CDMCPM has deculturalized the gospel

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What are we going to do?

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· We are going to discuss the following:

o The culturalized gospel that is saddled with cultural and religious traditions needs to be deculturalized before it is contextualized in the target culture on the mission field.

o DMM, CPM and CDMCPM are naturally purveyors of the deculturalized gospel.

o We need disciple-making movements where the number of new disciples exceeds the annual growth rate of the population for the task of completing the Great Commission to stay on course.

o We help the target unreached people group become reached so that they can take over the responsibility of bringing the gospel to their whole group without the aid of cross-cultural missionaries and to make contribution to the completion of the Great Commission beyond themselves.

o When we pursue cross-cultural mission, are we willing to go beyond our comfort zone on the mission field in order to solve missions problems or do we do it in a way we are comfortable with, thus perpetuating missions problems?

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What are we going to do?

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The culturalized gospel that is saddled with cultural and religious traditions needs to be deculturalized before it is contextualized in the target culture on the mission field

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With William Carey’s publication in 1792 of his pamphlet ‘An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of Heathen’, the Protestant Missions movement started gaining momentum. In those days missionaries took the culturalized gospel that was saddled with their cultural and religious traditions to the mission fields. They performed extractional evangelism and planted churches that were physical buildings. They practiced the gospel on mission fields in accordance with the cultural and religious traditions they had grown up in and were comfortable with just as no one would ever question the values of the culture he/she was born into and grew up in all his/her life. Consequently new disciples were perceived by other locals as having taken on a foreign identity and joined a foreign religious community.

Over time missionaries have gotten wiser and attempt to contextualize the gospel culturally and present the gospel with local cultural forms, using local language, wearing local dress, using contextualized translations of the bible, etc. (Please refer to the document ‘Person of Peace’ for a discussion of the importance of fully and not just culturally contextualizing the gospel.) But the local disciples are still perceived by other locals to have taken on a foreign identity and joined a foreign religious community by virtue of their conception of church being a physical building and the foreign things that go on inside that building.

In fact the gospel that missionaries practice on mission fields continues to be saddled with their cultural and religious traditions that are not found in the bible regardless of their attempts at contextualizing the gospel in the target culture. In other words contextualizing the gospel in the target culture is not by itself sufficient. The gospel should have been deculturalized by the missionary first so that it is free from their cultural and religious traditions and then contextualized in the target culture. Deculturizing the gospel is to get at the transmissible gospel from the source culture that is destined for the target culture. Contextualizing the deculturalized gospel is for speeding up its acceptance and transmission in the target culture.

It is fine that missionaries practice the gospel while in their home cultures that is saddled with the cultural and religious traditions they feel comfortable with. But it is imperative that they deculturalize the gospel before they take it to another culture on the mission field. Cross-cultural mission is not about missionaries finding things they feel comfortable with in their home cultures, taking them to the mission field and doing them there. It is about taking the gospel that has been deculturalized and planting it in another culture on the mission field. It is about taking the gospel that is free from cultural and religious traditions and contextualizing it in another culture on the mission field for consumption by and transmission among the locals.

After it was given to the apostles, the gospel became quickly saddled with the cultural and religious traditions of Jewish disciples. That did not cause any hindrance for the gospel to spread in the Jewish culture. But its spreading among the Gentiles ran into a brick wall, even though it had not been contextualized in the Jewish culture for an extended period of time yet before its spreading among the Gentiles. Cultural and religious traditions are like parasites from the former hosting culture that grow quickly and that sap the vitality of the gospel when the infested gospel is transplanted to another culture.

1 Corinthians 9:20-23

20To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.

21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law.

22To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.

23I do all this for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings.

