Winter on Contextualization in Frontier Mission

In the booklet The Challenge of Unreached Peoples, Ralph D. Winter outlines some of the potential dangers and opportunities faced when we consider how to reach the Unreached Peoples of the world.

In this post, part of a series, we look at the first challenge and opportunity, of contextualization in frontier mission.

Contextualization

Another danger is that we will underestimate and thus not anticipate the cultural shift that is likely to be needed in a truly cross cultural situation. The word "contextualization" is what refers to this kind of shift.

Paul was criticized for not requiring Greek believers to be circumcised, for example. Greek speaking "Christians" later failed to realize the need of Arab believers for their own form of belief, perhaps not called "Christian."

An Arabic translation of the Bible was not made in time. When the Roman Empire went officially "Christian," hundreds of thousands of "Christians" outside of the Roman Empire were massacred because they were now linked to an oppressive foreign power. Later on, thousands of Arab believers went over to Islam, which is a form of Christianity, if you will, something like the Mormons, and also with an extra prophet.

​If China were to become officially "Christian" (as it nearly did at the time of the Taiping movement) then thousands of tribal believers would find Christianity in a Chinese form less desirable and perhaps offensive.

Berber Christians, once Islam was available to them, preferred the new form of faith over Roman Christianity, since the Romans were there enemies. Instead of trying to make Muslims over into Western-type Christianity, we need to assist them to get closer to the Bible, which is often a great interest on their part.

Today we see inner city Blacks, oppressed in a white civilization, choosing Islam instead of Christianity. Many of them are taking their Bibles with them.

In Africa there are hundreds of kinds of African "Christianity" that are further removed from Biblical faith than are some forms of Islam. Yet they keep on studying their Bibles--and that is what they value!--they will work their way forward into something that is both African and also what we mean by "Christian."