A Life-Giving Church is a connected community that contextualizes the message of God’s love.
FACT : The church must contextualize its presence in society if it is to grow in relevance, sustain its health and hold forth the Gospel in truth and integrity.
The content of the Gospel must be set in the context of human culture.
How we do church must be a response to two things:
1
The unchanging Word of God.
2
The constantly changing World around us.
We must be able to integrate the old with the new by: (1) understanding the original purpose of the old, (2) examining the Biblical teaching, (3) evaluating the old in light of this teaching, and (4) prayerfully creating a new practice.
“Our goal is to plant an idea—the Gospel—in such a way that the members of a culture can embrace it without distorting it, but also in a way that no culture can contain or claim ownership of it.”
Crabb and Jernigan in The Church in Ruins
Contextualization requires a “whatever it takes” attitude.
1 Corinthians 9:19-23, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, moralists, loose-living immoralist, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life…but I entered their world…I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in order to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to just talk about it; I wanted to be in on it! (The Message) We must be mission-oriented not maintenance-oriented.
The incarnation of Christ is about contextualization.
Jesus made the ultimate jump across cultural barriers.
John 1:1, 14, In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and dwelt among us .
Jesus was different in his culture, not from his culture.
Jesus showed us that confrontation is a necessary part of contextualization.
1. We must begin to think missiologically.
John 4:36, Look around you! Vast fields are ripening all around us and are ready for the harvest. (NLT)
2. Leaders must think outside the box.
1 Chronicles 12:23, Men of Issachar…leaders who understood the temper of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take. (NLT)
3. We must be willing to change (move things around).
Luke 15:8, Won’t she light a lamp and look in every corner of the house and sweep every nook and cranny until she finds it. (NLT)
4. We must overcome our two main obstacles: Spiritual inertia Living only in our Christian comfort zone.
Only a ministry that is plainly relevant to life can bring God’s life to man.