C5 Contextualization: Coming to a North American People Group Near You?

In this post, I do not wish to be an alarmist, nor do I want to create a work of fiction and claim it to be a reality.  I do want to be proactive and begin a conversation. For sometime, I have been concerned over something that I believe will become a very serious issue in the very near future in the United States and Canada.  The issue is that of contextualization at the C5 end of the spectrum. 

While I am aware of the arguments and the various nuances of each category on the C1-C5/C6 spectrum, I do not subscribe to the general C5 paradigm when it comes to contextualization.  There appears to be enough evidence (in theory and reality) that such a methodological approach to missions crosses the line from healthy biblical contextualization to syncretism.  And we already have enough syncretism in the Church in North America as it is. 

Very infrequently, but from time to time, I have heard of contextualization practices in North America that sound very much like C5.  Now please note, all I have is second-hand information and speculation.  I am not claiming that such is a pervasive matter... at the moment.

While the C5 debate is nothing new in missions circles outside of the United States and Canada, Evangelicals in these countries have not thoroughly addressed the matter yet for their contexts.  In fact, most of us here are not aware of what is C5 and the heated debate that has been going on for several years  on mission fields across the globe.  Since this post is not sufficient to address the longstanding debate, I will direct you to some resources.  Unfortunately, the ones you should read first are not posted for free on-line but are John Travis, “The C1 to C6 Spectrum: A Practical Tool for Defining Six Types of ‘Christ-centered Communities’ (‘C’) Found in the Muslim Context," (pgs. 407-08), Phil Parshall, "Danger! New Directions in Contextualization," (pgs. 404-10), and the responses to Parshall by John Travis and Dean S. Gilliland (pgs. 411-17).  All of these resources are located in the Evangelical Missions Quarterly 34#4 (October 1998).    

I am presently working on a book with Biblica tentatively titled The Strangers Next Door: Global Migrations and the Great Commission Opportunity for You and Your Church (forthcoming 2011).  Within this work (as well as on this blog), I continue to raise the issue that many of the world's least reached AND unengaged people groups have migrated (and continue to migrate) to western countries.  In light of this matter, many Evangelicals are just now starting to wake up to the reality of the potential to reach the world from their neighborhoods. 

So, what is the concern?

Whenever you have a majority Anglo culture, as in the United States and Canada, encountering the multitude of minority people groups, the majority group generally has a large amount of ignorance when it comes to understanding those who are ethically and culturally different--from themselves.  And when it comes to evangelism and church planting among them, most of us are at a greater loss there as well.

But whenever someone comes along who is breathing oxygen and loves Jesus and says, "I have a heart for these people.  I have worked with them in the past  (Maybe the person is even of the same people group?).  I will serve as a missionary to them", we, rightly so, praise the Lord and bless their efforts.  But sometimes we remove accountability structures.  "After all," we rationalize, "as long as this person is calling people to repentance and faith in Jesus and as long as we are seeing baptisms and churches planted, this church planter must be doing everything else according to biblical standards.  He does know these people better than us."  And in our ignorance (or maybe laziness), and desire to be able to say, "In our area we now have this particular least reached people group with their own church," we never question the work.

Now, I recognize that some people will say that it is best to allow issues such as these to be below the radar and not worry about them.  After all, we all know that the methodology police are roaming to and fro throughout the earth seeking to devour the good work of the Holy Spirit and take the Church back to the 1950s.  And I am just giving them fuel for the fire.  Right? 

While I do have a problem with those who cherish their traditions over Kingdom advancement and prescribe uncontextualized methods, I also have a problem with those who advocate an "anything goes approach" as long as we get decisions, baptisms, new churches.  Such is not the way of Jesus, for after confessing Him as Lord (Rom 10:9), people are to be taught to obey all that He commanded (Matt 28:18-20).

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am very progressive when it comes to methods, but staunchly hold to biblical parameters that establish the boundaries for any methodology.  In other words, my approach is not "anything goes" but everything goes within the biblical framework for the making disciples of all nations--and this includes the nations represented in our North American communities. 

Missionaries serving in the West, particularly in the United States and Canada, have the shortcoming of not learning from the labors of our brothers and sisters that have existed throughout Church history.  We forget that the Church has a history and live as if nothing occurred between us and the Apostolic Church. 

For example, for many years we have been repeating variations of the problems that existed 100 years ago with the mission station paradigm for church planting.  While we do not build the traditional compounds, we do extract people from their social networks, teach them the Bible AND a new subculture, AND help them burn the relational bridges that God permitted to develop for Kingdom advancement.  We do not know that missionaries serving outside of the United States and Canada (and the U.K.) made similar mistakes long ago, learned from them, changed their ways, and experienced healthy Kingdom expansion. 

How long will the Church in North America fail to learn from those who have gone before us?  Must we continue to make similar mistakes (100, 50, 20 years later) at home before we change?

And now I return to the beginning. 

As we begin to love and minister to the peoples of the world in our communities, let us not do so out of biblical, missiological, and historical ignorance of the contextualization problems for the sake of seeing churches exist where churches did not exist before. 

Now I recognize that we must be cautious at this point.  On the one side of the road is the ditch of unhealthy contextualization that the methodology police would prefer, imparting a heavy dose of American or Canadian traditional Christianity on the new believers.  The other side is also unhealthy.  For there we have the ditch of syncretism, or a C5 model, remaining uncritical of the people groups' cultures.

The same missionary who requested prayer that the gospel would spread rapidly and with honor (2 Thes 3:1) was the same missionary who taught the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27).  In North America, it is possible to experience the rapid multiplication of disciples, leaders, and churches, AND for such growth to be healthy.  While C5 methodology may provide the North American Church with rapid growth among minority peoples, it will not enable us to teach the peoples to obey the whole counsel of God.  

Just wanted to start the conversation...