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 Nicholas

Meet Pastor Nicholas.  Pastor Nicholas is a typical Samburu pastor.  One year ago, his church was small and struggling.  They met under a tree and wondered how much longer this particular work could continue.

Last July, the MT4 project came to Nicholas’ church.  In a 3-month period, 400 Samburu who were not followers of Jesus, became followers of Jesus.  His church grew, and folks from other villages began walking to his village to go to church.  Immediately, Nicholas and the Kenyan leaders of the MT4 project knew what they needed to do: plant churches in villages that had new believers, but no church.

This church planting strategy brings new challenges to pastors like Nicholas: How to train these new pastors?  Many of them have herds of cattle and goats to shepherd and cannot go away to Bible School.  A great number of these potential pastors cannot read, so how do you train them to be “mighty in the Scriptures”?

Pastor Nicholas is a part of a pilot training program underway in Samburu.  Using the MT4 techonology, the wisdom of our indigenous partners and T4G’s oral strategy, 50 Samburu pastors are undergoing orality-based pastor training.  These pastors will be trained over a course of 2 years without a single book, manual or paper being written.  They will master 120 Bible stories, and have an understanding of how each story is a part of God’s grand story of Redemption through Jesus Christ.  These pastors will also have an orality-savvy model of preaching, and will be under the tutelage of seasoned pastors like Nicholas.

This is a topic of discussion that is near and dear to our hearts, as well as to our partners – both on the ground and in the donor community.  It is a critical component of our ministry and yet it is the one we wish could be invisible at the same time.  As I say to on-the-ground partners, the MP3 player kit we use is just a delivery truck.  If there is nothing in the truck, the truck made a wasted trip.

That said – it is the contents of the truck that takes time, understanding of culture/worldview, and a clear view of the needs of oral learners.  This is where the true value lies.  In theory, ANYONE can purchase technology and put content on it for use in listening groups. [We hope that our God-given understanding of technology helps make the purchase of the RIGHT technology for the application through good stewardship, though.]

This is Matthew Wong and his family.  We’ve worked with Matthew for almost 4 years now to handle our purchasing and logistics in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China.  He and his family are a great encouragement to our ministry and they join us in our faith in God through Christ – it is a blessing to be with them and to share what God is doing through Matthew’s efforts as a businessman to help us reach oral learners in many countries around the world.

Technology

Originally uploaded by t4global

]]> http://blog.t4global.org/2009/04/11/technology/feed/ 1 edweaver http://blog.t4global.org/2009/04/07/the-invocation/ http://blog.t4global.org/2009/04/07/the-invocation/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:55:28 +0000 Kyle McClellan http://blog.t4global.org/?p=200 ]]> Here’s the congregational invocation prayed this past Sunday at the church Pete and I attend:

Lord Jesus, Savior and King, speed the coming of Your Kingdom to the ends of the earth.  By Your powerful grace, draw the world to willing obedience to Your reign.  Overcome the enemies of Your Kingdom.  Rescue what sin has laid waste, and repair the desolations of many generations, that the widerness may rejoice and the cities be made glad with Your Law.  Rain down righteousness bringing salvation to the nations. As the waters cover the sea, so may the knowledge of Your glory fill the earth.  Amen.

When asked for a summary statement, Dr. Darrell Whiteman, T4G board member and resident missiologist for the Mission Society had this to say, “The work thus far has been a model for recovering the whole gospel. The gospel is that we are rightly related to God, to each other and to God’s creation. The work in Samburu has done that. We cannot divorce spiritual rebirth from issues of justice and mercy.”

What is remarkable is that not everyone in the circle, or the village for that matter, had listened to the MT4 player.  They had learned the song from others who had listened to the MT4 player.  This is a phenomenon that we see happen every time we implement an orality project.

Our recently completed third-party evaluation of our project among the Samburu in Kenya pointed out that while a large percentage of those surveyed had listened to the MT4 player, 18% had not.  Yet when they compared average percent increases over the baseline for changes in knowledge, attitudes and behavior, the increase for non-listeners was 39%!  Our evaluator, Calvin Edwards and Company, concludes:

“This suggests that there is a very significant degree of secondary learning occurring within this oral culture—even those who don’t listen to the MT4 player are quite likely to learn as ideas are passed along orally.”