Category: culture

Part one

Part two

Part three

Final Thoughts

If we are going to read the vast amount of material around this debate (some initial suggestions below), could I make a small plea for love and patience?  I find myself all too easily irritated by some who talk as if everybody in the ‘Western’ church is mesmerised by rampant individualism or when people dismiss the 19th century missionaries as colonial cronies who were mindlessly imposing Western culture as if it were essential to the gospel.  Conversely, I get irritated by those who assume that their own cultural expression of the church is ‘clearly’ the one that everybody should convert to as soon as they turn to Jesus.  I mention these things because there is no point in any of us getting lost in these side-issues of style [as I too often have done] but rather it is vital for us to get to the real substantive issues of how the global church family of the LORD Jesus Christ can enjoy fellowship together in His Name, supporting one another in genuine love and generosity.  How can we bring our Muslim friends to the liberating power and family of the LORD Jesus in the local church?

Another little plea... Throughout this debate there are many attempts to cite the examples of Jesus and the apostles with respect to the temple/synagogue in the New Testament.  We can’t really go into all of these references in this article, but it might be worth exercising care, caution and consideration about these references.  In these debates diametrically opposed conclusions are drawn from the exact same incidents!  Perhaps it is worth remembering that the temple was not a ‘pagan religion’ but the God-given but temporary centre of the Church community for 1500 years.  It was the centre of the system of law that was designed to prepare the church for the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of the LORD Jesus Christ, prophesied by the Law and the Prophets.  In a connected way, the local synagogues were centres for studying and living out the Law and the Prophets, not only in Israel but across the surrounding nations.  Yes, as we go on through the book of Acts and then on into the 1st and 2nd century developments we see that division opening up between ‘church and ‘synagogue’ as many Jewish people rejected the Jewish Messiah and began to formulate a new religious identity in distinction from Him.

We should be careful about drawing too simplistic or hasty parallels between a 1st century synagogue and a 21st century mosque or temple.  There are surely lessons to learn, but not all connections and parallels are legitimate, in my own opinion.

Further Reading:

John Travis on the C-scale and the C5 model.

John & Anna Travis on the assumptions behind the C-scale

Rebecca Lewis explaining some of the Biblical ideas behind the Insider Movement

Interesting article even if some of the earlier parts are dealing with other cultural issues in America -

Bill Nikides paper is stimulating -   Bill argues that the whole Insider Movement is not a work of the Spirit but a product of missiological theories developed in Western mission agencies.

Part one

Part two

We've examined the C-Scale as proposed by John Travis.  Let's now think through C2-C5 on the scale.

It is quite likely that many of us are aiming for a church community in our own situations that is around the C3-C4 style, but what about the C5 category?  That is where this debate becomes more heated.  The Insider Movement is the general heading to describe all that is going on under [mostly] the C5 heading: people remain “inside” their existing religious community but believe in Jesus.

Rebecca Lewis provides the following definition of the Insider Movement - “An ‘insider movement’ is any movement to faith in Christ where (a) the gospel flows through pre-existing communities and social networks, and where (b) believing families, as valid expressions of the Body of Christ, remain inside their socio-religious communities, retaining their identity as members of that community while living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible.”

The issues orbit around the extent to which a person can be described as “living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible” if they remain as a Muslim with the mosque as the centre of their community life, accepting the Quran as having religious authority and Muhammad as a prophet.  Can this be acceptable as a temporary stage on the way to the formation of a more Biblical church community or could a person or a group of people remain in a C5 situation as a valid expression of the church?  Is C5 nothing more than a stage of enquiry about the LORD Jesus Christ or could it be genuinely described as “a Jesus-centred community”?

John Travis, in the original article, acknowledged that the C5 position may only ever be a transitional form, but since then there are plenty who argue that it is a valid form of church and that it is a way that Islam itself could be ‘reformed’ from within!  Yes, it is a very large vision... but is it built on an unstable foundation?

To cut to the chase: could we see the Quran as a perhaps partially revealed word from God or that Muhammad is in some sense a prophet sent from God?  Is it possible to hold to the gospel without holding to the deity of Jesus?  These are fairly ideas that are heard within the Insider Movement which create genuine concern for the wider church.

For this reason not everyone is happy about the C5 situation and on BiblicalMissiology.com Georges Houssney has provided a lengthy analysis of some of the problems -  Note especially the long and fascinating discussion forum at the conclusion of his paper.

The Biblical Missiology website has many resources and discussions that point out problems and criticisms with the Insider Movement approach to mission.

