Over the last week, I have had the privilege to speak at three different denominations, Grace Communion International (formerly the Worldwide Church of God), The General Baptist Association of General Baptists, and the United Methodists. The first two involved, but were not solely focused on, church planting. Yesterday, I shared church planting research with the United Methodist leadership.

I indicated that I would post my presentations today so that some of the participants could download the research. Also, others interested in church planting might find the presentations helpful.

The "State of Church Planting" reports I referred to yesterday are listed below for your convenience. You can download them from the Leadership Network website at the links below.

The Christian Post reported on the research.

If you haven't seen them already, check out:

Church Planting Overview
Funding New Churches
Improving the Health and Survivability of New Churches
Who Starts New Churches?

You can also access all the Leadership Network downloads at www.leadnet.org/churchplanting.

The NAMB research I mentioned was done at the Center for Missional Research.

You should visit their site-- you can download over 2000 reserach presentation on a myriad of topics. The CMR web portal is one of the things I was most excited about when I worked at NAMB. (PeopleGroups.info was another).

Here is a rundown of what church planting research you can download.

First, is the full report of the Church Planting Survivability and Health study, a study involving 11 denominations and networks. You can download a presentation of that study here.

Second, are four articles that came from that study.

Part 1: The Survivability and Health Study
Part 2: How Many Church Plants Really Survive--and Why?
Part 3: 10 Factors for Higher Attendance in Church Plants
Part 4: Higher Baptisms in Church Plants

Third, is a research that looked at denominational "best practices" that led to higher church planting survivability and health. To do this, we did more in-depth analysis of several denominations to look for best practices. When we found a practices that was "statistically significant," we reported it and then I asked representatives to present what they did at last year's National New Church Conference in Orlando.

So, you can find the full report here and a PowerPoint of that data here.

Finally, you can find my presentation of the best practices research that I recently gave at the NAMB State Summer Leadership Conference. It is a big download, but you can get it here.

In that presentation, I combined the presentations of 4 denominational leaders who shared their best practices in the areas we found statistically significant. Each network or denominational leader presented their overall church planting system, then presented their specific best practice as determined by our research. Each of them gave their permission to share their presentation. The presenters were:

Steve Childers presented the Presbterian Church in America assessment system.
Rod Koop presented the Foursquare peer support / mentoring system.
George Klippenes presented the Evangelical Free team approach and funding system.
Steve Pike presented the Assemblies of God community minsitry approach.
Tom Nebel and Gary Rohrmayer presented the Baptist General Conference training for local church giving.

I hope they are a help!

Thanks so much to Ray Chang for his post last week on Creating a Culture of Internship in the Church.

Next week -- Rice Broocks, senior minister of the Bethel World Outreach Center.




Jason Hayes is a speaker, author, church consultant, and strategist for Threads, a movement connecting young adults to God and the Church. He is the co-author of Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and The Churches That Reach Them. Most recently, he is the author of Blemished: Confronting Empty Religion.

Jason's work has been featured in numerous websites, articles, and magazines across the US and internationally. Having served on staff at churches and with para-church organizations, he is committed to equipping leaders across the globe. Jason also speaks directly into the lives of this generation at churches, conferences, university chapels, and various other venues.

Jason's post today is on mentoring. He will be available to interact in the comments.

Quick Note: I wrote my post without knowledge of Ray's post from last week. After looking at it, I just want to be clear - I completely affirm Ray's thoughts and believe that we must consider the processes in how we train those in vocational ministry before we throw them to the proverbial deep end of the pool. With that said, the point of this post is to discuss how we mentor the younger generation within our church body. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

We don't hear a lot about mentoring these days, do we? (Except from Ray and the great comments from many of you last week) That's unfortunate. Maybe that's because we've shoved it behind the curtain of leadership development and coaching networks. Or maybe it's because we're too busy mentoring to actually discuss it. Or maybe it's because we're not doing it at all. Or maybe, just maybe, we've programmed the absolute life out of it that no one finds it appealing anymore.

Jesus' call to His disciples was, "Follow Me. Walk where I'm walking. Go where I'm going. And along the way, I've got some things to teach you."

