Sherwood G. Lingenfelter - Transforming Culture: A Challenge for Christian Mission

1998 by Sherwood Lingenfelter

Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2012

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eISBN 978-1-4412-0586-5

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

To

Dr. Judith E. Lingenfelter,
who for thirty-six years has been my partner in ministry,
my confidante and friend,
my colleague and professional adviser,
the mother of my children,
and my courageous, patient, enduring, and beloved wife.

For because of our faith, he has brought us into this place of highest privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to actually becoming all that God has had in mind for us to be. (Romans 5:12 LB )

Contents

Preface

T he second edition of this book has been substantially revised. The first chapter reflects my growing understanding of the nature of culture as both our palace and prison. The second chapter is new and, I hope, much more accessible to the general reader than was its predecessor in the first edition. The middle chapters contain many of the same case studies of conflict, but much of the ethnographic description, which was burdensome to some readers, has been removed. I have omitted the final three chapters of the earlier edition and have written a new concluding chapter that focuses on the biblical challenge of being disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, living as servants, shepherds, pilgrims, and strangers in a world of diverse and complex cultures.

The case studies presented in this volume are the result of field research that I have done in various settings around the world. I am deeply indebted to Louis and Lisa Shanks, Bob Mantel, and Jay and Beth Grant for their assistance and hospitality during the summer of 1986 as I visited and studied with them in African-American villages in the interior of Surinam. I am indebted to Gordon and Lois Koop, who were my hosts and coworkers for more than three months in 1977 in Brazil and without whose assistance I could not have written the material in this volume on the Deni Indians. The people of the Yap islands in the Federated States of Micronesia have allowed me to study their culture and to live among them for a period of nearly three years since 1967. I am especially indebted to Fran Defngin, Gabriel Ayin, Cyprian Mugunbey, and an elderly couple, Fithin-grow and Marungweg, for their help on Yap culture. Many other Yapese men and women, from whom I have learned much, are too numerous to name here. I am also grateful to many pastor friends in southern California and my colleagues at Biola University, who have helped me to understand the people and culture of middle-class Americans as they relate to other minority groups in the southern California region.

I am especially indebted to people at Biola University for their support in preparing the manuscript. Wendy Walker and Peg Fosmark have typed drafts of the manuscript and contributed to all of the major revisions, including the preparation of the final manuscript for the publisher. I am especially grateful to Clyde Cook, the president of Biola University, who views scholarship as an important part of my work and has freed me to spend time in the summers on the mission field and to continue my scholarship as part of my administrative work as provost.

As is the case in the production of any book, I am deeply indebted to readers who have given me critical feedback. I am particularly grateful to students in my classes who have given me feedback from the first edition, colleagues Ed Harris and Steve Barber, and missionary friends from the Summer Institute of Linguistics in East Africa who have read some of the revised chapters and given helpful suggestions. I hope they find this edition a useful tool for training others.

Transferring or Transforming Culture?

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of Gods mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to Godthis is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what Gods will ishis good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom. 12:12)

A few years ago some missionary colleagues and I attended a Sunday morning worship service in a large evangelical church in Cameroons capital city of Yaounde. The African pastors led us in a familiar service, selecting songs from a standard evangelical hymnbook and preaching an inspiring, doctrinally sound message, given in English and translated into French. We missionaries, a few white faces in a sea of black believers, enjoyed the service thoroughly. As I walked away praising God, it suddenly occurred to me that this service was almost identical to those I had experienced in North America. Momentarily stunned, I wondered why I should feel as comfortable in Africa as if I were at home.

A week passed. I traveled to the interior in the northwest province of Cameroon, where I attended another worship service. There, the congregation sang unfamiliar music, the musicians played instruments dissonant and grating to my ears, and, while the pastor read from the King James Bible, he preached in a language foreign to me. Remembering my experience in Yaounde, I thanked God for the unique expression of worship in this African church. As I observed more carefully, however, I discovered many familiar things. These people had constructed a church building with gabled roof and steeple, arranged their benches in rows, and copied the platform and pulpit of a New England church. The men sat on one side and the women on the other, as was common in the home churches of early missionary pioneers. In the order of service only the language and the music were unfamiliar. As I reflected further on this African congregation, I discovered a structure nearly identical to that of the Baptist conferences with which I am familiar in the United States.

Why is it that in the process of establishing churches in non-Western nations we transfer our culture of the church? Can we find a biblical basis for this practice? Are missionaries planting biblically founded indigenous churches, or are they transferring their culture of Christianity to every nation of the world?

In Europe, Latin America, and Asia, I have found in every area a similar pattern of church planting. In North Borneo, the Anglican, evangelical, and Roman Catholic churches are all modeled on patterns brought by missionaries from various denominational and cultural backgrounds. It is difficult to find in the two-thirds world a truly indigenous church. Most churches reflect more the culture of the missionaries who planted them than they do the culture of the new believers.