This is a great read on multiple levels. The article is titled “Man Digs Well in 40 Days For His Wife After She’s Denied Water, Whole Town Benefits.” Here’s how the article begins: After his wife was turned away and insulted by locals for trying to drink from a well, Bapurao Tajne was pushed to the edge hearing about the disrespect of their poorer working caste condition. Tajne put his back and tools to work for six hours every day... Read more
In the coming weeks and months, I’ll post a series of short videos explaining key ideas and introducing various tools. These videos intend to answer the most fundamental questions we discuss on this blog. In this post, I explain what is contextualization. In the future, other videos will address questions like “How do we contextualize the gospel?”, “What is honor and shame?”, “How do honor and shame influence the Bible?” and a number of others. If you look at the... Read more
I’m preparing a course called Theology of the Atonement. In the process, I read the following quote. I thought you would find interesting. It’s from Philo, a Jewish philosopher and contemporary with Jesus. Describing God’s design for the sacrifices, Philo says honor is at the center of the sacrificial system. He lists two reasons for sacrifices. “Firstly, that it conduces to the honour of God, which ought to be aimed at not for the sake of any other reason,... Read more
Today, I’ll give a few examples how to use a “contextualization map,” which I explained in my previous post. A “contextualization map” helps you introduce the gospel when you only have 3–5 minutes. Such brief conversations are insufficient to present the gospel in a meaningful way. The primary goal of this kind of “elevator pitch” is simply this: help people understand the gospel is worth their attention so that we get more time to explain the message more clearly. The following... Read more
Here are three reasons to check out the most recent issue of Themelios (an academic journal run by The Gospel Coalition). 1. An excellent review of One Gospel for All Nations: A Practical Approach to Biblical Contextualization I never claimed to be objective here. I will say that the review does a very good job of summarizing and interacting with the book. The reviewer does a service of anyone interested in reading it or who simply wants to reflect on... Read more
If we only have 3–5 minutes, can we still contextualize the gospel? I think we can. (This and the next week, I build my previous post “Evangelism or “Elevator Pitch.”) What gets in our way? Two obstacles get in the way of contextualizing the gospel even for a 3–5-minute conversation. First, many gospel presentations are contextualized for the wrong person––the speaker. Why? In a time-crunch, we default to sharing whatever we understand best. As a result, our message is tailored... Read more
Recently visionSynergy and HonorShame.com facilitated a global online conversation about ministering and leading in honor-shame contexts. Here’s is a great tool that came from that discussion. It’s concise, which makes it an easy to use tool to spur learning, reflection and discussion among teams and organizations. At the same time, there is a diverse range of responses. Below, you can get a peak at the PDF document. After you download and read it, please share it with others. Initiate your... Read more
What’s the distinction between evangelism and an elevator pitch? If you look at how we actually do evangelism, can you see a real difference in practice? Is it true most methods of evangelism are little more than elevator pitches? Do you recoil at the suggestion? Most people I know would object. Why? Elevator pitches are typically associated with business marketers. Perhaps, you think of smarmy salespersons who simply want to sell you a pile of goods with no genuine interest in your well... Read more
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of being interviewed with Nick Peters, who runs the Deeper Waters podcast. He regularly interviews theologians, missiologists and others concerning various issues related to the church. To listen to the podcast via iTunes, click here. To access the podcast via the Deep Water blog site, click here. The YouTube version can be found here. In the podcast, we discuss how to share the gospel in a biblical faithful and culturally meaningful way.... Read more
A number of people have expressed interest in the discussion (from last week’s post) concerning the relationship between the Plan of Salvation and honor-shame cultures. When I first wrote the article (which my post was based on), I also created a very simple infographic to help people summarize the key ideas in the article. I’m making it available for people who want to continue the discussion with friends and ministry partners. The graphic depicts the significance of having an honor-shame... Read more
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