Jesus didn't necessarily seek out a fig tree, a field, or a farmer. He was walking by those things, and He used those moments that naturally occurred to teach spiritual truth. But He had to be walking with people in order to have that opportunity.

When people from an older generation invite those younger than them into their lives, they have that chance. Whether eating a meal, going to the movies, or having a conversation, the natural circumstances emerge to see and seize teaching opportunities through sharing life together.

Though some specific direction can be emphasized in those relationships, the greatest learning moments will surface during everyday occurrences as they live life together--funerals, weddings, meals, baseball games, and family events. While mentoring does require time and vulnerability, the biggest key is intentionality. That's what Jesus demonstrated as He walked side by side with others.

Sometimes we confuse intentionality with formality. It's not about blocking extra hours (that you likely don't have) for "mentoring time." Instead, it's about mentoring people within the existing hours that you do have. Regimented weekly meetings are fine for some, but they'll never be as effective as simply bringing others into your everyday life.

As I mentioned yesterday, we are planning some big things for small churches. Be sure to read my last post for the details. I recently wrote on this issue for my column "As I See It" in Outreach magazine's annual Small Church issue (July/August 2010). If you are a subscriber, you have gotten a chance to see it already. If not, you can click here to subscribe.

Here's what I had to say:

Conventional wisdom has been that the larger the church, the more effective it is at delivering change to the world and local community. Perhaps this is derived negatively from our "bigger is better" culture. On the other hand, the attitude is born positively from the desire to see constant expansion in God's kingdom on earth.

No matter the reason, it is easy to observe that people in our culture assume that a larger group can make a larger impact. However, LifeWay Research's recent Transformational Church study, in which 7,000 Protestant pastors nationwide were surveyed, revealed a paradox regarding the reality and perception of the importance of church size.

Our study showed that the principles that deliver transformation hold true no matter the size of the church. Some differences existed based on congregational size, but few of any statistical significance.

Nevertheless, significantly fewer small-church pastors report actually hearing about changed lives at their churches.

Cause for Concern?
Two-thirds (64 percent) of pastors at churches with more than 300 in weekly attendance strongly agreed with the statement, "We are consistently hearing reports of changed lives at our church." Less than half (42 percent) of small-church pastors strongly agreed with that statement. (Outreach magazine defines a small church as one with 300 people or less in average weekly attendance.)

A myriad of factors might influence this outcome (for example, larger churches have more people from whom to hear about changed lives), but should it concern us that such a divide exists?

The difference may be explained, in part, because churches that focus on mission tend to get bigger. But I think part of the reason is that the small church has often convinced itself that it is not experiencing the life change that it really is.

So let me make two suggestions to those in small churches to highlight what is already taking place through the church's influence.

Celebrate Your Significance

Don't think that because you are small you are not significant. Celebrate life change. Remember that what you celebrate, you become. If the church you lead celebrates having a big crowd for business meetings, then you will become inwardly focused. If your church relishes times of prayer, then you will become well-connected to the Father. I would encourage churches--especially smaller churches--to celebrate Gospel-induced life change. As the church shares the stories of how Christ's work is changing lives, you will see excitement and expectancy rise in the pastor and everyone else. Life change best happens in relationship, and relationships thrive in smaller communities.

Share the Stories

Let people tell their stories. Having served as a pastor throughout my adult life, I've often hesitated to allow "just anyone" on the platform during a Sunday morning service to offer a testimony. We feel the pressure to make sure everything is done with excellence, and sometimes people are bad at telling their own stories. But a well-produced service is nothing compared to a Gospel-produced life. Smaller churches can encourage life change by offering stories of how their fellowship engenders life change.

The Transformational Church initiative serves as an encouragement that any church focused on the Gospel can affect transformation in people, churches, and communities. The leaders of smaller churches should press ahead with the vision to spread the enthusiasm. As stories of life change are shared, lives will be changed.

Be sure to get involved with the Transformational Small Church Exchange webcast we have planned by clicking here.