“The writings and practices of Insiders demonstrate a number of presuppositions that they seem to agree on. Generally, Insiders tend to have a positive view of Islam, Muhammad and the Qur’an. Many believe that Muhammad is some sort of prophet from God, that the Qur’an is at least a partially inspired word from God that points to Jesus, and that Islamic culture is not contradictory to the biblical message. Therefore, they do not invite Muslims out of Islam (they would call this “extraction”). Rather, they ask Muslims to follow Jesus while remaining Muslim and participating in Islamic religious practices such as prayer in mosques, reading the Qur’an, and fasting during the month of Ramadan.” [Georges Houssney].

Bill Nikides argues that the problems come from Western mission agencies trying to make C5 seem to be a legitimate expression of church when it simply is not.  We can all understand and work for C3 and C4 style churches that are culturally connected to the local culture and work carefully not to confuse the truth of Christ with specific cultural forms, BUT in a desire to deal with the perceived cultural difficulties that Islam has with ‘Christianity’ the attempt to see C5 as a valid form of church is unsustainable.  “The rationale for adopting C5 (cultural barriers) would also suggest C3- C4, a move that removes the threat of a slide into syncretism. Insisting on C5 when C3- C4 are plausible alternatives indicates theological deficiency. Whatever C3-C4 possibly surrender in terms of community acceptance is more than made up for by greater biblical and theological soundness.”

Perhaps the most positive conclusion Bill provides is to see C5 as a movement of Muslims who are beginning to seek for and develop a real hunger for the Living LORD Jesus - “Messianic Islam might in fact best be seen as a seeker movement. Classified as such, we can see C5 communities as an excellent springboard for biblical C3-C4 movements.”

Rev. Bassam M. Madany rejoices in the incredible awakening to Jesus that is happening across North Africa, but is very concerned about the whole concept of the ‘Insider Movement’ as it is promoted by Western mission agencies.   [NOTE: this website has many articles from the Arabic Christians who are committed to witnessing in dangerous situations using far more traditional models of outreach and church planting.]

For what it is worth, my own view is closer to Bill Nikides, but whatever view we take of this, it is vital that we think about how we can genuinely support the local churches around the Islamic world.  Mission is not an academic subject but the simple fact of the life of the local church.  When we try to disconnect mission from the local church then we do tend to fall into serious problems.

In the final post we will consider some final thoughts and further reading...

The Insider Movement 4 – Paul Blackham

This article by Paul Blackham is continued from here.

Before we examine various approaches to church and culture, let's acknowledge a key fact: becoming a follower of Jesus is a deeply social matter.  The LORD Jesus does not save mere individuals but saves His Church.  Too often we might talk about someone making various decisions in their heart/head about Jesus, but we might forget that in the Bible the key issue is about their membership of the community of the LORD Jesus Christ, becoming members of His Body.  The forms that His Body might take in all the different contexts and cultures of the world is gloriously and marvellously diverse, so a person must never feel that they are an isolated soul.  The formation of local church communities is how evangelism happens.

One further introductory point.  Advocates of the “Insider Movement” are aware that this is not always the most helpful label as it tends to give the impression of something only for those “in the know” or something not entirely ‘above board’.  Therefore, there has been an effort to change the vocabulary to emphasise that it is all about the LORD Jesus Christ.  There has been an attempt to focus on the goal of making disciples of Jesus as the primary goal.  This is somewhat helpful, but again it is not always clear how it fits with the Biblical vision of the local church.

Let’s begin with John Travis’ seminal article as he argued for a way of understanding how Muslims were believing in Jesus but remaining as Muslims.  He provided a scale that helps to analyse different ways in which a person might join the church as they turn to Jesus.  The scale runs from C1 to C6, where C1 is a ‘Western’ style church with ‘Western’ languages and C6 describes mostly isolated people who are secretly trying to trust/follow Jesus whilst remaining entirely within their religion/culture.

The whole original article by John Travis is essential reading if we are going to really understand what this is all about.

As we go through this list, it might be helpful to think about it in terms of the church plants and emerging church situations that you might have personal experience of.  Many of the same issues that face a Jesus community in Tehran will also be relevant in Manchester.  Each of these C-ratings describes a church situation that has different levels of integration into a local culture.

C1 - A Christian church that is like an island in the local culture, where worship is in a language foreign to the local population, where the music, songs and styles within the church reflect the culture of another nation.  So we might imagine an English speaking parish church in an Arabic city, where English is spoken and English hymns, clothes and cultural styles are adopted.  I seem to remember Michael Palin coming across a church like that in his Sahara adventures.

