Gospel Conversations Reimagined: Four Prominent Features of Faithful Recontextualization, Part One
If you have been following my posts, or if you are here for the first time, thank you for joining me!
In a previous post, I introduced a Series of Stories that are meant to invite you into my quest to discover relevant ways to engage in meaningful gospel conversations in a twenty-first century context. I describe the ways in which God used my encounters with people to push me into deeper study. I described the surprising conversation I had with a college freshman at Portland State University, and several subsequent and varied conversations on airplanes and Uber rides, in taxicabs and coffee-shops, in my neighborhood and at the gym.
Along the way, God used several things to get my attention. First, I quickly noticed that my well-scripted ability to make a gospel presentation hindered me from having a meaningful gospel conversation. Second, I became increasingly aware of the diversity in our country—the rich and varied cultural perspectives present in the lives of my Black, Japanese, Chinese, South Asian and Hispanic friends. Through their witness, I began to discover and experience a depth of the gospel I have never known. Third, I began to notice—no, to see—the faces of the poor and to hear the faint voices of marginalized people pushed to the edge of society. These sights and sounds humbled and sobered me, and again, challenged my understanding of the gospel.
On a personal level, I was shaken to the core. In previous posts I described feeling fragilized—uncertain how to communicate my faith, and sometimes afraid to open my mouth at all, in our rapidly changing context. On a theological level, I instinctively knew that I needed to keep reading my Bible, and that I needed a theologically sound way to wrap my head around the gospel in fresh ways. On a missiological level, I began paying much closer attention to the current twenty-first century context in juxtaposition with Bill Bright’s twentieth-century context (highlighted in posts beginning January 4, 2021). In addition to studying the history of evangelicalism and revivalism highlighted in previous posts, I also drew on Philosophy and Sociology to add depth to my Theology, and I followed what C. S. Lewis describes as the “sacred thread.”[1]
My research led to a call for a reimagined narrative approach to contextualization by way of the four prominent features of faithful recontextualization. In the weeks to follow I will take a closer look at what I mean by a narrative approach to contextualization and unpack the significance behind narrative/biblical theology and will defend, in brief, the need for recontextualization.
In the following weeks I look forward to expounding on each of the four prominent features of faithful recontextualization, and for now, I include them here by way of introduction.*
· Feature One: Faithful Recontextualization Affirms the Bible as the TSWW and the Gospel as Good News for All and highlights the four overarching themes inherent within God’s narrative: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration or re-creation. These themes offer a transcendent framework within which a person—believer or unbeliever—can understand the all-encompassing implications of the gospel for the whole of one’s life.
· Feature Two, Faithful Recontextualization Yields to the Full Weight of the Triune God’s Authority revealed in six ways:
In Scripture.
Through creation.
The mission of redemption set into motion by the fall, first, through the nation of Israel.
By the Spirit-empowered incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Through Jesus’s ascension and the sending of the Spirit.
in the restoration or re-creation of all things.
In addition, this feature depends on a Trinitarian, Christocentric, eschatological hermeneutic of the TSWW and provides a key interpretive element.
· Feature Three: Faithful Recontextualization, by Design, Reflects the Multicultural Reality of the Twenty-First Century and involves:
An increased awareness of cultural variations in America and a willingness to learn through cross-cultural collaboration.
A robust dependence on the framework of the TSWW in order to reflect this multicultural reality.
A reality anchored in the missional nature of the triune God.
· Feature Four (Faithful Recontextualization Necessitates a Dynamic and Dialogical Encounter with Culture) includes the following components:
An affirmation that the Spirit-created church lives as the very body of Christ in the world.
A dynamic and prophetic faith.
A cruciform way of discipleship.
A heightened awareness of exclusive humanism and hyper- and non-religious faiths coupled with agility to engage in meaningful gospel conversations.
Conclusion
This series of stories began with faint rumblings of change, followed by descriptions of paradigmatic shifts, to an unraveling that has overturned the life I once lived in a distracted and numb comfort—maybe you can relate. My goal in communicating all of this in a blog is to enliven our faith and to call us to embrace this moment in history as a prime opportunity to live out the Good News of God’s kingdom in fresh and relevant ways.
Portions of this post are taken from: Monaco, Cas. “Bill Bright’s (1921–2003) Four Spiritual Laws Reimagined: A Narrative Approach to Meaningful Gospel Conversations For An American Twenty First Century Secularized Context,” PhD Diss, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Wake Forest, NC, 2020.
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2001).
