The Central Asian believers and I leaned forward around our table, holding the earpieces tight against our ears to make sure we understood the assignment. Simultaneous translation meant that our preaching training was being taught in English, yet we were each hearing it in one ear in the local tongue – a complex, yet not impossible way to learn solid principles for teaching and preaching God’s word. Other tables were made up of believers and leaders from a neighboring people group, hearing the translation in yet another language.
Live translation, when the teacher or preacher pauses to let you translate, takes a fair amount of skill. Simultaneous translation, on the other hand, takes an extra special kind of linguistic ability and mental quickness. The local believing gal we usually hired for this kind of translation was in another country for an ultimate frisbee tournament, of all things, so we were trying out a couple of other believers who had traveled up from Poet City to help with the conference. Of the two of them, the teenage gal -whose parents had in recent years been outed as spies for a neighboring regime- was by far doing the better job.
As she translated, I mulled on the riddle of what to do when a teenager shows all the signs of true faith and a solid commitment to gathering with the body, but it seems that her parents are on the payroll of a foreign Islamic government – and likely reporting on things they’re learning through their daughter. So far, the wisest thing seemed to be to trust God and carry on. If they ended up reporting on this particular training, then at least mom and dad and their foreign handlers would be getting some sound homiletics principles.
“What were those foreigners telling people to do?”
“To make sure they could identify the biblical author’s intended message for the original audience.”
“And then what?”
“To find valid connections from that message to the good news of Jesus.”
“And after that?”
“To apply the main ideas to the daily lives of both the Christians and non-Christians who might be listening.”
“No! Those foreign infidels! Is there no end to their schemes? Make sure to report back if they start talking about how to craft effective sermon illustrations.”
I laughed to myself, thinking about what that kind of conversation might sound like.
“Wait, what are we supposed to do?”
This actual question from one of the brothers at my table brought me back to the current moment.
“Oh, right,” I responded. “The trainer asked if we could read Isaiah 25:6-9 and summarize it with a phrase or title that describes the main idea.”
One of the men at the table cleared his throat and then read out the passage in the local language.
[6] On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. [7] And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. [8] He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. [9] It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
After the passage was read, the table was quiet for a minute as we each thought about what major themes were present in the passage. Our Central Asian locals are not typically strong in this kind of exercise. Their educational system majors on rote memorization and repetition. It does not equip them to do things like summarizing a passage in their own words and recognizing the main point. But this was year four of this preaching training, and, slowly but surely, these crucial textual analysis skills were getting stronger.
“The hospitality of God!” one man exclaimed.
“Interesting,” I replied, “Where do you see that?”
“Well, what is the main thing happening in this passage? God is hosting all peoples on top of a mountain for a great picnic with the very best food. Look at how this passage overflows with his generosity and hospitality!”
I took another look, and sure enough, there it was, clear as day in verse 6. I had skipped right over this theme to focus on the theme of God destroying death forever (also a major theme in the passage). Leave it to Central Asians to spot what is obviously an eschatological mountain picnic hosted by God himself when the Westerners skip right past it.
It seemed our British trainer did the same thing I did, because he sort of looked confused when the same man raised his hand during the larger group discussion time to mention the theme of God’s salvific hospitality that had jumped out at him.
This is why it’s so helpful to study the Bible with those from other cultures and backgrounds. It’s not that the meaning of the text itself is relative and shifts according to the culture of the interpreter. It’s that each of our cultures gives us eyes for certain things, and blind spots for others. My culture is weaker in hospitality, so I’m less likely to see that when it’s there in the text. But there are other areas where I can see things because of my background that my Central Asia friends are likely to miss.
This is an argument not just for studying the Bible with those from other cultures, but also with those from other ages. Saints from the past are going to be awake to things to which my generation has grown dull and blind. I need their help to more fully understand the Bible, just as future generations will need ours.
The Bible is so rich and so deep. Sometimes I wonder if God’s plan in allowing so many languages and cultures is, in part, so that we might be better equipped to see more aspects of the Scriptures’ richness and beauty.
As for me, I’d like to spend more time looking for the hospitality of God in the Bible. Now that I’m more ‘awake’ to this idea, it seems to pop up just about everywhere.
We only need to raise 14k ($1,166 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
What do restaurants running out of sheep stomachs, AK-47s, meals on the floor with tribal enemies, and the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca have to do with Mark 11?
When preaching and teaching, our aim should be, first, to faithfully exposit the text. But second, it should be to helpfully 1) argue for, 2) illustrate, and 3) apply the truths of that text in ways that translate to the minds, hearts, and hands of our audience. Many of us who care deeply about expositional preaching tend to be very strong in the explanation side of things, yet weaker in these three other time-tested elements of preaching and teaching. It is in these three secondary, yet crucial, elements that I attempted this past week to draw local connections with Mark 11.