C2 - The same as C1 but the local Church uses the language of the local population.

C3 - A Christian Church that uses the local language and culture, but is careful to reject the aspects of local culture that might have religious associations.  So, dress, music and traditions from the local church are all embraced, but if any of those things are tied into the local religions [whether Islam, Hinduism etc] then they are excluded.  In terms of Islam, a conscious attempt is made not to keep Ramadan and food rules.  In addition, the mosque is rejected as the communal centre in favour of the Church community.  In a C3 context the followers will normally call themselves ‘Christian’, but they do not necessarily meet in a distinctively ‘Christian’ building.

C4 - The church will retain those aspects of the religious tradition that fit in with or are permitted by the Bible, but these religious traditions and forms are now understood in terms of the LORD Jesus Christ and His Way.  So, for example, a Muslim background believer might be most comfortable with prostrating in prayer or using a prayer mat: that same style of praying is retained in the church, but now the prayer is to the Father through Jesus in the power of the Spirit.  The religious forms might remain, but the people no longer see themselves as “Muslim” or “Buddhist” etc.  In addition, the church might keep the food laws [rejecting pork and alcohol] and use Islamic words/phrases.  Often the people in this kind of local church might not call themselves ‘Christians’ due to the political and historical associations with this specific term and might instead use terms like “followers of Jesus”.  However, the Muslim community would recognise that this church is not a Muslim community.

[NOTE: in point of fact, some of the “religious traditions” may be more in harmony with the Bible than the supposedly ‘Christian’ forms: think of how little attention is given to body posture in some forms of Christianity, but how often it is noted in the Bible.  Speaking personally, my wife and I have been involved in planning a church plant that quite deliberately makes provision for Muslims and Muslim background believers to use prayer mats].

C5 - It is harder to think in terms of a local church community when we get to C5 because the Muslims in this category are described as following Jesus whilst remaining within the Muslim communities.  They would reject the title ‘Christian’, not only for the reasons in C4 but also because “becoming a Christian” might be seen as treason against their local religious community.  In an Islamic context, these people would continue to be legally/socially/politically within the Muslim community - [NOTE: given the intense legal/political difficulties that many Muslims have in terms of changing their religious designation, there are many obvious pressures to explain this].  Yes, those aspects of Islam that are understood to be clearly against the Bible might be rejected, but in practice this is not always the case.  They are involved in life at the mosque, continuing to pray traditional Islamic prayers and keeping the fast, along with all the other aspects of mosque life that their neighbours follow.  As other Muslims become aware that they are committed to the LORD Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, so they might be seen as no longer “true Muslims” and can then be rejected by the local Muslim community.  It is claimed that there have been examples when so many local Muslims are C5 believers in Jesus that a kind of C5 mosque is established.

C6 - This describes the situation of believers who are isolated by such extreme hostility and persecution that they remain as secret believers within their local community.  They may even have no fellowship with any other believers in Jesus, so know nothing of membership of a church family, but more often they may have limited fellowship with small groups of other secret believers.

Now, of course, there may be all kinds of initial comments to make about this analysis, not least that it doesn’t really address how Christ transforms a local culture and it is not at all clear how C5 relates to the church [understood as the fellowship of the followers of Jesus, with leaders appointed to teach the Bible and disciple the church family].   It provides only a snap-shot at a moment in time of the work of the Spirit in a given situation.  Probably all of us can see how C1 and C6 can only be stages that must develop into something more if the Church is to find a vital, Biblical expression.  Many of us pray that in 100 years time we will find culturally vibrant churches all across the Islamic world where the Way of Jesus has found expression perhaps in forms and styles that perhaps we can’t quite imagine today - in a C3-C4 range.  The churches of the LORD Jesus, all across the world, do tend to produce new and exciting cultural forms over time: think of the variety of styles of music, dress and architecture that have emerged over time in the different cultures of the world.

Surely, from a Biblical perspective, we want to be thinking more deeply about Christ transforming all cultures rather than conformity to any culture.

Speaking personally as a British person with more than a passing interest in the ancient druidic religion of northern Europe, I am very aware that Mediterranean and Asian cultural forms of worship were imposed on my ancestors together with a North African form of the doctrine of the Trinity, articulated by the Egyptian Athanasius.  Even after more than a thousand years, we are still processing and dealing with those cultural issues: how can we retain the Biblical truth in Jesus whilst transforming, rejecting or re-affirming the cultural forms and styles that have had such a massive impact on Europe.  Yet, whatever cultural issues we European barbarians have had to deal with we always think back with deep gratitude to those Mediterranean and Asian missionaries who planted local churches among us so long ago.

