Tag Archives: contextualization

Contextualization and Creativity

In the Armenian student movement (CICI), they felt the challenge to have good Bible study materials to put in the hands of their students. While there were some materials available, they needed to be translated and interpreted properly to maintain their relevance in that context. So, we decided to invest time in staff, to enable them to feel confident to create their own Scripture Engagement materials, and then do the same with student leaders.

We wanted to take the Armenian context seriously, be faithful to the message of the Bible – both in specific passages and for the whole story of Scripture. We talked about how their students learn, what creative approaches to use during Bible study (for observation, interpretation, application and response), and how we can encourage students to love and value the Word of God.

Anna L, General Secretary CICI:

“This training has taught us to lead both practically and relationally. We have been challenged to be critical thinkers, to consider the historical and cultural context, and to passionately observe the text as we seek to know and love the Word of God and the God of the Word.”

One such approach was ‘Participative Drama/TV Interview’, which enables deep observation of a text and stimulates the imagination. I’ve seen and experienced this numerous ways in recent years, usually with a New Testament narrative.

This time we studied Nehemiah 8 and the wonderful story of how the people came to Ezra, asked for the Word to be read to them and responded from their hearts with weeping, joy, and obedience.

First, we read the passage aloud, then discussed the context of the story and any resulting questions. Each participant was assigned a character: Ezra, two regular Israelites, and two Levites (with more participants, Nehemiah, and some elders being added if necessary).

Next steps:

1. Read the passage again as that person (or group, e.g. Levites)

2. Remember how you as that person/group ended up here (context of exile and return, books of Ezra and Nehemiah)

– What do you already know or have you experienced of God? (Where is this event in the whole story of salvation?) What questions might you therefore have in life?

3. How do you as Ezra, for example, feel on this day?

– What are your fears/hopes/questions before, during, and after these events?

4. ‘TV interview’ that addresses questions to each person/group, with a final question to everyone that considers the significance of what they heard and experienced. For example:

– How have you been changed by the events of these days?

– How will you talk about this day with your future grandchildren, what advice will you give them as a result?

– How is it possible to keep living by the Word as families and as a community?

5. Debrief the exercise together

6. Discuss its application today

7. Prayer

Some of the staff enjoyed this so much that they started to recognise how it could be used straight away.

Paula
IFES Associate Secretary for Scripture Engagement

Engaging the Challenges of Our World

Ricardo Borges, IFES Secretary for Scripture Engagement, interviews Wilson Kiuna, from Kenya, member of the IFES global network of Scripture Engagement multipliers

Ricardo and Wilson

Why might it be important to ask questions of Scripture in the light of challenges we face in this world, such as the issue of politics?

We need to ask questions of Scripture primarily because the Bible is the revelation of God’s mind about the whole of reality; it guides how God’s people are to live, interpret, and wrestle with the issues and challenges of everyday life – across time, space, and culture (Deut. 32:47; 2 Tim 3:16-17). I also see in the Bible a humbling truth: the almighty God, who dwells in unapproachable light, yet invites us to [have a] dialogue with Him in our honest struggles. God is big enough to handle our doubts, anxieties, fears, frustrations. This certainly includes the trauma of broken socio-economic and political reality, as Gideon illustrates for us (e.g., Judg 6:13).

How best to ask questions of Scripture?

First, we need to appreciate the context of the lives of the communities of faith in the Bible; how they interpreted their own challenges; the kind of questions they asked – and to do this in light of God’s overall story in the Bible. Thus, using all our senses, we will try to immerse ourselves in their grief and lamentations, their joys and hope. Secondly, we need to study Scripture in community with others, with our feet grounded in our contemporary realities. This illuminates and deepens our vision.

The Bible is quite extensive and God’s revelation is given to us as a wide variety of content in different formats. As such, how do we know where to look for answers to the questions we ask?

I think it’s absolutely important to affirm that ALL SCRIPTURE is divinely inspired, and useful for all of life (2 Tim 3:16-17) – including inconvenient particularities of it, such as filing our tax returns! There is an essential theological unity that connects the entire Biblical story, pointing to, and ultimately finding fulfilment in Jesus Christ (Jn 5:39ff). In this regard, we begin to look for answers to our questions not merely to satisfy intellectual curiosity, but to respond in obedience to a personal invitation by Jesus himself “to come and have life” (Jn 5:40). So, we approach this quest with a humble plea for illumination and guidance, that whatever our starting point in Bible study, the Holy Spirit, our trustworthy teacher, will “open my eyes to see wonderful things in your law” (Psa 119:18).

What is the benefit of asking these questions with people who are different from us?

