Brendan McDonald - Student ID: 201619862

Essay
DM9020S – Reading the Age: Guidelines for Modern Missionaries and Church Planters

A question from Indonesia’s General Simatoupong during a plenary session at the 1973 Bangkok
meeting of the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism seems to have been a
profound moment that coalesced in the challenge that Newbigin felt was before him and us, “Can
the West be converted?’ From this course readings, discussions and intensive presentations
discuss what this means in your context.

Introduction

Can the West be converted? This is a profound question and indeed a challenge for us just as

much as it was for Lesslie Newbigin forty-six years ago. One would think that such a question

would have been presented to an auspicious audience of intellectuals and theologians from a

prominent platform, but that was not the case. It was an off the cuff, under the breath

statement that General Simatoupong made after an intervention during the plenary debate in

Bangkok (Newbigin 1987, 2). It just so happened that Newbigin overheard it and set his mind

to ponder the complexity of it.

Over time Newbigin began to stretch the idea and open it up stating, “Surely there can be no

more crucial question for the world mission of the church than the one I have posed. Can

there be an effective missionary encounter with this culture” (Newbigin 1987, 2). In doing so

he identified that the church’s ecclesiology, it’s mission, it’s view of the world and the meaning

of ‘encounter’, would all have to be scrutinised afresh if the answer to the said question would

be a ‘yes’. In this essay it is my intention to investigate the elements of the question and

engage with the thoughts that Newbigin raised. What does conversion mean now? What are

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the overarching values of that inform our Western culture? What does a missionary encounter

with Western culture look like? Does the church have a coherent missional ecclesiology for

this current age? Toward the end of the paper I will begin to apply some conclusions to my

own context and consider future pathways for my own ministry.

What does conversion mean now?

How are we expecting individuals and communities in Western society to respond to the idea

of conversion to Christianity? I am not even sure that Christians themselves even understand

what that means. During the 2011 census in Australia, 61.1% of Australians identified

themselves as Christian, yet only 15% of the population attends church at least once per

month (McCrindle). Clearly this is an indication that for many Christians, personal conviction

and commitment to a community of believers is not essential. In the context of my own church

community I know many people who do not attend church on Sunday morning but do

maintain some relationship with people who do. Sometimes they attend, but rarely. I would

say that they are on the fringe of our community. Many of them do have deeply held

convictions and perceptions of ‘truth’ in terms of what they believe about Jesus Christ, yet that

simply does not translate into full participation with our Christian community. It raises

questions for me about how belief translates in to behaviour and how that might relate to a

theology of conversion.

Many of these folks have had a conversion experience such as responding to an alter call and

others have an inherited faith through their parents, but they do not see commitment to a

Christian community as important or even a hallmark of their conversion experience.

Essentially there is no koinonia with many of these people because we don’t really know them

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that well. Bosch argues that “Conversion does not pertain merely to an individuals act of

conviction and commitment; it moves the individual believer into the community of believers

and involves a real – even a radical – change in the life of the believer” (Bosch 1991, 119). In

that sense Bosch might argue that some of the people we see at church intermittently have not

been fully converted. Conversion is more than simply what you believe. It is how those beliefs

shape the way you live in relation to other believers and the world. This pertains to

allegiances and values that inform our actions.

This emphasis on strong authentic relationships and unity amongst believers was also central

to Newbigin’s theology of conversion. He encountered a situation in the urban centres of

India where many thousands of people believed that Jesus was the only God, yet they had no

visible affiliation with the church. This circumstance was the catalyst for a discussion similar

to the one we face in our Western context. One of the justifications proposed by M.M Thomas

who was debating Newbigin was that it is possible to have “a ‘Christ centered secular

fellowship’ of people involved in ‘the struggles of societies for a secular human fellowship’…

‘open to transcendent forgiveness’” (Hunsberger 1998, 114). Newbigin’s response was to

refute this notion stating, “Christ-centeredness in the sense of acknowledgement of the

centrality of the person of Jesus Christ is the essence of faith” (Hunsberger 1998, 115). I have

talked to many Christians in my own town who express a form of Christianity in which Jesus

Christ seems to be relegated to the periphery as the God’s of other faiths and secularism

become equally central to their world-view. It is one thing to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord

and it is another thing to actually follow the Lord in action and behaviour. Is proclamation

without demonstration congruent with genuine conversion? In Newbigin’s assessment this is

a sign of what he calls a ‘minimal deposit of faith’. Hunsberger articulates further on

Newbigin’s theology of conversion stating:

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 “An ‘acceptance of Jesus Christ, as we know him through the Bible, as the absolute
Lord of all things’ must be part of the minimal deposit of the Christian faith. This
leads to Newbigin's dominant concern throughout the debate with Thomas: the
church is and must be a visible and recognizable fellowship. ‘The acceptance of
Jesus Christ as central and decisive creates some kind of solidarity among those
who have this acceptance in common.’ There is no determinative and universal
answer-beyond ‘meeting together to celebrate with words, songs and formal
actions’- to the question how far that must extend” (Hunsberger 1998, 115).

