Making Contextualization Practical

In this episode, Jude joins us to discuss contextualization and how biblical principles can be faithfully applied in different cultural contexts. Drawing from his experience planting churches in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Jude shares practical examples of contextualized preaching, worship, storytelling, and language learning.

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Two Churches, Two Contexts

Sam 0:00

Alright, so we should be good to go.

Jude 0:03

Is it gonna be the reggae opening?

Sam 0:05

Everybody's asking for that now, but I don't think that we can do that without regular cultural appropriation. I'm not sure that that's the best look on us. That's probably good.

Intro 0:28

This is Missio Ecclesia. Sharing stories from the mission field. Engaging Ideas with Charity, and recovering the church as the center of missions.

Dean 0:44

Welcome back, friends, to another episode of Missio Ecclesia. Sam, today, our guest, without any exaggeration, is one of my favorite modern missionaries. And I don't tire of telling others how gifted this brother is, how gifted his wife is, how fruitful they've been in the work. And because we serve in similar contexts, I've got to see he and his wife serving up close and personal. So I speak with some credibility. Jude, no pressure on that. Welcome. We're really glad that you're here, brother. Could you just start by giving us a little biography of your life overseas? I know you've had a number of stops along the way, but we'd love to hear from you starting right there.

Jude 1:30

Yeah, thank you for having me on. I've been listening to the podcast, benefited greatly from it. My wife and I have been overseas for more than the last 20 years. We started with seven years in a city in Eastern Europe where we sensed the Lord's call to especially pursue Muslims from Central Asia. And so we moved to a neighboring country where there were large numbers of those Central Asian Muslims, lived there for five and a half years before we relocated to a city also in Eastern Europe and a neighboring country. Unfortunately, had to leave there after about half a year, and then spent most of the last four years working in yet another city in Eastern Europe where we were ministering, especially among refugees. But at the beginning of the year, got to move into Central Asia proper, actually in the same city as you, Dean, although neither of us are in the city very often.

Dean 2:34

Yeah, that's a whole other story.

Sam 2:36

Indeed. Yeah, great. You know, brother, one of the things that is so interesting about the story, and I've heard it some from you, but also from Dean, is that you have been able to, by God's grace, plant different churches, very different churches, in some different contexts. So if you would unpack that story for us a little bit, and we'd like to hear how we can maybe draw some lessons from you based on what God did in both of those situations.

Jude 3:06

So actually, our first experience with planting churches was in our first stop in Eastern Europe, where we were a part of a team that planted largely a student-focused church and very dear people. Thank the Lord the church is still surviving today and doing some good work. I think that going through that process, we also learned a number of ways in which we needed to grow and learn to do things differently. So during our second stop, we planted a house church among Central Asian Muslim background peoples. And so we met in our apartment and had a very simple liturgy, always started with lunch and then ended with tea. And so people were in our apartment for six, eight, 10 hours on a Sunday. After that, the the next church that we were able to plant was among refugees in Eastern Europe. And this was a much more traditional church format and a situation that was much more traditional as well. It was not among Muslim background people, and so we actually named the church Holy Trinity, which isn't something that we try and do in Central Asia. But by God's grace, we had a wonderful beginning to the church there. We're able to raise up local leadership, even from the beginning. My fellow elders were from among the target people. And so one was very simple liturgically, the other was much more traditional liturgically, but at the same time, a lot of commonalities among

Elements and Forms in Contextualization

Jude 4:44

the churches.

Dean 4:45

Yeah, and it's about those distinctives and commonalities that we want to give some attention to in this conversation. But when you think about those churches, I have the privilege of knowing several believers from each of the second two that you mentioned, and can say with confidence that God has definitely used you and your wife in really encouraging ways in those folks' lives. And we've spent a lot of time talking through various situations and praying through challenges that you guys have had. And so it's encouraging to me to get to come back to the conversation. But one of the things that we want to sort of pick your brain about a little bit, sort of as a practitioner, is the concept of elements and forms, or if you said a different way, maybe the essence of things in the missionary task and then how those are contextualized, depending on the circumstances. But maybe before we come back to you, Jude, Sam, it would be helpful, I think, for us and for those listening if you would just unpack this idea of elements and forms for us. Yeah, sure. And then we'll ask Jude about how he applied those ideas in the various contexts where he served.

