Dever's great example to our culture

Yin-Yang Contextualization

from Church Matters: The 9Marks Blog by Jonathan Leeman

Ed, I've been meaning to say a few things on contextualization for a couple of weeks. You're helpful post Contexualization and Consistency provides me with the opportunity. One question from your remarks: in your second to last paragraph, you pit "fitting in like an insider" against "making hard choices." Can you give some concrete examples from Paul's life of what you mean by the latter category that does not also fall into the former?

What occurs to me about contextualization is that people often think of it in terms, as you suggest, of making ourselves like the culture we're trying to reach. It attempts to build a bridge on the power of similitude.  

But watching Mark Dever for years now has taught me about a different kind of contextualization. He has a good eye for locating the particular weakness of a culture and then adopting practices that directly run against those weakness. For instance,

• We live in an entertainment-driven culture, and so he works hard to make sure our corporate gatherings don't cater to that desire among Christians and non-Christians.
• We live in a highly emotivisitc culture, and so he's careful not to use overly dramatic sermon illustrations that play to that desire for an emotional rush.
• We live in a style-conscious and celebrity-driven culture, and so he dresses plainly/unremarkably, puts someone else in the pulpit around 35% of the year, and generally promoted the leadership of others.

I could keep going with the examples, but you catch my drift. He's a contextualizing "yin" to the typical contextualizing "yang." 

Now that doesn't mean he doesn't do the "yang." Clearly there's a time to build on similitude. His sermon introductions are all about meeting people "where they are at." But what I've learned watching him is that a pastor should also have a willingness to build on points of dissimilitude.

This takes humility and trust in God because building through similitude will almost always build the numbers more quickly. Building on points of dissimilitude may hurt the numbers in the short run. But you do it because it builds a firmer foundation for the long haul. You do it when you see that certain cultural preferences are in fact borderline idolatrous (e.g. entertainment, emotivism), and not finally usable for building healthy Christians and churches.

I haven't read much contextualizing literature, and perhaps the literature says all of this already. But the bottom line: my hunch is that we need a larger vision of contextualization. One needs discernment for knowing when to build with the YIN and when to build with the YANG.

 

--

Garrett Conner