Do We Really Need to Contextualize?

A video by William Taylor of St Helen's Bishopsgate seems to have stirred up some conversation on social media. Here are some of my thoughts on it.

Taylor argues that there is far too much emphasis on contextualization in preaching. The idea, commonly shared, that we should preach the gospel with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, Taylor says, is profoundly unhelpful. We need rather to preach with the Bible in both hands and as we do so it will be shown to be truly relevant to the people to whom we are speaking. We need, he suggests, to be beavers in regard to the Word but magpies in regard to the culture: we beaver away at understanding the text and that makes us aware of the shiny objects (the cultural phenomena) that magpies are supposed to be fond of.

I have deep respect for Taylor and am very thankful for his ministry. I must say, though, that I cannot agree with him. I appreciate the point that we can make contextualization a science such that people are intimidated to even try to communicate the message for fear of not connecting properly. What he says is clearly true when it comes to working in one's own society (if one acknowledges the variations within it). The big issue comes as we try to move out of our society and encounter people from a very different background. And the greater the cultural mileage, the bigger the issue becomes. So when we attempt to communicate a message across a cultural gap we need to be aware of how that gap affects the communication. And that works two ways - the way we understand the receptor culture and the way the people of the receptor culture understand us.

It is only by working hard to understand the receptor culture that we can appreciate the way our message should be articulated. Then we will hopefully avoid the kind of faux pas that every missionary would rather forget and that can have such a negative impact on the way our message is received. If they reject my message because they understand the significance of the cross that is their shame and their folly. But if they reject it because I didn't do my homework carefully enough, well, that is my shame and folly. Not that we all need PhDs in understanding the culture. But if none of us grapples with it, who will tell us when we are failing? The Apostle Paul 'looked carefully' at the Athenians' objects of worship (Acts 17:23). That gave him the way in to his audience. If Paul, who grew up in that region, felt the need for deliberate, conscientious cultural observation, then surely we should too. I have written before about Reformed cross-cultural naivete. My fear is that Taylor's stance is an example of just that problem.

Cultural Mileage

I have just come across the term 'cultural mileage' thanks to this 'missiographic' from gmi. It shows the idea of cultural distance between two countries and uses the research of Geert Hofstede and his associates.

Geert Hofstede conducted a huge cross-cultural study of the employees of the multinational corporation IBM. Through his research Hofstede demonstrated that national and regional cultures can be evaluated on a number of dimensions of culture, particularly in so far as they are related to the work place. These dimensions or values belong to a very basic level of culture, affect the behaviour of organizations and are very persistent over time. Hofstede’s initial work delineated four dimensions: Power Distance, Individualism v. Collectivism, Masculinity, and Uncertainty Avoidance. The initial research did not include China or the Soviet Union or most other eastern European countries. Further research was done by Chinese colleagues who constructed a survey called the Chinese Value Survey by which a fifth value, Short v. Long Term Orientation, was added to the initial four.

More recently still Hofstede’s associate, Michael Minkov generated two dimensions using recent World Values Survey data from representative samples of 93 national populations. One has been treated as an update of the Short v. Longer Term Orientation dimension (LTO). The other is called Indulgence versus Restraint (IND). This is how this dimension is described by the Hofstede Centre.

Each of the six dimensions has now been given a scale from 0 to 100. From this the idea of ‘cultural mileage’ is quantified. Cultural mileage is the ‘cultural distance’ from one country to another using the six dimensions of Hofstede’s work. Any two countries can be compared giving a total mileage anywhere from zero to 600, with the top score describing two countries that we might say are ‘poles apart’, i.e. totally different. You will see by going on the web site how many cultural ‘miles’ there are between your country and others with which you wish to compare it.

Like all of these attempts to scientifically compare cultures there are weaknesses. Rarely will any one individual be representative of their country, for a start. A host of factors should be considered in assessing whether one is suitable for ministry between cultures, but anyone who is thinking of crossing cultural boundaries to share their lives and their message will want to check this web site out and consider carefully the implications for their calling.