However, the C-scale does provide a way of thinking about this moment in the way that people are turning to Jesus in especially Muslim majority nations.  The C-scale helps us to think through what is happening in terms of religion/culture in a situation.

In the next post we'll think further about the C-scale and in particular C-5/6 - "the Insider Movement"...

The Insider Movement 3 – Paul Blackham

The Insider Movement 4 – Paul Blackham

In the recent discussion about Bible translation (here, here and here), several people have contacted me with questions and thoughts that are strictly not about the translation issue but about another issue that is often referred to as the “Insider Movement”.  It is important to divide this away from the translation questions because there is no necessary connection between the two - see “Clarifying some misconceptions”.

Any of us involved in evangelism and church planting will be aware of the range of issues that confront us when a person begins to follow Jesus.  How much of their existing life and culture needs to be immediately changed?  Do they need to dress differently, speak differently, socialise differently?  Some British and American Christians of earlier generations tended to insist on a much more holistic change when a person began to follow Jesus, encouraging a total rejection of all kinds of ‘worldly’ culture and friendships, but now we tend to encourage new believers to retain much of their existing lifestyle and social circle.

These issues did not seem so pressing in previous generations of the European and American cultures because the boundaries between ‘church’ and ‘world’ might have seemed more easily understood.  However, nowadays we find that we are having to go back to basics and think about British culture as an example of front-line cross-cultural mission whereby becoming a Christian has complex cultural implications.

These issues of cultural and religious boundaries have been much more obvious in ‘foreign missionary’ situations for decades.  How does a person move from being a Hindu, with all the dress, food, family traditions and cultural markers that go with that, to being a member of a Church community as a follower of Jesus?  What needs to change and what is retained?  What is transformed by the LORD Jesus and what simply needs to be rejected?

For many years we have become familiar with the idea of “contextualisation” whereby the teaching of the Bible is expressed in forms that are meaningful and relevant to a target group.  This does not mean that the teaching needs to be made any easier to deal with or more acceptable, but that the true meaning of the Bible’s teaching is made clear by speaking it in a specific local context.  So, Tim Keller spends so much time making sure that the secular, metropolitan New Yorkers feel and understand the hard-hitting nature of the Way of the LORD Jesus.  He contextualises the gospel in that he tries to make sure it is clearly heard, but he does not try to make it more acceptable by compromising the message.  In that same way, we are all aware how, when we speak to our Muslim friends, we try to make sure to clearly explain how Jesus was not conceived through sexual union between the Father and Mary; how the Trinity is one God; how following Jesus is a holistic life of discipleship; how Abraham and the ancient prophets were all trusting in the Promised Messiah; how the Cross is the centre of our salvation etc etc.  Our goal is not to make these truths ‘acceptable’ or ‘credible’ to our Muslim friends but to make sure that we have clearly, lovingly and faithfully explained the truth in Jesus.

Throughout the Islamic world there are local churches teaching the Bible and bearing witness to the One God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; explaining the Trinity, the Cross and the Way of Jesus.  At the moment the Holy Spirit is doing an amazing work as the local churches in these places are being heard as never before.  In one sense all the Western missiological agencies and theorists are mere spectators as the Holy Spirit works through His living church on the ground across the world.  If we are able to supply any needs that the local churches ask for then it is a great privilege for us, but we all, whether we see ourselves as specialists or not, need to remember that the churches throughout the Islamic world have centuries of experience and wisdom.  Our brothers and sisters in these local churches know better than any of us what the key issues are and how to set these in the proper context.

However, what if the principles of contextualisation are extended further and further until the issues of faith, worship and discipleship are happening within the Muslim community?  Could these realities be so grasped by a Muslim that they could remain inside the Islamic community and also be faithful to the truth in Jesus?  Is it possible to be a member of a local church whilst remaining a Muslim inside the Muslim community?  Or is it even necessary to be part of anything other than the Muslim community?  Is it even necessary to hold onto the whole idea of a distinctive, visible community of Christ’s followers, with appointed leaders meeting for Bible teaching and the Lord’s Supper?

These are the sorts of questions the "Insider Movement" seeks to raise and address.

The Insider Movement 2 – Paul Blackham

The Insider Movement 3 – Paul Blackham

The Insider Movement 4 – Paul Blackham