Sam 5:56

And probably also important to talk a bit about contextualization in the course of that conversation, because that's something that we as missionaries have to do when we are working in a culture. We believe as Christians that the Christian faith and the gospel can transcend cultural forms. So we believe that the Christian faith is inherently transmissible, that it can be passed from one people to the next. And given the constraints of culture and just the reality of that we all live in a situation and a context, we all live in a time and space, things are going to look a little bit different from place to place as we go about that. And one of the principles that has really been helpful in guiding the church, really, especially coming out of the Reformation tradition, is what we call the regulative principle of worship. And it simply means this that you should only do in worship what God has explicitly commanded in the Bible. And you could even extend that out beyond worship to just the way that we go about practicing the faith. And so when the Puritans, for example, would talk about this, they talked about what they called elements and circumstances. So the elements are the unchangeable things themselves. So imagine prayer, for example. So God commands that we pray. And that is something that we should do. For example, when we gather together with other brothers and sisters, the element is non-negotiable. It's a biblical command coming from the mouth of Jesus Himself that he gives us in the Sermon on the Mount. But then the circumstances are just the realities of being situated in a particular time and in a particular place, and just the realities of what it means to be human living in the world. So when people gather together, if it's raining outside, they typically need to gather in a building, preferably one that has a roof on it. They also got to figure out what time they're going to gather. They got to figure out whether or not they're going to use a microphone and a speaker and any number of things that are just the stuff of culture, the stuff of material human existence. And so that stuff is just the reality of being in a situation. It's not necessarily prescribed by scripture, but there's nothing particularly unscriptural about using it. And so we could extend that in certain respects to culture. Now we need to be careful there because when we start talking about culture, we recognize that there are aspects of culture that are not neutral. There are aspects of culture that would seek to subvert the gospel and that would try to undermine the truth that we find in God's word. So we need to be careful about those things, that we don't lapse into what is sometimes called syncretism, where we get the blending of one religion with another, and in this case, the Christian faith. We want to be careful about those kinds of things. Sometimes people talk about this using the language of over-contextualization or under-contextualization. I actually don't think those categories are so helpful because what they imply is that you can be too situated in a culture and it concedes that, for example, religion might be intrinsic to a culture. And I don't think that's true. I think that religion doesn't necessarily have to be intrinsic to a culture. In other words, if you contextualize prayer, if you do it in a way that Muslims pray, then therefore you've perhaps over-contextualize. I don't think the language of over and under is so helpful. I think it's just good and bad. Is the contextualization that I'm doing undermining the truths of the scripture, or is it simply recognizing the reality that we're in a particular time and place and just trying to give that good consideration? So maybe that could be helpful as we're starting to think about this some more.

Dean 9:50

Yeah, I think it is helpful. We appreciate you talking about that, but it's important to say, along with what you said, that an important goal of contextualization is making the truth of the scripture plain.

Sam 10:02

Absolutely. So when we talk about worship, we talk about wanting to be able to hear the word. So the word of God proclaimed, we talk about wanting to be able to speak the word, we want to sing the word, we want to pray the word. And when we talk about the ordinances, the Lord's Supper and baptism, we even talk about seeing the word or seeing the gospel played out. And those are the things that we would call elements. Those are the things that are non-negotiable and must absolutely be present and they must be faithful to scripture.

