The Effects of Culture on Evangelization

INTORDUCTION

In July 1974 the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization put a focus on how culture can have an effect on evangelization. With this focus in January 1978 the Lausanne Committee’s Theology and Education convened, and those who attended included form all six continents 33 linguist, missionaries, anthropologist and pastors to tackle this topic on culture and evangelism.

SUMMARY

While working on this report the committee had four goals they wanted to meet. (1) To develop our understanding of the interrelation of the gospel and culture with special reference to God's revelation, to our interpretation and communication of it, and to the response of the hearers in their conversion, their churches and their life style. (2) To reflect critically on the implications of the communication of the gospel cross-culturally. (3) To identify the tools required for more adequate communication of the gospel. (4) To share the fruits of the consultation with Christian leaders in Church and mission.

After setting the goals the Willowbank Report was divided in to nine different sections with each section focusing on the key areas of attention for the group. The first section goes into the focus of “The Biblical Basis of Culture. At the beginning of this section they state man is God’s creature and the culture is rich in beauty and goodness but with sin being introduced by man it is tainted and some is demonic. They also reiterated the Genesis 1:26-28 and how God created man in his own likeness and also the fall of man from Genesis 3:17-19 but with that God expects us to be good stewards of his creation. At the end of this first section they put a spotlight on how evangelical Christians have been to negative towards other cultures...

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... the concept of indigenous churches where the church they were planting would be self-governing, self-supporting, and self- propagating. The argument they would use was that the apostle Paul was to plant a church not build mission stations. The authors using their experience came to suggest using a dynamic equivalent model when starting churches. This would allow the planted church to have some formal accepts and also would allow the culture to have some of their own traditions in their church.

CONCLUSION

The authors of this report but a lot of information for current and new missionaries but what one can take out this information is that all culture are different and when missionaries go out and encounter they need to be sure that they hold true to what the bible says but also have respect for the culture so they can also honor the culture they are meeting.