer as the conversion experience rings through loudly and clearly here. It begs the question, “what does it mean to be saved?” Can somebody who has prayed the sinner’s prayer but not been transformed truly be called Christian? Are they a follower of Jesus? Perhaps our greatest challenge is to redefine what it means to be Christian.

In our church we have two people who report conversion by walking the aisle at a Billy Graham crusade. Those two people are probably those who are least interested in being earnest disciples of Jesus, allowing him to change their lifestyles and behavior. Small sample size, but a concerning trend.]

Much confusion could be avoided if, from the beginning, Westerners taught carefully about the new life that comes from true conversion.

The paper then discusses the elements of the Christian life: relationship with God; prayer as communion; living by the word of God; being an ambassador for Christ; eternal perspective; living by Faith; suffering; holiness and morality; stewardship.

Frequently in discussing these topics, the author stresses the difficulty that a Russian youth has in hearing these messages from a westerner, and the great need for a Russian disciple with the same life challenges and history who can speak from experience.

Finally, the paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these contextual venues for presenting the Gospel: mass evangelism; church evangelism; small group evangelism; one-on-one evangelism.

The author warns against the dangers of shallow results from mass evangelism; the fear of outsiders to enter a church to observe worship; the risk of a small group being a cult; the reluctance of young people to open up one-on-one.

The conclusion goes like this: There’s a common assumption among American Evangelicals that they can write the gospel message on a ‘blank slate’ when ministering to Russian youth. But there is a lot of ground to be broken and watered by wise Christian workers to form the gospel message in this context.

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Pat’s notes: This was a very helpful example for me to understand contextualization of the gospel across cultures. It also raises the spectre of the American gospel being so intertwined with the Christian gospel, and that is going to take a ton of work to detangle.

What are your thoughts on this summary?