C.O.N.T.E.X.T.U.A.L.I.Z.A.T.I.O.N
By: Deji Yesufu
I am away to Portharcout to organize a workshop with the Reformed Theological Seminary Foundation (RTSF). My host is the Rev. Dr. Aniekan Ekpo – the man who ordained me to ministry. The RTSF was formerly known as the Reformed Foundations Theological Seminary (RFTS) and was led by Pastor Ani for many years. Last year, Pastor Ani invited nine other men to form a board to oversee the seminary and to bring new life to running the whole system. I was appointed the secretary of the board and immediately resumed the work of organizing a secretariat. Prof. Ibiwari Erekosima was voted chairman of the board, and this man has since brought zest into the system. One of the things that was agreed upon by the board, to rejuvenate the seminary, was to conduct workshops from time to time for the students. Being the very first workshop, it was open to past students of the seminary – particularly those actively involved in pastoral work at the moment. Our speaker has been Oliver Allmand-Smith, one of the elders at Trinity Grace Church, Ramsbottom, Lancashire, United Kingdom. I will be writing an exhaustive essay on the program in the days to come. For now, I want to shed light on a word that came to my mind as Pastor Oliver taught at the workshop on Saturday. That word is “CONTEXTUALIZATION”.
Incidentally, Pastor Oliver did not mention “contextualization” in his series of teachings titled “A THEOLOGY OF CHURCH LEADERSHIP AND MINISTRY”. The thought came to me when I remembered that I also had done a similar course at seminary, and my teacher then, I believe that Bob Gonzalez, a reformed Christian musician, taught us worship in the church. Gonzales had explained in the series of tapes recorded for our learning, that contextualization is key for successful missionary endeavour anywhere in the world. He explained that the bane of reformed ministries is a tendency for people to just Europeanise the gospel message. That many missionaries tend to forget that it is the message of the gospel that a community needs; not the culture of the people bringing the gospel. He explained that many European cultures have come to be influenced by the gospel. For example, the idea of one man and one wife is New Testament. Monogamous marriages must be taught in every culture that the Christian message enters. If you observe too, you will notice that many Muslims are themselves adopting this culture; realizing that it is a lot better to marry one wife than to engage the liberty of marrying four wives that Islam permits men.
On the other hand, however, things like wearing a suit to church; speaking English as vernacular; eating rice and chicken on Sundays; etc, are not Christian values – these are intrinsically Western cultures that tend to be imported into the Christian church. When we learn the gospel from a man, the usual thing is to simply adopt everything that the preacher does. What contextualization does is that it keeps the gospel message and the culture that has emerged from it, and it merges it with the culture of the community where the gospel is preached – cultures that are not inimical to the Christian message. For example, Gonzales reminded us of Hudson Taylor jettisoning western clothing and wearing Chinese clothes, going about without shoes, and living with the Chinese people – rather than living aloof in European government-reserved areas. Mary Slessor, the British female missionary who took the Christian message to Calabar, Nigeria, did something similar. Slessor lived with the natives and went about without shoes. These missionaries realized that they could successfully hold on to the gospel message, preserve Christian Western traditions, and also adopt cultures within their communities that would commend them to the locals without hindering the missionary endeavour.
Now, as I think contextualization, a few things come to mind that I believe are important to this discussion. The first thing that comes to my mind is this: a missionary should be a man of initiative. When I say “initiative”, I mean that a missionary must be a man who understands the gospel message enough to know how to “translate” it into the language of the people he is called to minister to. In the days of Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, and Mary Slessor, this “translation” would require translating the English Bible into the language of the community. In our day, sitting on the shoulders of these giant translators will mean contextualizing the gospel message to the “language” of the community. This will entail understanding the culture of the community you are called to; then understanding the gospel message itself; and then helping the community appreciate the gospel message – particularly the demands that the gospel message would begin to make on them. This will require INITIATIVE on the part of the missionary. I use the word “initiative” very carefully because I see many reformed preachers and churches in Nigeria lack initiative. It appears to me that the only thing that is acceptable as far as reformed culture, teaching, and practices are concerned, are those that our reformed friends abroad are doing. It seems we are repeating the mistakes of missionaries of yore, who thought that the best way to bring the message to a heathen nation is to both preach the gospel and overturn the culture of the people – making them Europeans in the process. They forget that many aspects of our culture are a lot better than the culture of Europeans and these cultures were developed over centuries, such that the Europeans themselves will do well learning from this culture. But in the bid to become “wholesale reformed”, many reformed churches and Christians lack initiative. They only do what is prescribed to them by their Western sponsors. Thankfully, those of us who do not have these sponsorships, have learnt to think independently and to help our communities appreciate the gospel better. Initiative is probably the number one ideal of a missionary.