According to verse 20 Paul contextualized the gospel for the Jewish culture for its spreading among the Jews. It was proper for the gospel that was soaked in Jewish cultural and religious traditions to be spread among the Jews. In verse 21 Paul deculturalized the gospel so that it was free from Jewish cultural and religious traditions that had their origin in the law and then in verse 22 contextualized the deculturalized gospel for its spreading among the Gentiles. That was what he did when the gospel needed to cross the barrier between the culture of the Jews and the culture of the Gentiles. In fact verse 22 further indicates that Paul systematically did it this way whenever the gospel needed to cross the cultural barrier.

So Paul deculturalized the gospel to rid it of the cultural and religious traditions of its former hosting culture and then contextualized the deculturalized gospel for its spreading in the target hosting culture. We cannot find anyone in the bible who did it in as vocal a manner as Paul did. It could be a reason why no one in the bible could spread the gospel as effectively, efficiently and rapidly as he did.

Churches that send out cross-cultural missionaries who make an attempt at deculturalizing the gospel may still be practicing the gospel in accordance with the cultural and religious traditions in their home cultures, some of which might be problematic. That is perfectly fine. It is like parents who have been raised in a certain way that has left them stuck with problems. They may find it very difficult to deal with those deep-seated problems that have plagued them all their lives and are therefore not willing to deal with them decisively but simply manage them. On the other hand the conscientious parents among them would do everything they could to ensure that their children do not repeat their mistakes.

Likewise churches that are aware of problems in their cultural and religious traditions in the gospel they practice would approve of their missionaries making an attempt at deculturalizing the gospel so that it is free from their cultural and religious traditions before contextualizing it in the target culture on the mission field. They are willing to solve the problem of their culturalized gospel hindering its spreading in another culture on the mission field.

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The culturalized gospel that is saddled with cultural and religious traditions needs to be deculturalized before it is contextualized in the target culture on the mission field

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DMM, CPM and CDMCPM are naturally purveyors of the deculturalized gospel

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DMM, CPM and CDMCPM are naturally purveyors of the deculturalized gospel because of the insatiable desire of those who design and implement them to keep the gospel at the irreducible minimum for its spreading. The gospel conveyed through these tools can be expected to be free for the most part from the cultural and religious traditions of missionaries who use them. These missionaries are acutely aware that the moment the gospel is saddled with their cultural and religious traditions, its spreading in another culture on the mission field would run into a brick wall. It is only when the gospel is free from their cultural and religious traditions that it has the opportunity to spread when properly contextualized.

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DMM, CPM and CDMCPM are naturally purveyors of the deculturalized gospel

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We need disciple-making movements where the number of new disciples exceeds the annual growth rate of the population for the task of completing the Great Commission to stay on course

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The contrast between the missions outcome of a missionary who practices the gospel on the mission field that is saddled with his/her cultural and religious traditions and that of a missionary who implements DMM, CPM and CDMCPM could be significant in terms of the number of churches planted and the number of disciples made. The former may have planted a few churches with a relatively small number of disciples over the lifetime of the missionary while the latter may have planted more churches with more disciples within a shorter period of time. The missions outcome of the former will have difficulties bringing the target unreached people group to the status of being reached, i.e., having 2% evangelical Christians. In that scenario there is more implication in that the effort needed to accomplish the status change gets bigger over time.

An article entitled

‘The Brutal Fact’

by Justin Long

was carried in the January-February 2018 issue of Mission Frontiers. It states:

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‘Unevangelized is an attempt to measure who has no access to the gospel: who, realistically, will not have a chance to hear the Good News and respond to it in their lifetime. CSGC (The Center for the Study of Global Christianity) estimates 54% of the world was unevangelized in 1900 and 28% is unevangelized today. This is good news: the percentage of the world with no access to the gospel has dropped significantly. However, the bad news: in 1900, the total population of unevangelized people was 880 million. Today, due to population growth, that number has risen to 2.1 billion.

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Many churches often have inadequate emphasis on discipleship, obedience to Christ, and willingness to follow Him whole-heartedly. Low commitment yields little reproduction and runs the risk of declining or imploding.