Conversion is inextricably linked with salvation. It is in the reception into the body of Christ

through baptism and the living out of our baptismal promises that we are saved. It is through

the acknowledgement of that ‘Christ centeredness’ and our own need for forgiveness. In that

sense it is an individual endeavor but “In a world in which people are dependent on each

other and every individual exists within a web of inter-human relationships, it is totally

untenable to limit salvation to the individual and his or her personal relationship with God”

(Bosch 1991, 406). In support of this argument I contend that salvation and conversion

require participation in the life of the body of Christ, it’s mission and ministry. This is what we

should be looking for from our ekklesia and this is the appropriate response from Christian

disciples.

What are the overarching values of that inform our Western culture?

For many Christians in the West this call to deeper commitment is competing with an

individualistic, consumer driven culture whose quest for happiness, entertainment and

freedom is almost inescapable. What we are asking people in our Western culture to do when

they convert to Christianity is to appropriate a different worldview. According to Kraft “when

people become Christians, they make certain changes in their deep level worldview

assumptions, values and allegiances” (Kraft 1996, 11). The Western worldview holds it’s own

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presuppositions and values that inform how our culture is structured and how people

perceive reality to be. If the West is to be converted then the church needs to learn how to

engage the world’s culture with the gospel worldview, a real alternative to what people are

inculcated with from birth, what they naturally know and experience.

One of the hallmark values of Western culture is radical individualism. According to Grenz,

this has come about due to the rise of the post-enlightenment modern world where “the

modern world is an individualistic world, a realm of the autonomous human person endowed

with inherent rights.” (Grenz 1996, 167). This rise of the individual places personal happiness

and freedom at the forefront of many people’s thinking. We see it expressed in marketing and

advertising, also the ways in which companies are doing all things to meet needs and desires

of individual people. Even the fast food chain McDonald’s now caters for the consumer who

wants to ‘create their own taste’ by making their own burger. Companies now have to be agile

enough to make quick changes to their products in order to compete and meet the demands of

the individual consumer. The West is market driven by capitalist economics. This has given

rise to abject consumerism, which drives economic rationalism and competition. Freedom,

happiness, wealth and wellbeing, all of these cultural values mark us as Westerners.

Kraft notes that, “it is a person or groups worldview that is at stake whenever an appeal for

conversion (whether to Christianity or any other ideology) is made.” (Kraft 1996, 11). If we

are going to present Western culture and the communities we are a part of with the gospel

then we will need to be sure of what it is, gospel assumptions, gospel values and gospel

allegiances. The culture of the kingdom of God will need to become the dominant worldview

of the church and of those individuals who are members in the body of Christ. The rediscovery

of what it means to be ‘In Christ’ as a member of his ekklesia is to rediscover what it means to

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be disciples in our age. Van Gelder and Zscheile put it this way, “Christian identity must be

cultivated intentionally, patiently and comprehensively by congregations and other Christian

communities. Practices of discipleship are primarily a communal reality” (Van Gelder and

Zscheile 2011, 148). Clearly the worldview of the kingdom is communal, not individual;

therefore Newbigin’s understanding of “the congregation as a hermeneutic of the gospel”

(Newbigin 1989, 222-233) is just as, if not more critical now than ever before.

To ask Westerners to convert is to ask them to allow the values of the Kingdom to take

precedence over the values of the West. Acceptance of the centrality of Christ requires a

fundamental change in worldview. In doing this, missional congregations need to undermine

the ‘Plausibility Structures’, ‘sacred canopies’ and ‘maps for reality and maps for living’

(Simpkins 2015) by which people perceive their reality. Through this approach effective

missionary encounters with Westerners will take place.

What does a missionary encounter with Western culture look like?

If the West is to be converted then the church must face the challenge and tension of

presenting it’s own competing plausibility structures as Newbigin articulates, “The Church,

therefore, as bearer of the gospel, inhabits a plausibility structure which is at variance with,

and which calls in question those that govern all human cultures without exception.”

(Newbigin 1989, 9). As we apply a kingdom worldview to the assumptions, values and

allegiances of Western culture we are engaging in God’s mission, following Jesus and

proclaiming that, “The Kingdom of heaven has come near” (Mt 10:7). Theoretically that sound

great but in practical terms what does a missionary encounter look like?