Pastors of small churches, mark your calendar for Tuesday, September 7 (the day after Labor Day). I will be hosting a special extended version of my monthly webcast The Exchange on "Transformational Small Churches." Thom Rainer, LifeWay President, will be joining me along with a panel of small church pastors as we talk through how small churches are making a biblical impact in the lives of their members and in their communities. As always, this will be interactive and participants can submit questions through the online chat feature that we will be answering throughout the day.

If you live in or around the Nashville area, you can join us in person on September 7th. For the first time, we will be broadcasting The Exchange where we can have onsite participants. All you have to do is register at www.lifeway.com/TheExchange. (The registration fee is $10 and includes lunch. Seats are limited, so please register early.)

Leaders & Coaches: This is a great opportunity to gather pastors you are working with for a no-cost online conference. We have already heard that groups of pastors are gathering with lunch and resources provided, with an opportunity to facilitate discussions while they watch the broadcast live.

Keep watching the blog over the next few weeks. We have invited guest bloggers to share their thoughts on a variety of topics related to pastoring a small church: missions involvement, pastoring bi-vocationally, pastoring a rural church, and more.

If you plan to participate (online or onsite), give us your thoughts. What topics or issues are the most important to you?

Warren Bird and I have an article up at the The Foursquare Church website. It is an adaptation of a section of our new book, Viral Church: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers. In light of the significant hurdles that remain before missional multiplication will take off in the United States, we offer some thoughts of what has started to happen, but must continue at a higher and more widespread level to see the multiplication of missional churches in the United States. Below are the highlights.

1. Driving DNA Passion for Church Planting
People will need to consider church planting as one of their ministry's core values. Church planting cannot be an afterthought, someone else's ministry or a department. Churches will live, eat and breathe it. The widespread expectation that people will be sent out must become normal rather than exceptional...

2. New Measures of Success
Churches will always have a scorecard. A change of measures changes the current peer pressure and also creates positive peer pressure toward accomplishing the goal. As in all instances, scorecards can either press toward the goal or become a source of pride or depression...

3. More Roots in Historic Biblical Discipleship
Too often a church can't multiply its leaders because it has too few robust disciples. Instead it has lots of dependent believers who take a consumeristic approach to their faith and ultimately are shallow in character development...

4. Less Facility-Driven
Future churches will be less tied to the construction of buildings. The multi-site movement is helping our culture accept the idea of "de-building" large church facilities...

Churches will not cease from having facilities. But we can drop the hyperbolic reliance on the "if you build it, they will come" mentality...

5. Non-Anglo Leadership
Churches in the United States have heard that the growth hub of our faith is both south and east of us--such as South America, Africa and Asia. Now that North American Christians are understanding the reality of God's movement in other churches around the world, however, it is time to for us to assume a position of learning from the global Christian community. We can learn much, for example, from the worldwide church planting movements...

6. Less Permanency
To many of us, the idea of churches forming, flourishing and then going away, all somewhat quickly, seems to be a bad thing. We need to get a sense that God's people will last for eternity, but our facilities can be far less permanent. In fact, lots of churches died 30 years ago, but no one turned out the lights...

7. Multiple Pacesetters
"Historically all movements have begun because of the charismatic efforts of one lone individual who touched a nerve among a host of people. Who will step up to be that person?" asks Bill Easum, a prolific writer and co-author of Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts.

We think we're seeing multiple people step up, all sharing the same stage. Lots of good things are happening--but for a church multiplication movement to happen, the small stream has to become an unstoppable rushing river. If more people can decide to learn what God is up to in church planting movements, then we may be blessed to see them populate the continent in the next decade...

Head over to the Foursquare Church website to read the entire article, and then come back here to discuss.

We're haven't left the summer season yet, but I want to give you a heads up about two conferences coming up in September and October.

The NINES
9/9/2010

The NINES is an free online conference and gathering for church leaders that will happen on September 9, 2010. Things will kick off at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time (10:30 Central; 9:30 Mountain; 8:30 Pacific) and will last about 9 hours.

If you can watch videos at YouTube on your computer, you should be able to watch the live stream on The NINES. Just be sure that you have the most current version of flash.

Did I mention that this is free? Well, not only is the conference free, but there are upgrading options as well. You can learn more about The NINES here.

