Contextualization!?!

"Con-text-tu-al-iz-ation, I learned a new word for something I was already trying to do," said a man from on of the native people groups of Siberia. The word was difficult to say, but the idea was so freeing for the people that came to the conference. As you all know we are serving here in Russia because we have a heart to see all peoples know and love and praise the one, wonderful and amazing God. We have a special place in our heart for the Buryat people on whose land we live now. Living in Buryatia we see an amazing mix of the Buryat culture and the Russian culture as well as other groups of people that are represented here. We believe that God is praised best when He is praised in the unique way that people from each culture can do that. The worship of God comes from the context in which that worship comes from. In other words, Americans worship God in the unique way Americans do, Russians in the unique way Russians do and Buryats in the unique way Buryats do. The problem is that as we share the love of God we sometimes bring our cultural baggage with us and make people think that they need to act just like us and use the forms we use to love God instead of just sharing the principles of loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and letting that be expressed within the local context. Unfortunately all to often because of this, peoples like the Buryats are afraid that they have to give up all their culture, and in that all their identity, and become like Europeans to be in the church. This week our conference brought up questions about how we can help the different peoples of Siberia understand how to take what God has given them in their culture (in their context), to worship the God that made and loves them, and to think through ways of better passing on the good news that God loves all people in a way that makes sense to each person that hears this good news. It was great to think through these issues with different people from all of Russia. I was particularly blessed to have the pastor of the church I work with at the conference, and have some opportunity to talk and think through this issue with him as we look at making our church a church that blesses the Buryat people. We really feel like there will be a greater unity as people understand who they are and come together in love with their differences.


One great part of the conference is that we put on a festival of ethnic Christian music. There were people for many different regions of Russia that shared their own ethnic music in praise to God. It was a wonderful celebration and so beautiful to see and hear some of the different ways people are praising God here in Siberia.


One highlight was to see these two men who are brothers from the Altai region of Russia. Both brothers have been blessed with songs of their own for praising God, and one is even using throat singing. This is something that Jami and I have dreamed about, especially because of her heart for the Tuvan people (famous for throat singing), among whom she lived for a year, but had not heard yet.