These are the men who have given two years of their life to crafting stories in six mother-tongue languages of the northeastern state of Bihar, India. These stories were distributed prior to our partnership with New India Evangelistic Association, and we hope to expand the depth anbreadth of the Biblical content and add community development to their church planting strategy. Please pray for all of us as we plan and offer those plans to God.

Over the next few days, David Swarr of Davar Partners and I have the privilege of being speakers at the Plenary and workshop sessions at the Bihar State Network for Linguistics and Church Planting initiatives. This is sponsored by our partner, New India Evangelistic association, which is led by Dr. Alex Philip. What a blessing to be here and to see what God is doing through this humble servant and his team!

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.

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

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!

Pastor James’ Church

Originally uploaded by t4global

Outside of Maralal, in Northern Kenya, while doing a pre-program survey, we stop at this church in the Village. The surveyors are out in the huts asking questions of the local people to find out what they know and comprehend prior to rolling out the project giving them life saving information – both now and eternally.

99+1

Originally uploaded by t4global

This is where the animals stay at night in this Samburu village outside of Maralal, Kenya. It seems to be a great visual of scripture in real life. Notice that there are no animals in during the day – they’re out doing what they were made to do. Are we?