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In order to converse with the West the church needs to understand that the culture of the

West has changed. In his book Post-Christendom, Stuart Murray explains that the church and

state partnership has dissolved, yet, the ‘Christendom mindset’ of many in the church

remains.

Christendom lasted a long time. For centuries it’s assumptions, spirit, values,
priorities and expectations permeated church and society, shaping the institutions
and processes that sustained the system and the mindset of all who lived within
Christendom … Even if the church/state partnership is dissolved and the vestiges
are removed, Christendom thinking will persist. (Murray 2004, 200).

Murray is right. Even with all of that happening around us before our very eyes, it is mostly

Christendom thinking that still persists within the church. Murray notes that the ways in

which churches try to converse with the West, the cultural languages that they use, convey

Christendom reasoning, “The mindset is stronger in younger denominations and churches,

blissfully unaware of the Christendom values and assumptions permeating their theology,

ethics, structures and expectations.” (Murray 2004, 200).

Van Gelder and Zscheile assert that the church needs to reframe the way in which it is

organised stating, “may local congregations, judicatories, and denominations are still

organised for functional Christendom, not for being missional churches” (Van Gelder and

Zscheile 2011, 158). In order for this re-organisation to take place, churches need to see

beyond Christendom, which means adopting a ‘missional mindset’ where a theological

emphasis on God’s own sent nature, Missio Dei, informs it’s identity. Conextualisation is

critical in developing cross-cultural dialogue but you cannot even get there if you do not

understand that the West is Post-Christendom, postmodern and post-everything. In a re-

organised ekklesia, “the contextual nature of the church’s participation in God’s mission in its

local time and place, church organization will, of necessity, vary widely” (Van Gelder and

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Zscheile 2011, 158). It makes sense that different churches in different cultural contexts might

use different forms of worship and gathering.

A missionary encounter with Western culture will involve contextualization where we “bring

the gospel into dynamic engagement with its meaning systems” (Foster 2014, 44). For

churches this means living within the culture but offering some kind of critical engagement

with it in asking the questions that critique the assumptions, values and allegiances. We

should be finding ways of having a conversation with our communities to discover how the

meaning systems of the West manifest in local life. When we understand this as a local level

then we can begin to engage the conversation with kingdom values. In doing this we will see

the gospel “raise questions, confirm doubts, address fears and challenge behaviour in a way

that leads to repentance and renunciation, promoting and entire change of worldview (Foster

2014, 55).

Similarly, Murray says that we need to re-imagine church and convey the message in new

ways. A new language for postmodern minds stating;

We must present the Christian story as a meta-narrative. This involves challenging

the postmodern distain for meta-narratives; uncovering hidden but influential
postmodern meta-narratives; recognising most people are searching for a meta-
narrative; facing accusations that the Christian story is just another oppressive
meta-narrative; and telling this story in a winsome and authentic way (Murray
2004, 277).

I would add that this involves not only proclaiming the story but also demonstrating,

embodying the story as we engage our local communities.

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Does the church have a coherent missional ecclesiology?

Having previously discussed a theology of conversion, the conversation turns to how we

understand ourselves in light of it. Are we really a Christ centered people with kingdom

values, assumptions and allegiances? Surely, the answer is a complex ‘yes’ and ‘no’. No,

because we are such an imperfect church, a large, global, diverse and fractured church, but

‘yes’ because we are wrestling with it, we are thinking it through and we are re-imagining, re-

organising and responding to the postmodern West.

Not all of the church is participating in this critical analysis of itself. Kä rkkä inen notes that in

the modern era the church reacted to humanistic and secular values by becoming “apologetic,

attempting to defend itself against the growing impact of science and secular philosophy”

(Kä rkkä inen 2002, 157) and we still see this approach happening today in many pockets of

the church. Is that how we should be? Are we called to be like that or are we called to embrace

the West differently?

Kä rkkä inen relates Newbigin’s approach, which was markedly different saying, “Newbigin’s

own proposal for the church to accomplish it’s mission in contemporary Western culture goes

against the tendency to adapt to the culture” (Kä rkkä inen 2002, 158). Kä rkkä inen expands

this by saying:

The prerequisite for such an approach is a critical reevaluation of the self-

understanding of the church and its theology. Rather than trying to explain
Christian faith in light of modern scientific rationality, modern culture should be
analyzed from a specifically Christian standpoint. The church is called to challenge
the prevailing thought forms and its questionable philosophical foundation
(Kä rkkä inen 2002, 158).

