We all have unexamined cultural baggage that has the potential to distort the gospel message; whether we are reaching a new culture, or trying to bring the gospel to our own in a more biblically faithful way, we need to understand the nature of the gospel, learn how to interpret culture and discover how gospel and culture interact to produce a contextualised message, according to Tim Foster in his book The Suburban Captivity of the Church: Contextualising the Gospel for Post-Christian Australia.
The evangelical church in Australia has largely confined itself to ministry in the suburbs, and its gospel message has unwittingly acquired suburban middle-class cultural values. The gospel message wrapped in those values does not connect with the culture of inner-city people, who reject suburban values. Contextualisation is an important part of missiology, but how does it play out in the context of inner-city Australia?
Rather than just proclaiming the need for contextualisation, the author provides his own analysis of two different inner-city cultures, the “Urbanites” and the “Battlers”, and he describes what he considers to be a suitably contextualised way of presenting the good news to each group. Key gospel themes for the Urbanites include the environment, the marginalised, social justice, peace and reconciliation. Key gospel themes for the Battlers include: Jesus is one of us, a world for the rest of us, and security.
I found this to be a very interesting and helpful book. Most churches in Australia are not doing well in connecting with their local communities, but they fail to notice that their lack of success is at least partially attributable to unnecessary cultural baggage which repels the people with whom they are trying to connect. This book provides some very useful cultural keys and fully worked examples which will be of great assistance to local churches.