My current role as a resourcer, researcher, and writer means I’m not preaching in the local language nearly as much as I did when I was a church planter. However, this past week, I did get the opportunity to do so. Afterward, I thought it might be helpful to share a few examples of how I attempted to use local culture and experiences to bring the weight of the text to bear on the audience. I do so, not claiming that I necessarily got everything right, but rather, in hopes of spurring on others to make efforts like this in their preaching and teaching as well. After all, concrete examples from other contexts can be helpful as we wrestle with how to do this in our own churches.
My text was Mark 11:1-25: the triumphal entry, the cursing of the fig tree, the cleansing of the temple, and Jesus’ teaching on the power of believing prayer. From this text, my main sermon idea was that Jesus is the king of peace, the king of judgment, and the king of answered prayer. Each of my three subpoints was an unpacking of one of these three aspects of Jesus’ kingship: 1) the king of peace, 2) the king of judgment, 3) the king of answered prayer.
Now, here’s where the restaurant running out of sheep stomachs came in. I began my sermon by telling a story that happened in Caravan City around five years ago, when a group of local men went down to the bazaar in the middle of the night to eat a beloved traditional dish called head-n-foot. This is a meal consisting of rice sewn up in a sheep’s stomach and boiled in a broth containing the sheep’s head and feet. This unique meal is traditionally eaten in the middle of the night, along with fresh flatbread, and sometimes other side dishes like sheep brain, marrow, tongue, etc. While foreigners get queasy just hearing about eating this kind of thing, many locals can’t get enough of it. However, these particular local men loved it a little too much.
When these guys showed up at the head-n-foot restaurant, it had unexpectedly run out of food. This caused them such disappointment and such anger that they returned to their homes, grabbed their AK-47s, and came back and shot up the restaurant’s tables, counters, and windows in a blaze of lead, broken glass, and bits of sheep. Thankfully, no one was injured. But the story became the stuff of local legend, as well as countless jokes.
Why did I begin my sermon with this illustration? Well, one of the main themes of my passage, Mark 11, is the absence of fruit. The fig tree does not have fruit when Jesus visits it, nor does God’s temple. There is something deeply wrong with this situation, so wrong in fact that it warrants the very curse and judgment of the Son of God. While the men who shot up the head-n-foot restaurant were clearly out of line to do something so drastic, they were not necessarily wrong to be upset. A restaurant that fails to keep its most basic duty – that of providing food when open – has failed in its fundamental purpose. Perhaps these men had the right to be angry, but they had no right to shoot up the restaurant in the way they did. Jesus, on the other hand, had every right to both be angry and to also go on to curse the fig tree and the temple. He was the creator, owner, and rightful recipient of the fruit of both. But, scandalously, when he visited them, he found them utterly barren. And in the temple’s case, even worse than barren, corrupted and oppressive.
Did this attempt at using a local illustration work? I think so. Several of the attendees were nodding and chuckling knowingly as I shared the story. At least the sermon must have made two of them hungry because later that night, they went out to eat head-n-foot at the very establishment that had featured in my introduction. This included sending me video evidence that that night, at least, there was plenty of head-n-foot to go around.
My second attempt to illustrate with local culture was when I was trying to explain the significance of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a colt, a young donkey. In the ancient Near East, a king who rides into a city on a donkey is signaling both humility and peace. This is in contrast to a king who rides in on a horse, who is signaling power and conquest. However, this meaning has been lost in the 2,000 years that have transpired between Mark 11 and today. In our corner of Central Asia, donkeys are mostly a thing of ridicule, an insult, a symbol of stupidity, and the butt of countless jokes. This is why my favorite Kebab restaurant has donkey-themed pictures covering its walls. Locals find donkeys irresistibly ridiculous, which is why one local believer cautioned me in the past to avoid them in sermons if I can, due to the risk of the congregation descending into fits of giggles. Yet there’s no avoiding donkeys in Mark 11; rather, riding in on a donkey needs to be redefined according to what this would have meant to the original audience.
But before I explained its meaning, I first asked my audience a question. What would it signify to them if their tribal chief or an influential sheikh invited them to dinner at his house, and when they arrived, they also saw their personal enemy seated there on the floor for the meal? The audience responded with confidence – this scene would mean a desire for peace, a desire for reconciliation. Leaders here will invite enemies to share a meal together with them in an attempt to broker peace. In the same way, I explained, a leader riding into a city on a donkey, in first-century Judea, signaled a desire for reconciliation. Once again, heads nodded when the attempted connection was made. Whatever may have been going on internally, at least there were no visible fits of giggles because I had been talking about donkeys.
