Year 1: As Wise as Snakes

I don’t think the first phase of our mission will be all that glamorous in terms of baptisms and bible studies. At the recommendation of previous missionaries, we are trying to take the first full year on the ground to be full-time learners of the language and the culture. One of the things we are doing as a team is collaborating on a study of religious customs, rituals, and rites of passage. Over the next several months we will be conducting surveys and compiling all the knowledge we can on Catholicism and its rituals and practice, weddings, funerals, birthdays, the rite of confirmation, infant baptisms, Andean animism, superstition, etc.  In every culture there are things that point towards Jesus, things that point away from Jesus, and things that are more or less neutral. We have to be well-acquainted with the underlying meaning of things as we approach church-planting as cultural outsiders.

In the field of missiology (the study of missions) the word “contextualization” is thrown around a lot. Contextualization is the craft of relating something in a way that is understandable to people from a different culture. In actuality, everyone participates in some contextualization because we all deal with subcultures within our own culture. For example, your parents and your children (if you have children) are members of different subcultures. There is a generation gap between you. You might have to explain something to them in a different way than you would with someone your own age. This same concept is amplified when it comes to communicating cross-culturally. Creative and judicious contextualization is of vital importance when communicating the most important thing in the world: the Gospel.

When contextualizing biblical truth, we must be aware of the cultural baggage we bring along with us to a new place. We are not commissioned to spread American culture to those who are lost, we are commissioned to spread the transformative Gospel of Jesus Christ. We must, therefore, critically analyze our own ways of doing things. Do we do the things we do because they point towards Jesus? If so, those practices can be shared. Many times American cultural practices are spiritually neutral but end up getting passed along to the natives because that’s just how the missionaries have always done it. The spiritually neutral things are often the things the sending churches back home get upset about when missionaries decide not to impose them on the natives. Thirdly, there are things in American culture that we bring along with us that actually point people away from Jesus. God forbid we infect other cultures with our sinful cultural baggage!

The other pitfall of contextualization is syncretism. Syncretism is what God constantly warned the Israelites of doing when they entered the land of Canaan where people were practicing false religions. It’s the mixing of the worship of God and his message of good news with the pagan religions of the world. There’s a fine line between contextualization and syncretism. Trying to spread the Gospel without first taking time to carefully analyze the culture often results in syncretistic churches.  I’m reminded of the words of Jesus as he sent out his disciples “be as wise as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16). Our goal as newcomers to this culture is to become culturally savvy so that we can skillfully contextualize the Gospel and help the church make decisions about what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s neutral in Peruvian culture.

Our whole team is finally together in Arequipa!