Message from the Executive Director

by Richard Haney

How do we talk about the journey by which Christianity gets introduced, translated and assimilated into a new culture?

The Christian Church was born in the 1st century CE among Jews in Jerusalem and moved in fairly short order into Gentile communities throughout the Roman Empire. In the two millenniums since, the Gospel has been expressed and practiced in an ever-growing number of peoples and places.

Yet this didn’t happen without struggles and even crises along the way. In Acts 15, we read of the Jerusalem Council pondering the challenge of cultural outsiders becoming followers of Jesus and therefore members of the Body of Christ. Considered retrospectively, the council’s decision in favor of Gentile inclusion opened the door for Paul’s ministry and many subsequent translations of the Gospel into other cultural settings.

We can think of the Gospel as a singular story or melody with many variations. No one expression or single culture’s apprehension of the Christian faith may be considered normative. Yet the many expressions, or translations, of this message and worldview share common elements.

Mission scholars and practitioners usually describe this process as inculturation or contextualization. Missiological anthropologist Aylward Shorter defines inculturation as “the ongoing dialogue” and “creative and dynamic relationship between the Christian message and a culture.”

Historian Andrew Walls writes, “[S]ubsequent centuries of Christian history bear witness to an ongoing series of translations of the good news of Jesus Christ into a variety of cultural settings: Hellenistic, Roman, and European. Today those translations are reaching into the cultures of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” Like Walls, I prefer the term “translation” to picture the Word of Christ “applied to the distinctives of a culture, and thus to its commanding heights.”

Frontier Fellowship partners with Light of Hope Ministry Ethiopia (LOHME), one of the primary mission agents translating the Gospel into the language and cultural forms of the Arsi Oromo people. Our associate director, Taliilee Fiqruu (formerly Badecha), jointly serving with LOHME and Frontier Fellowship, is pioneering an effort to create worship songs and liturgies while revitalizing a significant Arsi Oromo custom. Her wisdom and musical talent uniquely suit her for this contextual theologizing. You’ll read more of the story in this issue’s feature article.

We’re learning from our LOHME friends and others around the world what it looks like to incarnate the Good News in culturally meaningful ways. It’s a privilege to envision God’s coming Kingdom through their eyes.