My third attempt to illustrate from local experience came in my second point, when I was explaining how Jesus is not just the king of peace, but also the king of judgment. In Jesus’ shocking actions in the temple, we see how much he hates religious oppression and corruption. Jesus is furious because not only is the temple worship being used to make a hefty profit off of Jewish pilgrims, those who are stuck with the inflated temple prices and money-changing fees, but this is happening in the only space available in the temple for the Gentiles to worship God. Tragically, all this shows us that instead of the true worship of God taking place (true spiritual fruit), there was religious oppression of the Gentiles, the poor, and the faithful. God will not stand for this kind of thing, as evidenced by Jesus’ temple violence.
To illustrate how all the world’s religions tend to do this – and thus are worthy of God’s curse – I reminded the audience of how the Islamic pilgrimage, the Hajj, has very similar dynamics to the temple corruption seen in Mark 11. See, Muslims are obligated to make this pilgrimage once in their lifetime. And there’s only one place they can go to do this – Mecca. Because of this, the government of Saudi Arabia charges exorbitant prices for plane tickets, hotels, visas, even corner market goods in Mecca itself, all in an attempt to milk the pilgrims for all they’re worth. Pilgrims have no choice. They have to pay up. In this way, elderly locals from our corner of Central Asia will blow tens of thousands of dollars in a misguided attempt to secure forgiveness of sins. This is money that should have gone to caring for them in old age, or to their children’s futures. Instead, it goes straight to the pockets of the Saudi political and religious establishment. This kind of system is deeply wicked and worthy of being cursed by God.
Having drawn the connection in this way between the temple’s religious oppression and that which this room of former Muslims was all too familiar with, I then reminded them that Jesus’ focus here was not some pagan worship of his day. No, it was the corrupted worship of his own people and their leaders. We, therefore, have an obligation to guard the worship of the local church so that the true worship of God is never hijacked for the sake of worldly gain.
My final attempt at using a local illustration attempted to connect with the fact that many in the audience were former guerrilla fighters. Under the point about how Jesus is the king of answered prayer, I borrowed an illustration from Piper about how prayer is not like a hotel phone, where we call the front desk for a softer pillow. Rather, prayer is like a soldier’s walkie-talkie, which he uses to call in air support for the battle. Jesus’ radical promises for answered prayer in this passage are not given so that we might ask and receive anything random we might desire. Instead, they are for prayers directed against anything (mountains included) that stands in the way of his people bearing spiritual fruit. I couldn’t tell how well this one connected. I’m realizing just now, as I write, that guerrilla fighters don’t tend to have air support. Usually, they’re fighting in the mountains with their small arms munitions against the superior ground and air power of whatever regime they’re resisting. But I’m hopeful it still made sense.
Once again, these efforts to use local culture are not the most important thing going on in a sermon. But if the exposition of the text itself is like a good steak, then the argumentation, illustration, and application are like the salt and pepper, the grilled vegetables, and the glass of red wine that accent the steak so well. The steak is more powerfully tasted because of their presence. In the same way, the faithful explanation of God’s word is more powerfully experienced when it is supported by faithful and contextual argumentation, illustration, and application.
How do we find these local examples? We must be continuous learners of whatever culture is currently hosting us. Through curious questions and good listening, we can, over time, stock quite the storehouse of local examples that we can draw from as opportunity arises. Practically, we will also need a way to remember these examples. For me, writing and lists of things to write about are ways that I find I’m able to better hold onto this local knowledge. Did you know, dear reader, that by reading this blog, you are a part of how I’m able to hold onto things so that I might later bring them into a spiritual conversation with a local? For that, I’m very grateful.
Every culture, indeed the whole world, is full of spiritual analogies and metaphors, things that we can leverage to strengthen our presentation of God’s word. As the old hymn, This is My Father’s World, proclaims, “This is my father’s world; He shines in all that’s fair; In the rustling grass I hear him pass; He speaks to me everywhere.” Missionaries of ages past, such as Lilias Trotter, had such good eyes for the spiritual analogies baked into the world all around them. If we follow in their footsteps, recognizing that not just in nature, but even in fallen cultures, God has not left us without a witness, our preaching and teaching (and writing) will be all the more powerful for it.
Don’t just explain, brothers and sisters. But argue, illustrate, and apply as well – even if that means you find yourself preaching about things like sheep stomachs and Kalashnikovs.
