The Seed of the Gospel

This is a little essay I wrote for the Perspectives missions course I'm doing, reflecting on the "Cultural Perspective" section. I wanted to share it because I think it's one of the most important issues I've had to think through on this course and I wanted to give you a taste of what Perspectives is about.

“Do not bring us the gospel as a potted plant. Bring us the seed of the gospel and plant it in our soil.”

This was a statement made by Mr. Murthi, an Indian evangelist, (Hiebert, “Cultural Differences and the Communication of the Gospel) to Western missionaries in India. It forms a very memorable and vivid picture in my mind as to what my goal is as I attempt to communicate the gospel in a very different culture to my own.

As I reflect on my personal experience and the readings that I’ve done in this “Cultural Perspective” section, I can see how the gospel has often been “transplanted” as a potted plant from Western culture to other cultures throughout history. The cultural trappings that missionaries brought with the gospel message sometimes became the message itself. Converts would adopt Western services, music, leadership styles, lifestyles, etc. Sometimes this practice isolated and excluded new Christians from their larger culture and caused unnecessary barriers to the gospel in different people groups. At other times, the majority of the people group would embrace the “gospel” message but at a surface-level rather than at a deep, worldview level. (Kraft, “Culture, Worldview, and Contextualization”) Some of their outward behavior would change, at least temporarily, but their patterns of choosing, feeling, reasoning, interpreting, valuing, and explaining would be largely unaffected by the gospel message. This often lead to syncretism, the blending of surface-level “Christian” practices with deep-rooted worldview beliefs.

If the gospel is brought to a people group as a potted plant, it is essentially foreign and incomprehensible to that people. The key is to bring it as a seed and plant it in the new soil, watering it and tending it as it grows there. This involves directing the gospel message at the worldview of the people. It must be communicated to them in their heart language and in cultural forms that they can understand.

I think this is a very challenging process. The gospel was originally communicated by Christ within the first century Jewish culture, and then by the apostles within the Jewish and Greek cultures. How do we extract the seed of the gospel from Scripture and also try to free it from our own ingrained cultural assumptions in order to plant it within a new culture? I think an important clue is found in Jesus’ teachings and parables. He used ordinary, every-day cultural forms such as sheep and harvesting grain to communicate the message of the kingdom. His stories varied but they imparted the same truth. Another example is Paul in Athens, when he spent time wandering around the city, observing the peoples’ religious beliefs and practices, before proclaiming to them the “god” they worshiped as an unknown god.

In these lessons, I learned about ministering to people in their “felt need”. What are their fears, what are their sorrows, what do they value, and how does the gospel message speak to these? In Scripture, the gospel is portrayed with different illustrations: as atonement, as justification, as the kingdom of God triumphing over the kingdom of darkness. Different facets of the gospel will resonate within different cultures in significant ways. The plant that grows from the seed of the gospel may look a bit different to one in another culture but it will grow from the same roots and the same new life will come from it. (Kraft, “Culture, Worldview, and Contextualization”)