All Things to All People

The apostle Paul teaches churches to contextualize the Gospel message by being flexible with ministry strategies while being firm on the message. This contextualization allows churches to reach their community in their culture with a Gospel that fits the people they are trying to reach. Unfortunately, the ministries and style that fit the people a church is seeking to win for Jesus is often different than the preferences of those within the church. But we are called to be lay down our preferences for the good of those who still need to hear the Good News!

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Message

We have finished our “Greatest Hits” series from the Psalms but are not quite ready to kick off our fall series “Closer,” dealing with relationships; so we are going to revisit the first series I taught after becoming your pastor: “Outside the Walls.”

“Outside the Walls” was a message series on outreach and evangelism. In three messages we saw:

• Jesus issued The Great Commission – our call to go and make disciples of all nations.
• Jesus taught that the sick, not the healthy, need a doctor; so He connected with the lost and the hurting – and so should we.
• When Jesus looked out at the crowds, He had compassion on them.  He said the harvest was plentiful but the laborers were few. We talked about how we need to see the community around us the way Jesus does.

Today I am adding a fourth message to this series to examine how the Apostle Paul instructs churches to reach the people of their communities. This is perfect timing because, as a church, we are currently in a season of listening for God’s direction as to how we can best reach our community. We find Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23 – ¹⁹ Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. ²⁰ To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹ To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. ²³ I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. 

Without using the word, Paul teaches how to contextualize  the gospel to whatever group we are reaching. “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some!”

Contextualization  means fitting the message to the context in which you find yourself.

I contextualize in ministry all the time. How I conduct our Senior Adult lunches is far different from how I react with the youth on Wednesdays. Each gathering has a meal and a game, but they have a very different feel. As you would expect, I lead those two groups entirely differently.

Some people may say, “But, Ryan, you’re just being a chameleon and changing your colors to please the world.” Yes, I am changing the window dressing of the events; and yes, I change how I behave. However, who I am – my essence – doesn’t change from one group to the other. I am still me. I still have the goal for both groups to connect with one another and with God. I still treat people with love and care. I just shift some exterior styles to better foster connection with our youth and with our Seniors.

That’s what contextualization is – fitting the content of what you want people to grasp into terms they will receive in their context. Contextualization is a firm message with flexible strategies.

Just as teachers have shifted their methods through the years to adjust to kids’ diminishing attention spans, Paul shows us that we can shift how we share the gospel of Jesus based on the context of who we are sharing it with. He spoke about Jesus with the Jews differently than He spoke with the Greeks. That makes sense.

Many people get very concerned when we start changing things in the church. They assume that if we change a program or a method, we are changing everything – including the message.

I understand their concern. Throughout history we have watched people bend the message of the church to fit the context around them. It still happens today in numerous denominations. We have to guard against that!

But that’s not what we’re talking about today. Today we are talking about the important evangelistic teaching of Paul – that we should be flexible to the world around us and creative in ways to meet people where they are as we tell them the unchanging message of the forgiveness available to us all by the work of Jesus on the cross.

We see this in the four Gospels. The books are not identical, but are flexible in how they share the message of Christ. The authors decided which details to include and which to leave out.

In the Gospel of Mark, the author explains a bunch of Jewish traditions because the book was written to Greeks who didn’t know the traditions. Also, the book shows the overarching power and authority Jesus has over sickness, demons, storms, and every other power the Greeks thought were controlled by their gods.

On the other hand, the Gospel of Matthew was written to the Jews. It is loaded with Old Testament quotations to show how Jesus fulfills the prophecies about the coming Messiah. This would have been meaningless to the Greeks, but it was a significant argument when trying to convince the Jews that Jesus really was who He said He was.

Common areas of Contextualization

When we look at contextualization in churches today, we see several common areas in which churches find flexibility in their strategies and forms.

Gospel Presentation

I’ve already shared with you how Mark and Matthew wrote their Gospels differently to reach different people. That tradition continues today.

The gospel is like a diamond with hundreds of different facets – different ways to look at it and see Good News. But what is really exciting to one group may not seem like Good News to a different group. So we focus on different aspects of the gospel message for different audiences.

Here’s a primary example: how many of you think of the gospel in terms of honor and shame? Probably none. Yet that is the main way the gospel is presented in Eastern cultures like China and Japan. We don’t live in an honor/shame culture, and so that aspect doesn’t speak to us in America; but in China it is much more important than the common American approach of speaking about God’s love.

None of these approaches is wrong. They are just different – fitted to the audience.

Another example: I am occasionally asked why churches don’t talk about hell as often as they used to. The reason is that hell has become a touchy topic with my generation and younger because it was used so often as a scare tactic when we were kids. So, for many, speaking about hell immediately turns people off from hearing anything else I have to say. This doesn’t change the fact that hell is real and will eventually need to be discussed; but it does mean that I don’t talk about it nearly as frequently as preachers of previous generations did when calling people to follow Jesus. I make the judgment call to be sensitive to the context I’m ministering to. I try to avoid obstacles to conversation.

Ministry Focus

When we share the gospel with others, the message is primary; but beyond the message are the decisions about which ministry we invest in to care for people. There are hundreds of options for what we could do, but each church should be sensitive to what fits that church and its community the best. That’s contextualizing your ministries.

For example, Sunday school was a popular outreach tool in the early 1800s when many children were not being schooled but could learn at the church. There was a great need among the working children in the community; the church met that need AND taught about Jesus. Obviously this was a genius ministry that served a great purpose.