The GCM Collective Conference 2010
October 28 - 30, 2010

The GCM Collective will be hosting their first GCM Conference in Austin, TX this October, bringing together church planters, pastors, and leaders to collaborate on the practice of missional communities. This three-day conference will feature main and breakout sessions under the theme of GOSPEL, COMMUNITY and MISSION.

You will get to hear from, meet and interact with leaders who are daily practitioners, living in gospel communities on mission in their cities. This is a unique experience that will present the why, what and how-to of starting, leading and multiplying missional communities. Interactive plenary sessions, breakouts and unique training experiences will fill our days both on-site and off.

Big church, small church, multi-site or neighborhood this event is for every church that seeks to effectively expand the gospel in their context.

I'm looking forward to be speaking along with Steve Timmis, Jeff Vanderstelt, Caesar Kalinowski, David Fairchild, Drew Goodmanson and Jonathan Dodson. You can find more information and register here.

Today I am flying from Santa Fe, NM to Orlando, Florida, to speak tomorrow at Grace Communion International's 2010 International Conference. Most of you would know it as the former Worldwide Church of God (hence the title). They have recently changed their name to better reflect who they are. I think their story is worth telling as they have become renewed in Christ in amazing ways.

Appropriately, the theme of the meeting is "GCI: Renewed in Christ." This is particularly exciting, given the history of this denomination.

Grace Communion International was formerly known as the Worldwide Church of God, and was considered by many to hold to unorthodox teachings, but in the late 1980s, they began a process of doctrinal reform on a large scale, and essentially transformed into an evangelical denomination. They also joined the National Association of Evangelicals.

In 2009 they changed their name to Grace Communion International, to better reflect who they are and what they teach. You can read their story on Wikipedia here and on their own website here.

They describe their journey this way:

Jesus Christ changes lives. He can change an organization, too. This is the story of how the Lord changed our denomination from an unorthodox church on the fringes of Christianity, into an evangelical group that believes and teaches orthodox doctrines. The story involves both pain and joy. Thousands of members left the church. Income is less than one fourth of what it once was. But thousands of members are rejoicing with renewed zeal for their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Living Hope Video Ministries made a documentary about GCI entitled "Called to Be Free." If you haven't seen it, check out this great story of the grace of the Gospel.

I will be doing two main sessions and two breakouts and I plan to make much of Jesus and His mission.

I am grateful to Wendy Horger Alsup for her contribution last week on Equipping Women for Gospel-Centered Lives.

Next week, we will be hearing from Jason Hayes, young adult ministry specialist for Threads Media.


For this week's Thursday is for Thinkers guest post, I've invited Ray Chang to contribute. Ray is Pastor of Ambassador Church in Brea, California. He has been pastoring and planting churches since 1993.

I have had the privilege of knowing Ray in my work with the Evangelical Free Church leadership. Also, Ray and I took a taxi ride through Taipei, Taiwan and discussed how second generation immigrant churches in America can be involved in God's global mission. You can watch that video here.

Ray blogs here: Transformissional Leadership: An Inside Look at Leading a Multiethnic, Missional and Multiplying Church.

Ray is sharing with us today about the value of ministry internships. He recently completed his doctoral work on the subject and I found it helpful and invited him to share a bit here. He will be interacting in the comments.

There are many factors that contribute to who we are and what we are about. Whether people, circumstances, or books, God can bring various experiences along our paths that shape us and our ministry. For me, 1991 was a one-year experience that served as the profoundly formative experience of my life.

Growing up at church, my understanding of ministry was either by sheer observation (usually what not to do) or just learning by doing (usually being told what to do). There was very little guidance.

After finishing at two seminaries with two Master's degrees, I was as one person remarked, "educated beyond my intelligence." I had all the theory without practice, until a friend told me about an internship at a large church in Fullerton, California. It was pastored by one of my preaching heroes, Chuck Swindoll. Just an opportunity to be trained under this gifted leader was one of my dreams.

When I applied, I had very little hope that I would be selected. Each year, they would select two full-time interns who would not only work with Pastor Chuck but would also be the interns with the church. This radically changed my understanding of ministry. The internship became the most valuable, formative experience for me. I call this year the seminary learning I never got from seminary, or simply the missing year of seminary.