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We continue using most of our resources to support distant-culture teams engaging unreached groups rather than prioritizing and adequately resourcing near-culture teams to reach neighboring unreached groups.

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We need to face the brutal fact that missions and church planting as usual will not reach the goal. We need movements where the number of new believers exceeds the annual growth rate of the population. We need churches multiplying churches and movements multiplying movements among the unreached.’

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As a result of population growth over time, the effort needed for a target unreached people group to become reached gets bigger and bigger. To compound the problem, churches on the mission field run the risk of declining or imploding owing to inadequate emphasis on obedience-based discipleship. Disciples might be given theological training but theological training and obedience-based discipleship are two different things. The former gets at the head and the latter at the heart. The former is no substitute for the latter. The devil knows the bible better than we do but is not willing to obey God. The conclusion of the article is that we need disciple-making movements where the number of new disciples exceeds the annual growth rate of the population for the task of completing the Great Commission to stay on course.

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We need disciple-making movements where the number of new disciples exceeds the annual growth rate of the population for the task of completing the Great Commission to stay on course

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We help the target unreached people group become reached so that they can take over the responsibility of bringing the gospel to their whole group without the aid of cross-cultural missionaries and to make contribution to the completion of the Great Commission beyond themselves

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When an unreached people group becomes reached, the group has a local, indigenous church that can bring the gospel to the whole group without the aid of cross-cultural missionaries. Besides that, the group can mobilize a near-culture team to reach neighboring unreached people groups. The near-culture team will be more effective than a distant-culture team in reaching these groups as a result of similar worldview, culture and language.

So the cross-cultural missionary who starts a sustainable disciple-making movement helps local disciples become self-sufficient in terms of making disciples of not only their own people but potentially also neighboring unreached people groups, thus enabling them to make a greater contribution to the completion of the Great Commission. (When there is only a few traditional-model churches with a relatively small number of disciples, it is not likely that the near-culture team will emerge.) This eases shortages of distant-culture missionaries sent from missionary-sending countries. The potential outcome is movements multiplying movements among the unreached.

Here is an excerpt from a book on the disciple-making movement among the Bhojpuri in India:

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‘The work began among the Bhojpuri in 1994, then spread into other languages and areas in this order: Awadhi (1999), Muslims (2002), Bengali (2004), Magahi (2006), Punjabi, Sindhi, Hindi, English (in urban communities) and Haryanvi (2008), Angika (2008), Maithili (2010), and Rajasthani (2015).

We praise God that the movement has spread in a variety of ways to different language groups, different geographic areas, multiple caste groups (within those language and geographic areas), and different religions. The power of the good news keeps breaking through all kinds of boundaries.’

John, Victor. Bhojpuri Breakthrough: A Movement that Keeps Multiplying (p. 148). WIGTake Resources. Kindle Edition.

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Please note that the near-culture team again needs to deculturalize the gospel they have culturalized and then contextualize the deculturalized gospel for the near culture they are reaching.

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When we pursue cross-cultural mission, are we willing to go beyond our comfort zone on the mission field in order to solve missions problems or do we do it in a way we are comfortable with, thus perpetuating missions problems?

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Pursuing cross-cultural mission for our own sake, we would do what we are comfortable with and take our culturalized gospel that is saddled with our cultural and religious traditions to another culture on the mission field such that it has difficulties spreading in that culture. We would stick with our church model and plant a few churches with a relatively small number of disciples over the lifetime of the missionary on the mission field and so let the gap between the necessary mission endeavor and the end goal get bigger over time as a result of population growth.

Pursuing cross-cultural mission for the sake of others, we would deculturalize the gospel and then contextualize it in the target culture. Only that practice can have any realistic hope of helping the target unreached people group become reached so that they can take over the responsibility of bringing the gospel to their whole group without the aid of cross-cultural missionaries and make contribution to the completion of the Great Commission beyond themselves.

We should pursue cross-cultural mission for the benefits of others by going beyond our comfort zone on the mission field.

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