Jude 10:36

Sam, I really, really love hearing you say that. I think that contextualization, especially for me, thinking through the gospel according to John, John 1.14, where the word becomes flesh and dwells among us. And then we see Jesus saying, as the Father has sent me, so send I you. We see that Jesus is this word that's made incarnate, made understandable, made visible, just as you were saying in the context of worship. And so as we look at the people that we're trying to minister to, and the brothers and sisters that we're gathering together and to fellowship with us, we're looking, how is it that we can make this word more understandable for them? The whole of what we're trying to do is not make it more receivable, not to make it more palatable for them, not to remove the offense of the cross, but rather to make sure that they're understanding exactly what it is that God is communicating. So the whole reason for word becoming flesh dwelling among us, not just to give himself and live the perfect life, die the perfect death, but also that the word of God may be seen as it truly is. So that's what we've tried to do in every place that we've lived, to make the gospel as understandable as it possibly can be.

Sam 11:59

That's so good. Yeah.

Dean 12:00

That's that's good. Thank you, both of you brothers, there. While we're on contextualization, I actually remember sitting around a lunch table with Jude, talking to some national brothers. And I remember the phrase in our second language, Jude, where you said often we see the Apostle Paul going against the culture, confronting the culture. When we think about contextualization, we have to understand, as you said, that the gospel in its essence is an offense. And in an attempt to make it understandable, we're not going to avoid that offense or we're going to be compromising.

Sam 12:36

Yeah, I think about like examples too of contextualization in missionary practice. You think about, for example, the Son of God controversy and the use of the language of Son of God in Muslim context, for example. And there are practitioners who say that we ought not use that language, at the very least, not lead off with it and perhaps even try to avoid it altogether. And the reason for that is because Muslims find it offensive. And if you use that kind of language, you're going to hurt your explanation of the gospel, and it will be less likely to be received by the person with whom you're sharing it. And yet, when you look at the New Testament and you think about Mark's gospel, a son of God appears in the very first verse. It's in all four of the gospels, and Paul uses it as well. And the language of Son of God is not any less controversial or offensive to a 21st century Muslim than it would have been to a first century Jew. And yet all of the gospel writers and the Apostle Paul chose to use it anyway.

Jude 13:39

Right. And when it comes down to it, the message of the gospel is that the very best that we are capable of doing is still so bad, so sinful, so tainted, that the very Son of God had to become flesh to live a perfect life, to die the perfect death, because we are so far from what is demanded of us. Amen. That is offensive no matter what culture

Putting Contextualization into Practice

Jude 14:05

you're in.

Dean 14:06

Yeah. So Sam just offered kind of the anti-example. We we can't contextualize away the reality that Jesus is God's Son, come in the flesh, right? Jude, could you give us a positive example of contextualization that you practice where you're doing something that's sort of in the direction of the culture to make the truth of scripture more plain to those that you're interacting with?

Jude 14:35

Numerous examples that I could share, but one of the things that I try to do is go back to the stories from scripture as much as I can, because the context that we're ministering in is a context where story is so much more powerful to their way of understanding than maybe just points of truth. Whereas in an American context, I might just, you know, run down some bullet points. Here's something that you need to understand. In the context where I am, they respond to story so much more. And so I've tried to become as good of a storyteller as I can and use that in my conversations.

Dean 15:22

And one thing I've learned from you is yeah, you definitely tell stories from the scripture, but you also have this sort of toolkit of anecdotes from life that you share as stories to make spiritual points. And maybe we'll get to those, I don't know, but those have been super effective as I've seen you share the gospel with unbelievers by telling stories. So yeah. All right. So one of the reasons that we've wanted to have you on, Jude, is because you have, by God's grace, seen churches planted in very different contexts. And so whether we talk about elements and forms or elements and circumstances, as Sam mentioned, you have sought to faithfully maintain the elements, the essence, the scripturally required things like prayer and singing and preaching, but have practiced those in different ways dependent on the context. So you planted a church called Holy Trinity among Eastern Europeans, very traditional type form, but then you also, by God's grace, with others, planted a house church among Central Asian migrant workers. And so could you just unpack for us, sort of down on the ground, what was the same about preaching and singing in prayer in those places, and what was different, maybe even membership, if you want to talk about it, to sort of work out in practice this concept of elements and circumstances of contextualization.

