T4 Global

We use Google Alerts. If you are unfamiliar with this wonderful tool, you enter in key words or phrases and Google sends you blog and web hits related to your area of interest. Every day, I’m greeted with new food for thought thanks to the good folks at Google.

One of my keywords is “contextualization”. It’s a great word for what we do – quite useful in fact – or at least I thought so. Turns out, contextualization is used to describe everything from art to punk rock music to literature. When it is used in reference to Christian mission/missiology, the conversation becomes quite heated. Turns out, one must understand the context in which the term contextualization is being employed. What folks in North America mean when they employ the term is quite different from how the word is used when speaking of cross-cultural work among Muslims. Furthermore, missiological Titans like Lesslie Newbigin and Paul Hiebert employed the term in a third way – which only muddies the water and intensifies the debate. Would the real contextualization please stand up?

When used by emerging types here in the US, contextualization is basically a “get out of jail free” card. The historic and authoritative propositions of the Christian faith are set aside so that individuals can “contextualize” their own individual response to the dialogue being set forth by church leaders.

For those working among Muslims, the term is employed quite differently. Since Islam has cultural implications, missiologists have debated how far one must remove themselves from that culture to be an authentic disciple of Jesus. Do I have to change my name (usually to the name of a Bible character)? Do I have to renounce my family? Can I go to mosque on special occasions? Do I have to refer to myself as a “Christian”? The process of wrestling through these questions is grist for the mill of contextualization among those working with Muslims.

Confused yet? Don’t worry, we’ll continue our journey through the murky waters of contextualization . . . tomorrow.

The evaluator for a separate Pastor training program stated that things got “beautifully messy” as the pastors took their training and passed it directly to the people of their villages – non-believers and believers alike and that lives have been changed.

To more completely quote Randy Coates, a missionary to the oral-culture Turkana in Kenya, who was the evaluator of the Pastor Training program:

….” the ministry effectiveness of the T4 device exceeded the particular objectives of this leadership training module. The recorded stories and songs traveled well beyond the initial target audience of church leaders: first among the general church membership, then into the wider community and then to other churches and villages. Among rural Samburu communities, use of the T4 device for leadership training inescapably and simultaneously became a general discipleship and evangelistic tool.

I believe the device works dramatically as a multi-level ministry tool among the mostly un-reached and mostly illiterate Samburu.”

We praise God for what He is doing among the Samburu.  We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have about what is happening.  To read this evaluation in full, please click on T-4_Pastor_Training_Evaluation

The KLP Office

Originally uploaded by t4global

This is the office we’re working out of while in Salka, Niger State, Nigeria. Our Baseline survey team is out on their second day of work in Auna and Agwara – we hope to have an additional 200 surveys completed by tonight.

My team is in the office finishing 20 or so hours (in each of the three Kambari languages) of health, agriculture and Biblical stories, songs and dramas and loading them on 750 MP3 players so that lives can be touched and transformed by hearing the Truth in their heart language!

Ed Weaver and Chuck Madinger recently participated in the  International Orality Network annual conference in Dallas, TX.  The conference gathers ministries, businesses and vendors that specialize in reaching oral cultures with Good News.  Ed serves on the Executive Committee of ION and chairs the Communications Task Force that posts a great website.  (check it out: www.ion.com), and Chuck sits on the Research Task Force.  The picture is of Ed reporting to the plenary session on the work of the Communications group.  Chuck presented two papers for the research task force – one on better defining orality and the other on comparing communication strategies (mass media, collective media and small media).  You can check those out on the T4Global website under “research.”