In our internship year, the church was dealing with an elder convicted of child molestation. We saw how the church dealt with crises and how sin was confronted. We saw how the staff supported each other through the day-to-day grind of ministry rather than creating silos. We saw the key element of trust fostered and nurtured among the church board and staff. We saw worship joyfully experienced and God's Word faithfully taught. We were also given opportunities to teach, lead and learn from all the staff.

I look back at that year as the most foundational and formational year of my life. It was an internship that was personal and practical. It focused on exposure and experience. It gave full access to learning.

Because of the value of internships in my life, I wanted to make this a part of our culture when we planted a church in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The church plant began with five interns from Talbot Seminary and their spouses as the core group. It became a laboratory for these interns to learn how to do ministry. While nothing was set up, they established ministries like small groups, worship, young adult, outreach and assimilation. From our core group of six families we grew to about 60 adults and launched our church.

From this experience, I have learned some principles of developing a culture of internships or residencies. In my doctoral thesis, I examined two case studies of churches who had well-developed "internship" or "residency" programs. For the sake of this article, I will use the terms synonymously. While some have called an internship "slave labor" or "free work no one else wants to do," the goal of an internship is to "provide supervised practical training." The focus is more on the intern rather than the job. It is an investment for the long-term rather than for short-term ministry gain. While churches and ministries may gain from interns, it really serves to invest in building up workers for God's kingdom.

So how does a church, regardless of size, develop a culture of internships? Here are some practical questions and principles to consider.

1. Do you have a vision for investing in younger leaders? It begins with the senior leader or leaders. If internship is truly to be a value, then it has to be a value with the person steering the bus. Leaders provide the access points for internships and should lead the church to value the process.
2. Are you willing to make financial investments? It takes more than a willingness to bring on interns. It takes resources. Will the church structure or restructure resources to invest in interns? The great news about interns is that it doesn't take a lot.
3. Is there someone who can personally oversee the interns? Whether the senior pastor or a staff member, churches of all sizes can offer practical learning if time, direction, and guidance is given.
4. Are you willing to give a realistic assessment of the interns? Feedback is important during an internship process. Whether they are serving, teaching, or leading, there must be an assessment process.
5. Is there a training process in place? Some of my early internship experience was just about doing. I was a hired gun for a particular need like youth ministry, but there was no training. Training involves both classroom and on-the-job training. It also has to fit with the unique background and personality of the intern.

As I reflect on my days as a pastoral intern, it was one of the most important years of my life. All five principles were integral in the internship. The church was completely on board with this internship. It was celebrated from the senior pastor to the person sitting in the pew. They paid me a full-time salary. The senior associate pastor personally oversaw the process and met with us weekly to go over what we learned. To this day, he is still one of my personal mentors. We had consistent times of reflection and assessment. From the personal interviews at the beginning to internships to feedback through the year, we were constantly challenged to look at how God wired us as leaders. And, the training was both the reading of books and the studying of Scripture together (Pastoral Epistles) as well as on-the-job training. All of this contributed to developing me into a better pastor and leader.

For the sake of the kingdom, we can help the next generation become better pastors and leaders as well.

I know the readers of this blog like books, so I thought I'd point to four recently published ones that are being promoted through Leadership Network or Exponential. They are worth your attention. All four books debuted April 2010 at the Exponential Conference in Orlando, FL. Below are excerpts of interviews with each of the authors.

Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement
by Dave Ferguson and Jon Ferguson

Exponential tells our story of how God brought a handful of friends together to start a missional church movement and how others could do the same. The principles we share come from the very message that Jesus communicated to His first followers when he said, "Come follow me." So, there may be very little that is actually new about this book, but it is the one book you can read if you want to reproduce yourself, your ministry and your church.

It doesn't matter if you're leading a small group or the lead pastor of a very large church, you need to be asking the question, "Who is walking beside you? Who are you equipping to do what you are doing?" That is absolutely foundational to developing a reproducing culture in any church. We are really excited...

AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church
by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay

We wrote the AND at the request of a respected group of network leaders who felt that someone needed to call the church past the "missional/attractional" divide that has grown over the last 5-7 years. The message was confirmed at an informal gathering of mega and micro church leaders in Denver, where we saw the exact same passion for the explosion and expansion of God's missional church across a wide range of forms. No one cared about "how" we were doing church. Everyone just wanted God's church to re-emerge from the ashes of irrelevance.

Early on, people assumed we were organic purists because our church started from scratch with most of our stories in homes, pubs, coffee shops, etc. As our story grew we felt uncomfortable being labeled by someone else's "form" of church. We never tried to claim any type of church, but we were learning that there is a natural struggle to find a balance of scattering people into incarnational mission but that there is also a significant beauty and meaning in corporate gatherings...

Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers
by Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird

It was our desire to write a book that would assist those involved or interested in church planting so that they might move beyond simply starting one church, toward the planting of movements. As such this book is intended for everyone involved in the church planting process: denominations, networks, local churches and church planters. Our ultimate hope is that we'll move from addition to multiplication. We need to see true church multiplication movements take place.

One of the first things we need to do is give more people permission to plant churches. There are marks of the biblical church and those always need to be central to what we do, but we have "clergified" church planting. In other words, we have made it necessary to be a certain class of person in order to plant a church...

Ethnic Blends: Mixing Diversity into Your Local Church
by Mark DeYmaz, with Harry Li

Ethnic Blends is for the growing numbers of pastors, church planters, and ministry leaders, indeed, entire staff teams who are seeking to promote greater ethnic/economic diversity within the local church or ministry they lead.

Intentionality is both an attitude and an action when it comes to mixing diversity into your otherwise healthy, homogeneous context. Yes, intentionality must permeate and inform every corridor of a multi-ethnic church. For instance, I have no doubt that people mean well when they say that they would gladly welcome others of varying ethnic or economic backgrounds to come be a part of "their" church. However, in practice, what they really mean is "... as long as 'they' like things the way we do them." Therefore, you should recognize that a healthy multi-ethnic church is not established by assimilation but rather...

If you haven't read these yet, be sure to check them out.

Speaking of books, if you're on Twitter, we've launched four new Twitter accounts -- @TransformChurch, @viralchurches, @SprtlWrfrMssns, and @plntgmsnlchrchs. With these accounts, we're hoping to get out the messages from Transformational Church, Viral Churches, Spiritual Warfare and Missions, and Planting Missional Churches. Link up with Twitter and start following!

In all of the discussion and debate revolving around the issue of contextualization most will agree that knowing the truth of the gospel is not enough, but that we are called by God to also make it known to make disciples. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "... how can they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent?" (Rom 10:14, 15 HCSB).

The desire for contextualization is often driven by a hope for clear gospel communication. (I've touched on this a bit in part 1 and part 2 of this series.) However, agreement on our calling to make the gospel known to make disciples will only help us to see the need for contextualization if we define it properly.

Contextualization is not so easy to define because people use the word differently in different traditions. Yet, as I did when defining culture, I think it is important to consider how evangelicals define and use a term if we are to have any meaningful conversation in the evangelical community. Thus, we look again to The Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, where Gilliland explains that contextualization is a tool to "to enable, insofar as it is humanly possible, an understanding of what it means that Jesus Christ, the Word, is authentically experienced in each and every human situation" (Gilliland, Dean. "Contextualization." In The Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions. Ed. Scott Moreau. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000).

There are other variants of that view and I will not try to address each one. For that, I would suggest reading Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models by David Hesselgrave and Edward Rommen. And, it should tell us something that whole books would be written on the subject.

Thus, all definitions of contextualization address communication. Gilliland says elsewhere, "Contextualization is, first of all, concerned with communicating by appropriate and understandable means that salvation is in Jesus only." (Cited by Darrell Whiteman in "The Function of Appropriate Contextualization in Mission" in Appropriate Christianity, edited by Charles Kraft. William Carey Library, 2005).

Though communication is not all that contextualization includes (as subsequent installments will discuss), it is a central part of the concern.

What is Contextualization?