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This reevaluation of the church and its theology is crucial to having a missional ecclesiology

because it is about interpreting culture and finding the language and disposition to which the

culture will respond but without diminishing the gospel. The term ‘Missional Church’ has

become more and more popular as congregations wrestle with this concept and as they see

their mission as a participation in what God is already doing in their communities. Where

God’s mission influences the activities and behaviours of the local church.

Van Gelder and Zscheile describe the biblical and theological themes that underpin the

missional church conversation; Trinitarian missiology, the reign of God with it’s already/not

yet dimensions and Missio Dei – The mission of God (Van Gelder and Zscheile 2011, 26-30). I

would argue that churches leaders who absorb and experiment with these themes are

probably working within a coherent missional ecclesiology and may find more success in

converting their local contacts.

Conclusion

I have premised this whole discussion on Newbigin’s extrapolation on the initial question -

Can there be an effective missionary encounter with this culture? In doing so I have examined

and teased out my own questions that relate to the subject. The difficulty I face in my own

context is that I am a Westerner and all of the people in our congregation are Westerners and

if we like it or not, we cannot escape the enculturation of Western values, assumptions and

allegiances. I find it exceptionally hard to engage in a cross-cultural discussion with my own

indigenous culture. Even so, Common Ground church has begun to try and understand the

underlying thoughts of our community so that we can begin to contextualise the gospel in

Maiden Gully.

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We have entered into the missional conversation and immersed ourselves in missional

themes. In that sense we have begun to develop our own unique missional ecclesiology for

our local town. We are doing our best to survey the unique characteristics of rural Victoria to

discover how the meaning systems are formed and how our neighbours understand reality.

We are making sense of these things by seeing them in the wider context of the Western meta-

narrative around individualism, consumerism, happiness, wellbeing and economic success.

We are re-discovering the meaning of conversion and beginning to use this knowledge to

critique our cultural norms.

In my rural Diocese it is clear to me that most other Anglican priests have not fully grasped

the missional imperative and barely engage in the missional conversation. One of the

problems with Anglicans is that they think they have a handle on most subjects, particularly

priests who have been in ministry for many years. The concept of Post-Christendom is

understood by many but for some reason it never follows through to changing our forms of

worship or assumptions permeating their theology, ethics, structures and expectations. In this

environment I often feel very isolated and sometimes not taken seriously. The truth is though,

that folks populate most of the churches in the Diocese over the age of 55 and the weekly

attendance continues to decline.

The final point I wish to make is that none of this endeavor to convert the West will be at all

possible unless it is truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. Newbigin said:

The Church, living in the power of the Spirit, is the privileged place where the Spirit
bears witness and draws men and women to Christ. The words and deeds that flow
from the presence of this Spirit are - equally – occasions by which the Spirit acts
(Hunsberger 1998, 115).

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As a leader of our congregation I see my role as one that brings this missiology to the minds of

God’s people. Many of them are like my clergy friends who are blissfully unaware of their

Christendom bias, but the more I inform and proclaim Christ centeredness, the kingdom of

God and his mission, the more I see signs that we can convert the West. My ongoing prayer is

that we fully grasp this reality and have ears to hear the Spirits witness.

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Bibliography

Bosch, David. 1991. Transforming Mission – Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. New York:
Orbis.

Craig Van Gelder and Dwight J. Zscheile. The Missional Church in Perspective – Mapping
Trends and Shaping the Conversation. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2011.

Foster, Tim. 2014. The Suburban Captivity of the Church – Contextualising the Gospel for a Post-
Christian Australia. Moreland, Victoria: Acorn Press.

Grenz, Stanley. 1996. A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm.B. Erdmans
Publishing.

Hunsberger, George. 1998. Conversion and Community: Revisiting the Lesslie Newbigin-M. M.
Thomas Debate. International Bulletin of Missionary Research. 22(3): 112-117.

Kraft, Charles. H. 1996. Anthropology for Christian Witness. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

McCrindle Forecasts Strategy Research. The McCrindle Blog, A Demographic Snapshot of

Christianity and Church Attenders in Australia. http://mccrindle.com.au/the-mccrindle-
blog/a-demographic-snapshot-of-christianity-and-church-attenders-in-australia (accessed
November 15, 2016)

Murray, Stuart. 2004. Post-Christendom - Church and Mission in a Strange New World. Milton
Keynes: Paternoster Press.

Newbigin, Lesslie. 1987. Can the West be converted? International Bulletin of Missionary
Research. 11(1): 2-7.

Newbigin, Lesslie. 1989. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm.B.
Erdmans Publishing.

Simpkins, Andrew. 2015. MA in Missional Practice – Core module ML1 Contemporary Culture
and the challenge of Mission. Lecture notes presented at Stirling Theological College for unit
DM9020S – Reading the Age. September 26-30 in Melbourne, Australia.

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