We need to raise 28k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
One of the most curious examples of poor contextualization in Central Asia is how opposed most missionaries are to preaching. By and large, missionaries feel strongly that the indigenous church plants and churches in this part of the world should replace preached sermons with participatory Bible discussions. And they feel even more strongly that if preaching must be present at all, then it should absolutely not be the foreigner doing it.
The reason this is poor contextualization is that these feelings and opinions seem to be based entirely on the missionaries’ own opinions, culture, training, and baggage, and not on that of the locals at all.
Yet very few missionaries seem able to see this.
Most foreign workers here would heartily resonate with the idea that, as I heard it put yesterday, “I didn’t come here to reproduce white guy monologues.” But few are asking themselves why they feel this way – and crucially, whether or not any of their local friends feel the same.
Instead, much of the missionary community has become an echo chamber, reinforcing the idea that preaching, and especially foreigners preaching, is bad contextualization – and therefore to be discarded. As it turns out, however, this is a huge assumption. And one, as I’m increasingly convinced, without any local evidence to back it up.
See, on the level of cultural values and practices, our Central Asian locals highly prize experts and expertise. Whether in the realm of education, government, medicine, art, or religion, when locals want to learn or teach something, they seek out an expert who will proceed to educate the community (often giving out certificates when they’re done). This teacher, ironically, will almost always do this by means of a monologue, a lecture. In fact, the same word is used in our local language for any kind of public teaching like this, whether it be an address, a speech, or a sermon. Every day, all day long, this kind of public oratory is happening here on television, on the radio, on social media, in tribal gatherings, in schools, and in meeting halls. The idea of the wise expert is so prominent and respected here that in our community of Caravan City, one of the most honorable ways to greet a random man on the street is to address him as “Teacher” – whether he actually is a teacher or not.
But perhaps, one might think, it’s different inspiritualsettings. To the contrary, week in and week out for 1,400 years, locals have been going to a mosque to hear a monologue, an Islamic sermon. Well, what about before Islam came? Our area had a strong presence of ancient Christianity. Weekly Christian sermons would have been happening in local churches here for 500 years before Islam arrived, with some of the most famous preachers being originally from other nations in the region. What about before Christianity, then? Turns out our area also had a strong Jewish community, which means that weekly Jewish public reading of the Law & Prophets and teaching based on it would have been taking place in the local synagogues for several hundred years before the coming of Christianity. This is quite the history. We are looking at over 2,000 years of local precedent for preaching of one sort or another.
Not surprisingly, given this precedent, if you were to gather a group of our Central Asians today who want to learn about the Bible and then ask them what they expect that kind of activity to look like, they would tell you that they want to be taught (i.e. lectured) by a religious expert. And if possible, they would prefer that the expert be a credentialed foreigner.
Do most missionaries listen to them when they express these expectations? Do they honor this contemporary local preference, one backed by thousands of years of local precedent? Nope. Instead, they assert that preaching is Western, not actually contextual. And they then proceed to import a form that is radically foreign – informal, inductive group study, casually facilitated by a “coach” or “a trainer of trainers” – someone who is not supposed to have the authority of a teacher or an expert. Then, these missionaries go on to assure themselves that they are, in fact, using methodology that is so much more contextual and effective than previous generations of colonial missionaries with their imported Western methods.
To be clear, our locals do not gather on their own for informal, inductive study of a religious text, facilitated by a “coach” or “trainer” or some other Socratically-minded sort-of-but-not-really-leader. There is no local precedent for this kind of methodology. So, when locals are told over and over again by the foreign Christians that they have to do this in order to be good disciple makers, they initially find it very disorienting. This disorientation leads to questions like, “Why are we awkwardly meeting in a house and not in a church or official space?” “Who is in charge here and why aren’t they taking charge of this time?”, “Why won’t the person who is supposed to be the teacher tell us the correct answer instead of hinting and asking us these unfamiliar questions?”, and “Do you know a real priest or pastor who can actually explain things to us?”
Sadly, our locals are also not trained by their education system in critical thinking. This means they can’t easily jump into reading a text, summarizing it in their own words, and finding its main point. And because they’re from a high context, high power distance culture, they often don’t know how to comfortably navigate these informal, “organic” times of group Bible study. Yes, they can certainly learn how to do these things over time. I myself have trained many local believers in group inductive group Bible study (for reasons I’ll get into below).
But the key thing I want to draw out first is the sheer magnitude of the disconnect going on here. Many missionaries in our region are convinced they are doing something closer to the local culture by choosing informal, inductive group study instead of preaching. And yet in reality, the exact opposite is happening. This can only mean that the missionaries are deceiving themselves, importing a radically foreign form that is far stranger to locals than preaching would be, and all the while believing they are doing the complete opposite.
