Today over at his blog EdStetzer.com: A Lifeway Research Blog in Bluegrass and Contextualization in Taiwan missiologist and President of Lifeway Research (SBC) Dr. Ed Stetzer shares:

One of the funny elements in my video interview with Pastor Chen included a reference to a Bluegrass concert (he calls it Greengrass in the video).

Phil Johnson (of Grace to You and John MacArthur fame) made a comment about it. Phil and I have traded tweets twice, both in regards to contextualization, so he is enthusiastic about the subject. ;-)

Anyway, Phil tweeted:

OK, Ed Stetzer seems excited by this, but but I don’t get how bluegrass helps contextualize the gospel for Taiwan: http://bit.ly/25TivB

 

I don’t remember being excited or saying it “helps contextualize the gospel,” but Phil and I like to tweet about contextualization, so I responded:

@Phil_Johnson_ LOL. I was a bit surprised, but he said it was a great outreach. Bluegrass in Taiwan– who knew? ;-)

 

…People in Taiwan have no context for bluegrass music (there’s not a term in Mandarin for bluegrass), but they love music and American culture. So, it led to an interesting outreach event… (Online source)

It’s interesting how the Lord works because about a week ago a reader of Apprising Ministries sent me a link to Context and Contextualization, an article by Phil Johnson from March of 2008 at his popular Pyromaniacs blog; which I hadn’t gotten to read until today, but now I see it’s just as *ahem* relevant.

Johnson begins by telling us this post will explain, “More about why I’ve been so adamant in my refusal to embrace and celebrate a word so many people seem enthralled with.” So here I find myself completely in agreement with him right off the top.

Then Johnson hits the target dead-on as he goes on to say:

Before the 1970s, the word contextualize was pretty hard to come by. It was, however, listed in unabridged dictionaries as a verb meaning “to study something in its own context.” (The Oxford English Dictionary still gives that as the word’s primary meaning.)

In the early 1970s, left-leaning missiologists made contextualization into a religious shibboleth. They also turned the dictionary definition of the word inside out. They weren’t talking about studying or explaining biblical truth in its own context; instead, what they wanted to do was adapt and stylize religious ideas and symbols to fit into the cultural context of their target audience—namely oppressed and marginalized people groups.

It wasn’t long before hip, young evangelicals discovered and embraced the basic concept, and then franchised it. Instead of targeting impoverished and downtrodden people, however, they turned contextualization into a tool for attracting Yuppies. People-pleasing activities quickly replaced God-exalting worship. Popular entertainment, apparently, was the one “context” the new evangelicals’ target clientele were drawn to en masse.

Now post-evangelicals have canonized contextualization as the one essential belief they all agree on. The “context” that seems to interest them most is the postmodern underbelly of western youth culture. (They evidently believe nihilistic post-generation-Xers are the very epitome of an oppressed and marginalized people group, so in effect they have brought the term back to its roots.) They defend contextualization with a zeal most of them don’t even have for the authority of Scripture…

A fundamental problem in all those cases is that the starting point of their hermeneutic is not a careful study of the biblical text in its own context—but a sympathetic self-immersion into various contemporary cultural contexts. The favorite emblems of faddish subcultures are then borrowed and blended with spiritual imagery in order to make selected elements of the Christian message seem as comfortable and familiar as possible. Re-contextualization or even de-contextualization would be more fitting terms. (Online source) 

You can read the rest of this insightful post by Phil Johnson sharing the proper perspective concerning this critical subject right here.

See also:

THE REALLY GOOD NEWS

THERE IS NO SPIRITUAL SWITZERLAND

JOHN MACARTHUR: WHEN BEING “NICE” IS WRONG

YOU LOVE JESUS; GOOD FOR YOU, BUT WHICH ONE?

THE NIGHTMARE BEGINNING FOR MAINSTREAM EVANGELICALISM

APPRISING MINISTRIES WITH A PEEK AT THE COMING SOTERIOLOGY OF EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY

JOHN MACARTHUR: EXISTENTIAL NEO-ORTHODOXY DENIES SOLA SCRIPTURA