Now that our fathers have translated the Bible into many indigenous languages, some of the tasks left for us their children are to translate other works written by tested theologians and hymn writers to the languages of the people of the land. This is a full-time ministry in itself and it is something that must be done. As we pursue translating these messages to indigenous languages, we should also apply ourselves to raising reformed Christians who will preach the gospel in the language of the people of the land. The only person who has ever discussed this with me is my friend, Moses Jesutola. Jesutola is concluding his studies at the Institute of Pastoral and Theological Training, Egbe, Kogi State, but his mission base is in Meran, Lagos. Having visited his missions before, I appreciate the concern in this young man’s heart. The people of Meran cannot be reached by the usual elitist reformed people that we have in Nigeria. You must know how to speak Yoruba to these people; you must be able to live with them; and share their lives – their poverty and wants. As you do this, God’s message to these people becomes more and more relevant. And there are thousands of other communities like that in Nigeria. Moses would require contextualization to prove his ministry among these people. This contextualization will include speaking the Christian message in the local parlance of the people; translating helpful literature for these people to read; and then maybe writing hymns in the language of the people, or translating known hymns to indigenous languages. This latter part has been done by many people in the past, but I think we can still have a lot of more reformed hymns brought to the people via their mother tongue.
While we extol contextualization, we must also not be unaware of some of the dangers lurking behind it. The reason why many missionaries do not bother to contextualize, but simply follow already laid out paths, is because some very real dangers could enter the churches in the name of contextualization. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Anglican Church in Nigeria experienced a split. Nigerians in the church had had enough of the high-handedness of the white man and made it clear to them that they had traced the history of the Anglican Church itself, and discovered that the church had broken away from the Roman Catholic Church through King Henry VIII in the early 16th century. They made it clear that there was no such thing as an “Anglican Church” in the Bible. Now, just as the British chose to name their church “Anglican”, which meant “English” Church, they also wish to go away and form an “African” church – and they left. The problem, however, was that the African Church started on a faulty basis. They even went as far as including in their tenets that the gospel message permitted a man to have more than one wife. We see therefore that the challenge with contextualization is that unbiblical truths can be brought into the church in the name of novelty. This is why the missionary that must contextualize must not only be a man of initiative, but a holy theologian at the same time. Holiness will ensure that heresy does not encroach on his messages, and wholesome and proven theology will help him to remain on the path of tested biblical truths.
Yesterday, while having dinner with some of the leaders of the workshop, Pastor Oliver Allmand-Smith asked me what challenges I was facing with ministry in Ibadan. I explained to him that one such challenge is that I am realizing that I cannot adopt an “oyinbo” temperament to do ministry in Ibadan. Because Europeans are prim and proper people already, you can always reach these people with a so-called “gentle” evangelizing. Nigeria is different. Nigerians are naturally aggressive and loud people. You cannot reach such people with a gentle demeanour – they will not understand the message. Contextualization might require employing some aggressiveness in reaching the Nigerian people with the gospel. Such aggressive posture need not degenerate into abuses and insults, but it must be employed all the same. I have done these many times, especially in engaging apologetics on social media. Many reformed people, who think that European gentleness is what is needed, eschew my methods. I used to be concerned with their views in the past. I am no longer today. I think that when Jesus said that the kingdom of God would require some violence (Matthew 11:12), this is what our Lord meant.
Again, contextualization requires initiative. The man of God who will bring the gospel to a society must be taught by the Spirit daily what and how he must carry out ministry. His greatest impediment would be those who think that because the gospel has come from the West, we must only employ Western values in passing the Christian message. They forget that the gospel was not invented by the white man. The gospel is an idea from heaven – and if we listen well to what the Spirit is saying to the churches, we will succeed at making gospel realities relevant to our societies, winning them to Christ in the process.
Deji Yesufu is the Pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY.
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