I believe that this practice helps us appreciate our ‘fellowship of neediness’ as God’s people – regardless of our cultural, gender, socio-economic and other aspects of diversity; we are all so needy of the grace of God! Second, this practice enriches our discernment of Biblical truth, as people share hermeneutical resources and tools from other cultures and lived experiences (cultural idiom, stories and anecdotes etc.), and illustrations of use of Scripture in real life. Thirdly, it provides a ‘redemptive’ challenge to our personal and cultural blind spots, which so often frustrate our Scripture engagement.

How do we deal with questions that the Scriptures ask of us in return?

I think it is a redemptive act of God’s mercy whenever Scriptures ask us questions – especially those that confront our various shortcomings. It often invites us into self-examination and realignment (Psa 139:23-24). This transformative aspect requires us to cultivate a contrite, teachable spirit (Psa 32:8-10), and the ‘Berean’ diligence of searching the Scriptures in community (Acts 17:11).

Questions to and from the Scriptures

Photo by Matt Walsh on Unsplash

I have always been fascinated by the questions we ask and that are asked of us when we interact with the Lord through Scripture. In this I include both the big and small matters of our time, asked by people around us, as well as the way in which the Scriptures themselves act to challenge and transform us.

Perhaps this is why I have enjoyed an exercise recently undertaken by our friends at IFES East Asia. Through a series of videos, staff from different movements are exposed to a text of Scripture and invited to ask questions prompted by that text. I believe this helps us recognize an important point that we often overlook: when we come to the Scriptures, who we are and where we are impacts how we respond. In other words, context matters.

The circumstances in which we live, our background – even our age and gender – all play a part in how we read the Word of God. I think that being more attentive to this would help us to benefit more from the diversity of the community in which we study the Scriptures. This variety of perspectives and questions would help us be mindful and open to how the Holy Spirit speaks his Word.

Being attentive to these nuances can also encourage us to be more effective in our witness. I believe that religious people, whether they are long-time Christians or interested in spiritual matters, ask questions that are quite different from those asked by an atheist or agnostic. When I study the biblical text, for example, the questions I pose are unlikely to be the same as those asked by someone from another religious tradition or non-religious worldview. But I should not ignore them; neither should I try to answer them quickly, nor say that they are not asking the “right” question of the biblical text. Rather, it is legitimate and appropriate to listen carefully and seek to understand the questions they bring to the Scriptures.

Similarly, we must always pay attention when the Scriptures ask something of us – especially when such queries disturb, challenge, or bother us. It is the questions we take away from our reading of the Bible, and those for which we do not find an easy answer, that usually have the most transforming potential. They shake the foundations of what we take for granted, whether in our own opinion or from broader tradition. In doing so, they reveal more to us of God’s authoritative voice. And that voice, spoken through the Scriptures, is the One that provokes change. Questions bring forth life, and we should not be afraid of them.

Ricardo Borges, IFES Secretary for Scripture Engagement.

Scripture Engagement & Context

God is a revealing God, his Word is his revelation of himself and his purposes to his world. It is wonderful we are invited by God to meet him, know and love him, through the Scriptures. As we answer this invitation and engage with Him in His Word, it is helpful to acknowledge we are a diversity of peoples, times and contexts. How we approach, view, interpret, understand and connect his Word to our lives is a question we must address with faith and with faithfulness.

Just look at Acts 3:12-26 and Acts 17:22-31 as classic examples of taking the context and those people’s questions seriously when presenting the good news.

When the working group met to reflect and discuss this issue, we thought it would be important to focus on how our contemporary context affects the way we read, interpret and live out God’s Word. We do this in the wide variety of contexts we come from where we seek to be faithful to the Lord – ‘correctly handling the word of truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15) having our thinking, speaking and behaviour transformed by God through His Word and by His Spirit.

Through fostering a growing reflection and exchange in our global fellowship about “Scripture Engagement & Context”, we hope to better recognise our blind spots – those things that because of the milieu we live in/ have grown up in we do not see: about God, His purposes or ourselves. Through mutual learning in our international fellowship we hope to avoid some possible risks: a selective hermeneutic determined by culturally defined questions leading to ethnocentrism and relativism; or cultural ‘imprisonment’/bias leading to a poor reading of Scriptures even leaving out parts that don’t seem to be relevant (in our own eyes). For an extreme example of this see what King Jehoiakim did in Jeremiah 36!

We believe it is important to both grow in how we engage with the Scriptures from our own times and contexts, and at the same time become increasingly aware of how the Word ‘reads’ and engages with us. As we read and are ‘read’, as we participate, God transforms us and our context/community.

When engaging with the Word, we believe we are engaging with God himself in the Scriptures, with Jesus, the Living Word. We can therefore expect that he will engage with us – an experience that will not leave us or our communities the same.