Jude 16:50

Yeah, certainly. I think teaching is a really good place to start. My conviction is that in the church gathering, there needs to be the proclamation of the word of God. It can't just be a discussion about your opinion and my opinion. I'm reading through 1 Timothy in depth right now. And Paul just comes back again and again and instructing Timothy on how to conduct himself in the church, you need to proclaim the truth. But the way that in many of our contexts that works itself out is something like a 45-minute monologue. 45 minutes would be great if I could stick to it. Let's say it's probably closer to an hour. Hopefully, I don't go much longer than that.

Dean 17:36

But as I have noted at other times, concision is not your strongest spiritual gift.

Jude 17:42

That that is correct. So in Eastern European context, the 45-minute monologue is great. That's the way that the people learn, that's the way that even school sets up. And so what we would do is stand up and preach for 45-50 minutes, and we'd teach other people to do the same thing. Now, in the house church context, for a number of reasons, the limited number of people that were there, the learning styles of the people that we were working with, the fact that most of these people had worked night shift before coming to our service the next day, a 45-minute monologue just wasn't gonna be the best way to put this word before God's people. And so we had much more of an interactive model. But in the interaction, it would never be just what do you think about this passage? There was always direction. The person that was leading this time knew what this word was directing God's people towards. And so all of the questions that were formed were designed to lead, to elicit out of the people certain answers. If different answers were given, correction was also given. And then at the end of however long we spent discussing interactively the scripture, there would be a summary mini-sermon that was maybe 15 minutes, 10 minutes. But the idea would be that at the end of this time in the word, everybody was very clear. This is what the voice of God has to say to us through His scripture today. So the similarity in both situations is that we were trying to do this expositionally. The point of the text is also the point of our time in the word. We wanted to give God the microphone to use another way of putting it. But the way that we came at that was very different in each of these contexts. So I think that would be one of the clearest examples of the ways in which we tried to contextualize, to try to keep this element, but change the form that was around it.

Sam 20:02

One of the things that you said there that I think is really important about the second group is that it even involved direction, in other words, guidance by presumably a teacher. Could you talk just for another minute about why you think that is so important that you would still include it?

Jude 20:21

Yeah, it especially in studying what the New Testament says about preaching and teaching in the church. I I just see that as an element that is absolutely essential to the worship of God's gathered people. And so if there is no actual teaching being done, no direction, no saying, thus saith the Lord, I feel like that's out of step with what we see in the Old Testament, what we see in the New Testament, New Testament preaching being somewhat of a continuation of the prophetic ministry of the Old Testament. At the same time, I feel like the person leading these Bible lessons, he's not only declaring the truth of God's word, but whether it be the 45-minute monologue or the more interactive pattern, one of the goals of the teacher is to try to teach the people how even to read and to study the Bible for themselves. And so in the 45-minute monologue, there's certain ways that we go about that, the ways that we talk about our study and how we came to certain conclusions. In the interactive model, I think that it's even easier to help people to learn how to study the scripture, especially people from the background that we were working with. Yeah, so good.

Dean 21:42

Yeah, it's very good and helpful. And in some ways, I feel like a bit of a third way when we talk about teaching in the context of the gathering. And so I'm I'm really helped by it. Jude, I appreciated that you mentioned there that preaching is biblically required. In the main gathering of God's people, something that Sam and I certainly would agree with you on. There's a book called Preaching in the New Testament by David Griffiths. I think you and I talked about it. You've read it. And in the, I want to quote him because he says in the book, the character of preaching as presented in 2 Timothy 4.2, you know, where Paul says reprove, rebuke, and exhort. The character of preaching as presented in 2 Timothy 4.2 is as an authoritative and educational proclamation of God's word, which is a great sentence. In what you guys were trying to do in that house church, would you say that your interactive times in the Word fit that definition that Griffiths gives?

Jude 22:49

Most definitely. Anytime that we asked for input through questions, through interactions, and answers were given that did not come in line with what the Bible was teaching in that particular text. We didn't just let it go. We redirected, we brought it back in, and we made sure that it was clear at the end that thus saith the Lord, the scripture does teach us. And so we we must not shy away from that. Amen.

