Contextualization Theology Of Gospel And Culture

Download or read book Contextualization written by Bruce J. Nicholls and published by Regent College Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can a Christian brought up in the metropolis of Sao Paulo speak the gospel clearly to a Buddhist raised in the mountains of Tibet? Every missionary confronts the difficulty of cross-cultural communication. But missionaries from the Third World, Bruce Nicholls says, must understand four cultures--"the Bible's, the Western missionaries' who first brought the gospel, their own, and the people's to whom they take the gospel." Recognizing this, Nicholls proposes that the gospel be contextualized, that is, presented in forms which are characteristic of the culture to which the gospel is taken. The problem is to find the right cultural forms and thus keep the gospel message both clear and biblical. Nicholls deals with tough social, theological and hermeneutical questions and proposes a direction for missions in the future. Bruce J. Nicholls, formerly executive secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship Theological Commission, was a career missionary in India working in theological education and in pastoral ministry with the Church of North India. He was also Editor of the Evangelical Review of Theology for 18 years and is now Editor of the Asia Bible Commentary series.

Download or read book Contextualization in the New Testament written by Dean Flemming and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-09-20 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a 2006 Christianity Today Book Award! Honored as one of the "Fifteen Outstanding Books of 2005 for Mission Studies" by International Bulletin of Missionary Research From Cairo to Calcutta, from Cochabamba to Columbus, Christians are engaged in a conversation about how to speak and live the gospel in today's traditional, modern and emergent cultures. The technical term for their efforts is contextualization. Missionary theorists have pondered and written on it at length. More and more, those who do theology in the West are also trying to discover new ways of communicating and embodying the gospel for an emerging postmodern culture. But few have considered in depth how the early church contextualized the gospel. And yet the New Testament provides numerous examples. As both a crosscultural missionary and a New Testament scholar, Dean Flemming is well equipped to examine how the early church contextualized the gospel and to draw out lessons for today. By carefully sifting the New Testament evidence, Flemming uncovers the patterns and parameters of a Paul or Mark or John as they spoke the Word on target, and he brings these to bear on our contemporary missiological task. Rich in insights and conversant with frontline thinking, this is a book that will revitalize the conversation and refresh our speaking and living the gospel in today's cultures, whether in traditional, modern or emergent contexts.

Download or read book One Gospel for All Nations written by Brad Vaughn and published by William Carey Publishing. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bible tells us what to believe––the gospel. Did you know it also shows how to contextualize the gospel? In One Gospel for All Nations, Jackson Wu does more than talk about principles. He gets practical. When the biblical writers explain the gospel, they consistently use a pattern that is both firm and flexible. Wu builds on this insight to demonstrate a model of contextualization that starts with interpretation and can be applied in any culture. In the process, he explains practically why we must not choose between the Bible and culture. Wu highlights various implications for both missionaries and theologians. Contextualization should be practical, not pragmatic; theological, not theoretical.

Download or read book Contextualization and Syncretism written by Gailyn Van Rheenen and published by William Carey Library. This book was released on 2006 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Culture's influence upon Christianity is easier to discern in retrospect than in prospect. If history is our guide, one thing is sure: This age will be as syncretistic as any other?How is the gospel being contextualized in the contemporary world? To what degree are these new contextualizations syncretistic? This book attempts to answer these questions by defining and analyzing contextualization and syncretism."-Gailyn Van Rheenen

Download or read book Honor, Shame, and the Gospel written by Christopher Flanders and published by William Carey Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Honorific Gospel: Biblically Faithful & Culturally Relevant Christians engaged in communicating the gospel navigate a challenging tension: faithfulness to God’s ancient, revealed Word—and relevance to the local, current social context. What if there was a lens or paradigm offering both? Understanding the Bible—particularly the gospel—through the ancient cultural “language” of honor-shame offers believers this double blessing. In Honor, Shame, and the Gospel, over a dozen practitioners and scholars from diverse contexts and fields add to the ongoing conversation around the theological and missiological implications of an honorific gospel. Eight illuminating case studies explore ways to make disciples in a diversity of social contexts—for example, East Asian rural, Middle Eastern refugee, African tribal, and Western secular urban. Honor, Shame, and the Gospel provides valuable resources to impact the ministry efforts of the church, locally and globally. Linked with its ancient honor-shame cultural roots, the gospel, paradoxically, is ever new—offering fresh wisdom to Christian leaders and optimism to the church for our quest to expand Christ’s kingdom and serve the worldwide mission of God.

Download or read book Issues in Contextualization written by Charles H. Kraft and published by William Carey Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gospel is to be planted as a seed that will sprout within and be nourished by the rain and nutrients in the cultural soil of the receiving peoples. What sprouts from true gospel seed may look quite different above ground from the way it looked in the sending society, but beneath the ground, at the worldview level, the roots are to be the same and the life comes from the same source. What does a vibrant indigenous faith in Jesus look like? How do we communicate the essential meanings of the gospel in forms appropriate to a particular people at a particular time? Issues in Contextualization, Charles Kraft’s latest book, presents his own insights on this topic from decades of experience teaching and ministering around the world. Significantly, Kraft’s analysis includes an exploration of spiritual power, an aspect frequently neglected in such discussions. This volume is an update of Kraft’s classic work Appropriate Christianity. It contains fresh presentations of previous articles and new insights into topics such as insiders (followers of Jesus outside the religious culture of Christianity) and power encounter.

Download or read book Models of Contextual Theology written by Stephen B. Bevans and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen B Bevans's Models of Contextual Theology has become a staple in courses on theological method and as a handbook used by missioners and other Christians concerned with the Christian tradition's understanding of itself in relation to culture. First published in 1992 and now in its seventh printing in English, with translations underway into Spanish, Korean, and Indonesian, Bevans's book is a judicious examination of what the terms "contextual theology" and "to contextualize" mean. In the revised and expanded edition, Bevans adds a "counter-cultural" model to the five presented in the first edition -- the translation, the anthropological, the praxis, the synthetic, and the transcendental model. This means that readers will be introduced to the way in which figures such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank, Lesslie Newbigin, "and (occasionally) Pope John Paul II" need to be taken into account. The author's revisions also incorporate suggestions made by reviewers to enhance the clarity of the original three chapters on the nature of contextual theology and the five models.