Great Commission Contextualization by David J. Hesselgrave

Contextualization must be done in light of the overall purposes of God and His redemptive plan for the world. Failure to contextualize without the “big picture” fragments the understanding of
Scripture and significantly hinders the Church from fulfilling its mission.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FRONTIER MISSIONS, VOL 12:3 JUL.-SEP. 1995by David J. Hesselgrave

The “rule makers” say that one should never begin an address...or a letter with an apology. However,I have not heard of a rule that dictates that one should not begin with a confession. To the contrary, an old adage has it that confession is good for the soul and it
says nothing about whether one begins or ends with it. So at the very outset. I confess that for all my missiological life and most of my missiological tenure I erred rather grievously. My sin was more one of omission than commission but nevertheless it was a costly mistake. I was nurtured and subsequently ministered on a “simple gospel” basis: the idea that we are to encapsulate the Gospel
into two or three (or four or six things) that “God wants people to know,” and that if a person assents to those and accepts Christ, subsequently he/she will be saved; and that leaders are free to nurture converts in any way that suits personal preferences and preunderstandings. Now I still believe that there is something to be said for that approach. In one sense the Gospel is “simple.” Aided by the Spirit of God, anyone can understand it. One need not be a theological expert in order to be truly saved. But the larger truth is that the Gospel is inclusive of the whole of biblical revelation from Genesis to Revelation. Even the bad news is part of it in the sense that the Good News is hardly recognizable as good apart from it. Moreover, we are called upon to disciple the nations by teaching
them to observe all that Christ has commanded. There is an inclusivity—a wholeness—in the Great Commission whether one interprets the object of “teach” to be “observing/obeying” or “all things Christ commanded.” If we take our Lord seriously our task is indeed
an encompassing and exacting one much more than many of us have thought it to be. At various times both missionaries and national leaders employed a variety of “discipling approaches” but few seemed satisfied with any of them. One approach after another was discarded until most fell into some more orless comfortable pattern and settled for that. Over the years I have come to believe that an omniscient God has already provided the key to both world evangelization and effective contextualization. In effect, and with your indulgence, I therefore propose to outline the progress of my thinking over a generation and illustrate the contextualization process as I now understand it 

Definitions and PreunderstandingsIt will not be necessary for me to
elaborate my commitment to propositions having to do with the verbal plenary inspiration and the perspicity of Holy Scripture, the necessity of Gospel proclamation, the convicting and illuminating ministries of the Holy Spirit and the priesthood of all believers. However, there are certain terms and assumptions that require special attention. First, I use “biblical theo1ogy” in the more technical sense to refer, not just to theology that is biblical, but to theology that is the “....confessional recital of the acts of God in history;
together with what must be inferred from those acts” (Wright 1991:101). Both the biblical record of those acts and, therefore, biblical theology are characterized by unity of plan and purpose, chronological development, a largely, but not exclusively narrative form, objectivity, and normativity. With B. B. Warfield, I believe biblical theology to be basic to the entire range of theologizing as classically conceived, whether exegetical, expositional, systematic or practical
(Davis 1978:144-45).
Second, as intimated above, many and often elaborate definitions have been conferred on the neologism “contextualization.” I define it here in terms of “cultural meaningfulness.” Since my interest is in contextualization with a view to fulfilling the Great Commission, I
will use the term to refer to the process of communicating the biblical Gospel in such a way as to make it meaningful to the people of any given cultural context. This stipulated definition is simple but important. Contextualization has been defined so as to include
socio-political involvement, incarnational lifestyle, application as over against exposition of the biblical text, and so on.
Third, Scripture itself as the Word of God written constitutes the most authentic and effective instrument ofcontextualization. This is so because its divine Author has so ordered history and so inspired certain human authors that the cu1tural settings, languages, literary genres, events and actors of the Bible—as well as the meaning of the text itself—bear the stamp of what I will call “transculturality.” Contributors: “Way-Show-ers”From my earliest days at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I enjoyed the good company of the Old Testament scholar, Walter C. Kaiser. Only later on did I begin to understand the relationship that existed between approach to biblical theology and his mis