Our different contexts raise a variety of questions which we should pay careful attention to when engaging the Scriptures. At the same time, the Word of God often raises other questions or gives answers that we would not have expected. Scripture reveals agendas and poses questions that people may not be asking. Thus, engaging with the Word will often disturb, question, and challenge what may be fully accepted in our context.

The reader of the Word is therefore not only personally challenged and transformed but challenged to be agents of change and transformation in the context and community within which they live.

In the end, when we are dedicated to a serious study of the Word, it should lead us to discover the heart and mind of God for our world: the Lord who is missionary, who is transforming and reconciling the world to Himself through Christ.

We pray that when paying more attention to the contemporary context we all live in, we will grow to become a better global hermeneutical community, learning from each other and faithfully giving witness to the Lord across the world from each of our contexts.

IFES Eurasia Scripture Engagement Coordinator (no name as in sensitive country) and Ricardo Borges (IFES Associate Secretary for Scripture Engagement)

Invited into God’s Mission

“As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. (…)
(…) As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” John 17:18; 20:21

These two small verses changed my life. It happened when I joined the student group of ABUB Brazil on my first day at the University of Sao Paulo. I had just started to study Agronomic Engineering.

I was already a Christian believer. Actually, it was my privilege to grow up in a family whose faith gave me love for the Lord through the Scriptures. During all my childhood and adolescent years, I remember well the family tradition of reading the Bible and praying together before going to bed. My dad was a pastor for more than fifty years; as soon as I was able to read, he would ask me to read the Bible in the frequent pastoral visits he did to so many families.

Yet going to university in another city, away from my family, when I was only 17 confronted me with some big challenges. In this situation, the student group of ABUB Brazil became the place where my faith grew and connected to mission, particularly to God’s mission in my context. Together with my Christian brothers and sisters, I grew in the love of our Lord.

Slowly, but continuously, three key truths began to grow and take root in my life. Firstly, God is the origin of our mission; it is his mission in the first place and a great privilege for us to participate in it. It somehow touched me deeply to understand that first Jesus was sent into the world and then he sent us, giving us his own mission as a model. Secondly, that in order to understand what God wants from us, we need to enter more deeply into a personal and saving encounter with Jesus through the Scriptures. Thirdly, that obedience to God’s call means being sent by him to fully connect with the world around us, with our own context, with the people and the challenges we face in our reality.

God is the centre and origin of mission. Jesus is both our Saviour and the paradigm for us in mission – modelling for us a mission that connects deeply with the people and the context around us. These small, yet deep lessons have been an important part of my life and obedience in mission throughout these years.

Ricardo Borges, Ricardo.Borges(at)ifesworld.org
Associate Secretary for Scripture Engagement

A Targum for Today

(written by: Yohan Abeynaike, General Secretary FOCUS Sri Lanka)

After a few generations in exile, the Jewish leaders faced a serious problem. Hebrew was being replaced by Aramaic as the common language of the people. With the change of language and context the leaders wondered how to communicate the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures to the next generation in a manner that was easily understood. This was the beginnings of the Targum.

Initially, the Targum consisted of a simple paraphrase of the Scriptures in Aramaic. Later, it started to include explanations and expansions of the text so that the listeners could clearly see the relevance of the Scriptures in their context. In December, members of FOCUS Sri Lanka, decided to try their hand in writing a Targum using Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). We began by dividing the song by phrases and then developed each phrase more broadly in the explanation to achieve different aims. Here are a few examples of the aims we sought to achieve:

1. Understanding the conflicting thoughts and feelings of Mary and seeing her through modern eyes. (Lk 1:48-49)

“I cannot believe it! Thousands of Jewish women throughout history have wanted to be in this position. In the years to come people from everywhere will read and hear about my story. They will play my part in dramas and movies, they will preach sermons about me, they will sing songs about me. So many would wish they were me… but who am I? I am nothing…

…But, I am scared sometimes. I don’t know what the future holds for me. What will my relatives say about the pregnancy? What will the neighbours say? Will they mock me, ignore me or stone me?”

2. Applying the implications of a text broadly. (Lk 1:51)

God laughs at the boastful claims of the knowledge producers in our society. Can the scientist uncover all the mysteries of life? Can the economist satisfy all the people’s needs? Can the lawyer make a society more moral? Isn’t the claim that ‘all truth is relative’ – an absolute claim in itself? Why are they puffed up? Don’t they know that human knowledge will always be limited? It is only God who knows all things.

3. Using phrases and situations familiar to people today. (Lk 1:52)

All that is hidden will be exposed. He is the divine Wikileaks. The dark web will be lit up. The hate speech and tweets will be silenced.

The full text of our Targum for the Sri Lankan context can be found here.

The whole process was creative and fun. More importantly, it helped us to see and apply the text in fresher ways. Why not try it?

Yohan Abeynaike, yohan(at)focus.lk