Dean 23:19

That's great. Thank you. Thank you. So is there another element that's biblically required for the gathering of God's people that you would want to sort of unpack for us in terms of the distinctive practice of it in these two contexts?

Jude 23:35

So I think a lot of the other required elements of gathered worship, they may look a little bit different than they would in a larger, more traditional church. And yet I think they're entirely recognizable, right? So singing was very simple. Sometimes we had a guitar, sometimes we didn't. We'd sing songs in multiple different languages because on any given Sunday we'd have eight to ten different languages represented in the gathering. But, you know, it's still God's people gathered together singing songs. So I can't say that there's much of a difference there. In prayer, we did encourage everybody in the group to pray out as they came together. Membership in our house church looked a bit different than it did in a more traditional model of church. But I was just telling my pastor here in the city where we're living now, that if I had it to do over again, I think I would have changed the way that we approached membership in our house church. I think we would have probably made it more like it is in more traditional churches, a little bit more of a process to go through. We did have defined membership, but I don't think that we did a very good job, even with this small group of people that we had, of helping them to understand their responsibilities as members of the church, their responsibilities for one another. And so definitely if I had a do-over, I would go back and change the way we approach that. That's great.

Learning the Language and Story Telling

Dean 25:09

So we mentioned, we've already talked a little bit about stories as part of the toolkit in sharing the gospel and discipling others. One of my favorite stories that I've heard you tell on a number of different occasions and that I've retold, although maybe not to as great of an effect as how you've told it, is the story of pork in the traditional Central Asian dish that we call plov. Could you just tell us that story real quick and tell us how you use it as an evangelistic tool, if we could say, in sharing the gospel with Muslims?

Jude 25:45

So the story about the plov, plov is what we might call in English pilov. It's rice, carrots, meat. Onions. Onions, yeah. And sometimes some other things can be thrown in as well, depending on the city that you're in. Every culture has their version of it. They all claim it is their own. They all say that theirs is the most delicious. And so I try and play it up, knowing the person that I'm talking with. I say, imagine that we're sitting at the tea house and we're waiting for them to bring us this plate of plov. And when they bring it out, it's this huge plate that is just heaped up and it's it's perfect. The rice is the best sort. The carrots are the yellow ones, which are the sweetest, the most delicious. There's just enough onion, not too much. And there's meat just piled on there. And the meat, it's half beef and half. And then I usually do a little pause. For effect, it's lamb, right? No, no, no. It's pork. Half beef, half pork. Will you eat it? Now it's important for me to know my audience because not all Muslim background. Yeah, I'm thinking that you might get punched, like right at that moment. Well, some of them would say, Where is this plov? I'm ready to eat it right now. The the ones that actually pay attention to halal and haram, they would say, Oh no, I would never eat that. And I'd say, why not? Well, there's pork in it. Say, ah, I understand, I understand. Well, imagine that I take out most of the pieces of pork. And so now it's 75/25. Will you eat it? No, there's still pork in there. Okay, I'll add a lot more beef to it. So now it's 99% beef, 1% pork. Will you eat it? No, no, no, I'd never touch that. Why not? It's unclean. Okay, imagine that I take out every piece of pork. There's no pork remaining in there at all. Will you eat it now? No, I'd never eat it. Well, why not? Because everything that the pork has touched has become unclean. So I say, Well, how then can we eat this plov? Well, they answer, you've got to throw out the plov. You've got to wash the pan and the knives and everything else, and you need to start all over. Then I explain to them that our lives are like that plate of plov. And we come before the most high and we say, please receive my life. Take me into your presence. But we have some good things like that beef, but we've also got our sins, which are like the pork. And some of us think that if we just have a little bit more good deed in our life, then we'll be acceptable to the most high. And yet sin in our life is haram. It's unclean. It makes everything that it touches unclean. And so if we won't eat this plov, how can we expect that the most high will accept us? What we need is a new beginning.