Most generally, to contextualize is to place something in a particular context. Thus, I would say that any definition of contextualization must include presenting the unchanging truths of the gospel within the unique and changing contexts of cultures and worldviews. This requires us to retain the nature of the truth and the integrity of the message while explaining and applying such things in the necessarily unique or specific ways that enable hearers to understand and respond.

Maybe Pictionary will help me make this point.

Most of us are familiar with the classic party game, Pictionary. The "artist" gets a name of a person, place, or thing and he has to draw the picture so that his team can guess it, without ever using any words to help. Imagine if I was playing a game of Pictionary at a party. I am assigned to draw the person President George W. Bush. So, in efforts of simplicity and speed, I draw a picture of a bush. I'm playing with a pretty quick crowd, so they guess it right away. "BUSH!!!"

They've partially got the answer, but not all of it, so it doesn't count. So, I start pointing at the bush and make hand gestures, moans, and grunts (but no words). I use my hands to say, "that's right, but more." Again, the crowd is smart, so they can see the clue has something to do with a bush so they start guessing. "Tree!... Plant!... Green!... Photosynthesis!... Oxygen to carbon dioxide!... Krebs Cycle!" (I told you they were smart.) Now, they're getting way off base, but I can't say anything, so I just keep pointing at that bush. I point at it harder and harder and keep gesturing and grunting and, at this point, I'm getting mad.

The others never get it. I know what it is. I know they should know it. It is so obvious. But they don't.

I get frustrated, and yet, I never gave another clue.

Too often, I think this is what many evangelicals look like in the twenty-first century. For example, many today in American culture want to talk about "spirituality," but are unfamiliar with the gospel and not warm to the idea of spiritual absolutes. Some well-meaning Christians hear the spirituality talk and want to move people to the gospel, but the unexplained theological language and the old evangelistic approaches that were targeting a different worldview amount to noise that leaves the hearer in the dark trying to guess. It's like we, as believers, start communicating through our gestures and grunts, but they don't get it. We wind up giving clues that lead them in circles, and not to the truth. We know the answer, and we want them to know the answer, but we just can't make a solid connection.

Without contextualization, the words and arguments we use can amount to ineffective clues.

We Already Contextualize

Let's be clear about this issue of contextualization; everyone does it. Everyone. Whether or not they use the term, all have contextualized, because every presentation of the gospel must be given to a particular audience, in a particular culture. If you share the gospel with others, then you are contextualizing. You either do it properly, or poorly. For example, you do it poorly when you are attempting to share Christ with the unchurched person in front of you, but present the gospel as if you're speaking to someone who is already familiar with the claims of Jesus.

You can't just jump into "Jesus died to save you, and his resurrection demonstrates that he is who he said he is" because the person first needs to know about the one true God, their sin before him, and who Jesus is and what he has done. A person must first know they are lost before they will be found. I am fairly certain most of you will agree with the previous two sentences. If you do, you believe in contextualization, which is placing the gospel in a particular context. We may argue about the amount of contextualization, but we cannot argue with the need for such (assuming the definition mentioned earlier).

We can also turn the example around. The de-churched southerner who has grown up in an evangelical church where the Scripture is preached might not need convincing that the Bible is God's word, or that he or she is a sinner, but he or she may simply need clarity on the new birth, or how one responds to the gospel (personally via faith and repentance).

Contextualized Communication and Clear Gospel Proclamation

Contextualization is necessary because while the human condition and the gospel remain the same, people have different worldviews which in turn impact how they interpret themselves, the world and the things you say. People who care about contextualization care because they want a clear gospel proclaimed AND understood.

It's one thing to know the gospel, but it's another to make the gospel known. And making the gospel known is more complicated in America today than it was in decades past. Less people today have a general Christian orientation, or even a shared Judeo-Christian ethic. This means concepts (truths) like sin, death and hell cannot be assumed. So when we want to communicate the gospel and deal with categories like God, man, Christ and faith we must not only know them well, but also how to effectively make them known to the people God has sent us. Knowing where to begin and how to explain the truth to particular people are issues of contextualization.

We are already contextualizing. Let's do it well.