Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Spiritual Heritage

Contextualization is about making Christianity the spiritual heritage of a particular people.

-Cody Lorance, Contextualization in Church-Planting Missions: What is it?

4 comments:

PaulLion said...

That defintion is really narrow, and if the goal is spreading Christianity, not Jesus then we continue down the same road many doing church planting have gone before. I want Jesus to be at the center of a particular people, not Christianity. Keep posting great stuff.

Anonymous said...

PaulLion and all readers should the entire article on the link shown. It is an excellent. At the beginning of the article, he defines contextualization as “to enable, insofar as it
is humanly possible, an understanding of what it means that Jesus Christ, the Word, is
authentically experienced in each and every human situation." Great post--keep up the good work.

Warrick Farah said...

PaulLion,

I liked the quote because it was a unique way to look at the big picture of contextualization.

PLEASE, PLEASE don't get hung up on semantics. In Cody's case, when he says "Christianity" he means "Biblical faith." Personally, I don't want to use the word "Christianity" with Muslims, because it is misunderstood, but when I MYSELF read the quote I knew exactly what Cody meant. He's not writing to Muslims but TO US- we know what he means (Hermeneutics 101).

If you're confused or offended by the word "Christianity," you can substitute your own preference. I.e. "Contextualization is about making Biblical faith the spiritual heritage of a particular people."

Make sense?

And of course "Biblical faith" is Jesus-centered (as you mentioned), which is what Cody meant.

Hopefully now you can understand the quote.

For your joy,
WF

Unknown said...

Just saw this, Warrick. Was looking for an online copy of this little article. Thanks for the post and the discussion.