Sam 29:10

Yeah, you know, one of the things that's coming out, even as I listen to you share that, brother, you can just tell that you're constantly growing as a practitioner. And that's what I think good contextualization is, is especially in gospel communication, is learning the surrounding culture, becoming a student of culture, and becoming a student of language. And Dean tells me that you're actually an excellent speaker of your second language. So I was kind of wondering if you could give us some thoughts on the work ethic that goes along with becoming an effective cross-cultural worker, becoming a good student of language and culture.

Jude 29:48

Well, by God's grace, my wife and I came to the field first before we had children. And I say by God's grace, because there's a lot more freedom in language learning when you're young and when you don't have children at home. And so we were able to dive in very quickly, very deeply into this main language that we use. We set ourselves the goal that six days out of the week we would do nothing in English. We would read only in our second language. We were in church in our second language, we'd listen. Fortunately, this was before podcasts and really not many MP3s at that point, but we would listen to whatever materials we could get on tape or CD or whatever it was at that point.

Dean 30:37

And just so you would, if a language learner is listening to this podcast right now, you would endorse him going ahead and clicking off and going back to his target language. Well, listen to the end of this podcast and then go back.

Jude 30:49

Okay, okay. And then go back. I'm with you. You know, I I've also taught language for a number of years. Dean, you and I have that in common that we started language businesses at one point and and taught lessons. I I see that everybody has their own style of language learning, and the best method to use is the one that works for you. Such a pragmatist.

Sam 31:16

Just kidding.

Jude 31:17

There's there's no biblical warrant for language learning in one way or another.

Sam 31:21

But Yeah, amen, brother.

Jude 31:24

But what I will say is that the work ethic that's behind that is that we've got to just launch ourselves into that. Because we were able to get such a foothold early on. And then again, by God's grace, pretty much everywhere we've gone, we've used this language as our main language of ministry, if not of life. God's allowed us to go deeper and deeper. But because of that, we can do things like counseling and discipleship, preaching in this language without a second thought. It just seems very natural to us. And in fact, an interesting tidbit about our family is before our firstborn came into this world, my wife and I decided to try something that we call, that not we call, that experts call, intentional bilingualism. And so I switched over into our second language in the home. And to this day, I speak with my wife and my children in this second language, and they speak back to me in English most of the time now. So amazing.

Dean 32:28

Yeah, which is not for everybody, but it speaks to you and Leanne's commitment to a high level of acquisition of your target language. And that's a great example for us. Jude, this has been really good. You've done a great job. Thank you so much for your faithfulness in ministry, but also just very how you've articulated some of these ideas in our short time together. Anything that you would like to add before we close? Or Sam, same to you. Anything to add?

Jude 32:58

Well, I mentioned that I've been studying recently 1 Timothy, and been especially struck this week by 1 Timothy 4.16, where Paul says, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. Don Whitney says about this verse that it's a verse with three commands and two promises in it. Now I won't unpack all of that. It's a remarkable verse. I think that for me, one of my biggest desires in life and ministry is to exercise these first two commands, to keep a close watch on myself and on the teaching. Any advice that I can give on any topics, it's just going to revolve around this. We need to keep a close watch. You know, this is the same chapter where Paul tells Timothy to constantly be exercising, training himself in godliness. And then we also need to keep a close watch on our teaching, the way that we teach, the way that we contextualize what we teach. And if we persist in this, it will result in final salvation for us and for our hearers. Maybe not necessarily the masses that we all pray and hope that we will see come to salvation, but God does promise fruitfulness for those who keep a close watch on themselves and on the teaching. Fruitfulness in whatever ways that He sees fit.

Sam 34:30

I think that's a great word to end on, Dean.

Jude 34:33

I agree. Thanks, Jude. Thank you, brothers. Really love the podcast and love being with you today.

Intro 34:40

Thanks for listening. If you found today's conversation helpful, please follow us and leave a review to help others find us. And be sure to share Missio Ecclesia with your friends so we can widen the conversation about the church as God's mission strategy.