More currently, sports are a big part of many kids’ lives, and so some churches have turned to sports-based ministries for children. They continue to seek to share Jesus with the next generation; but instead of using education as the draw, they use today’s currency – athletics.

In a post-pandemic world, we must recognize that ministries that have worked for years may not still work today. Our job as a church is to recognize which ministries best fit the context that is all around us. We never change the message or the goal of sharing Jesus, but we are flexible with what form our ministries take.

Service Style

Contextualism should apply to our Sunday morning worship service as well as our discipleship ministries.

Think back over the past three decades. How many men attend church in full suits and ties today, as compared to the numbers in 1992? How people dress has changed, including what we wear to church. It’s no better or worse, just different.

The same is true of many other parts of the Sunday morning service. The choir was once a mainstay in most churches; now you rarely see one. Churches used skits and dramas, which were replaced by videos and YouTube clips. Many elements of the church service were useful for a time, but for many that time has come and gone.

In the same way, the changes you’ve seen take place in our services here are efforts to connect better with our community. I explain rituals like communion before we do them. We try to sing songs that aren’t completely loaded with churchy words. We incorporate newer songs with the older ones so that everyone can feel included. We try to be all things to all people so we might win some. Everything in our worship service is examined through the lens of “How does this fit into our community?”

Language

You may have noticed I don’t use a lot of big church words. I don’t talk about atonement, propitiation, the wedding supper of the Lamb, or our need to be sanctified without giving a full explanation. I tend to use smaller, more common words to explain these same concepts.

This is not because I don’t believe in these things! Nor is it because I don’t know what those terms mean. I do this because I know the average person checking out our church doesn’t know what the words mean. Rather than create a communication barrier (like Mark did in his Gospel), I explain what I need to explain and use more common words where they work better.

This is the same principle followed in the new Bible translations that have come out in the past 40 years. While some people lament that any changes have been made to the King James Bible, the fact is that language changed. Many people couldn’t understand a book written over 400 years ago in Shakespearean English. The “new Bibles” haven’t changed the message; the translators are being flexible to changes in language and using new words to help people grasp the old, old story.

Cost of Contextualization

Here’s where the rubber meets the road! One thing we haven’t talked about yet is that contextualization comes with a cost. Yes, it’s easy to talk about, and we can see why it’s important, but it requires something from each of us.

Remember the first verse we looked at:

1 Corinthians 9:19 – Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

Paul recognized that being a Jew to the Jews and weak to the weak had a cost. He became a slave to everyone. He no longer let his preferences dictate his ministry focus or his gospel presentation, but he flexibly adjusted to those around him. He submittedhis own ideals to fit whatever the situation called for.

That’s the most difficult part of this message, and we need to hear it today. If we are going to meet our community – the unchurched of Chariton, Iowa – on their own terms, then it means we need to make some conscious decisions. Which gospel presentations are most important to share? What ministries will be

 most effective in meeting the needs of the unchurched?  What service styles will help them connect with Jesus? What language will be best understood?

Following are some glimpses of what this might look like for us. Right now our leadership is discussing what some new ministries at First Baptist might look like.

• Reading Club. We’ve heard that some kids fall behind in learning to read at an early age. We want to help fill that gap and maybe help some parents with child care on Wednesdays, when the children are out of school early but the parents still have to be at work. Like the first iteration of Sunday school in England, this would be education-based, but we could also read them stories from the Children’s Storybook Bible.
• A Van Ministry is also under discussion right now. It’s not a new idea, but it is still important to this community. Many people don’t have the ability to drive to church or don’t have reliable cars. What if we removed that hurdle and picked them up and brought them to church.

These are examples of just two areas we are investigating. These would be ways of contextualizing what ministry to Chariton, Iowa, could look like. There are dozens more ideas, all of which we must run through the lens of “Will this help us reach our goal of winning more people to Jesus?”

Today we’ve taken a bit of a “behind the scenes” look at how we do church and why we make the decisions we make. However, it’s important for you to see that according to the Apostle Paul, our ministry should not be based on any one leader’s preferences but on what we believe will truly help us be the most effective at sharing Jesus with others.

Please join us in praying about these ministry opportunities.

• Pray for me to find creative ways to preach and teach each week with the unchurched in mind.
• Be conscious about the language you use when talking about Jesus with your friends and family. Make sure you aren’t making your faith inaccessible.
• Most importantly, be willing to let go of your preferences for the sake of those who are currently outside these walls.

Some of you have already done that, and I thank you for your maturity and selflessness. I’m sure it will be rewarded one day.

For others of you, this is a tough one. But when you get to heaven, I guarantee you won’t regret what you gave up once you get to see those who joined us in heaven as a result of the ministry of First Baptist.

Perhaps none of the changes made so far have impacted you negatively. That’s great! But the day may come. We all will have to pay the cost. We all are going to have preferences that don’t line up with what we recognize as the best way to minister to our community.

When we weigh the cost versus the reward, it’s an easy decision.

Conclusion

As followers of Jesus, our number-one allegiance is to Him. We submit our whole lives to the way of our Lord; and He wants us to give up our own freedom so that more will come to know Him. That’s what a life looking outside these walls looks like. It looks like laying down our preferences for the good of those who are yet to join us.

I truly believe Jesus is calling us to trust Him in this. I see a stirring here. I see the Spirit moving here in a fresh, new way. But now we have another test. Will we trust Him with more changes? Will we give up our old and comfortable way of doing things for many years to do what God knows our community needs in this new moment?

Are you willing to sacrifice your choices for the salvation of just one person?

I am.

And I know you are, too!