Once you see how upside down all of this is, you can’t unsee it. It would be like a foreign exchange teacher coming to the US who is convinced that bowing is the more authentic way that Americans greet one another, and that waving or shaking hands are outdated foreign forms. So, he insists on bowing and making all of his American students bow also when they greet him and one another. The American students don’t know why this foreign teacher keeps insisting that they bow to one another, since it’s not something they’ve naturally been brought up to do. This teacher is not operating in the normal cultural code of form and meaning as they understand it. But the teacher tells all his colleagues back home that he has adopted this method of greeting in order to be more American in his relationships, more like the locals. It’s not just that he’s getting it wrong. He’s confident in his take on American culture, when in reality, he’s actually deluded, the one who is, in fact, guilty of importing the foreign method. To make our analogy even more complete, imagine that the vast majority of foreign exchange teachers in the US believe this same thing.
Why is the blind spot regarding preaching so powerful among missionaries among the unreached, especially if it’s not being reinforced by the locals themselves? Here, I think a number of powerful factors are combining. First, there is the place where Western/global evangelical culture currently finds itself – a place of overreaction to the structures and methods of the past. This pendulum-swing away from the methods of our forefathers includes strong negative vibes regarding things like institutions and preaching. Missionaries are misdiagnosing the unhealthy churches they grew up in and placing the blame erroneously on things like preaching and formal organization. They end up on the field, not exactly sure what a healthy church is, but awfully convictional about the fact that they don’t want it to look like the churches back home, the very churches that are funding them.
Second, popular missiology and missions training drill into new and veteran missionaries a false narrative about what is and is not effective and contextual on the field. Even if a missionary personally benefited from preaching and enjoys sitting under it themselves, all the loudest voices from missiology and pre-field training tell them that that 45 minute sermons are something must be left back in the homeland, and not something to introduce among the baby churches of their focus people group – who, it is claimed, deserve the opportunity to do church in a more pure, New Testament manner, unsoiled by modern Western accretions like preaching.
Third, missionaries bring preconceived notions with them about people groups in this part of the world. They carry deeply held assumptions about what is normal for Muslim people groups, such as the belief that they will prefer to meet in house churches and do discussion-based study, if only the foreigners would get out of the way and give the locals the chance to be true to themselves and their culture. Preconceived notions are unavoidable. But they must be tested once we are actually living among a people group, and if necessary, discarded.
In the face of this powerful triad of their own cultural baggage, the voices of the missiologists, and their own assumptions, missionaries can spend years on the field completely blind to the fact that their aversion to white guy monologues is mostly a reflection of themselves, and not really a reflection of the locals at all.
However, preaching is good contextualization. I believe this, yes, because it fits with the desires, expectations, and forms of this particular culture. But that point only matters if the form itself is, first, biblical. I firmly believe it is biblical, although when it comes to this question in particular, the theologians and pastors do not agree with the missiologists. Whenever this happens regarding biblical interpretation, I’ve learned you almost always want to trust the theologians and pastors, not the missiologists. This is because the former group is more gifted and wired to be careful with the text of Scripture, while the latter group is often gifted and wired as passionate pioneers and practitioners. This otherwise good gifting comes with an unfortunate downside – the temptation toward sloppy use of the text to justify mission methods. For example, when mission leaders claim that faithful preaching as we’ve known it in church history is not required because it’s not a method rapid or reproducible enough to “finish the task.” As the logic goes, 1) Our church/disciple multiplication methods must catch up to the rate of lost people going to hell, 2) Preaching isn’t rapidly reproducible enough for this exponential rate of growth, therefore, 3) Preaching must not be biblical and should be replaced with participatory Bible studies not dependent upon a qualified teacher – just like we see in Acts!
In reality, the biblical case for preaching is really not that hard to establish from even a cursory overview of the New Testament. Jesus preached monologues to his disciples and others, such as the sermon on the mount (Matt 5-7). The apostles preached evangelistic monologues, as recorded in the book of Acts, as well as preaching to groups of only believers (Acts 2, Acts 20). The book of Hebrews is a good example of a local church monologue, a sermon for believers, adapted into a written form. The New Testament church found its primary model in the Jewish synagogue, where preaching and teaching – monologues – were taking place weekly in the first century (Acts 13:13-43). Finally, add to all this biblical witness the uniform witness of church history that preaching is an apostolic practice (1 Tim 5:17) handed down to us from generation to generation of God’s people.
Because we can draw clear lines like this connecting preaching to the Bible, and clear lines connecting preaching to the strengths and forms of our local culture, I therefore believe that preaching is sound and important contextualization. Yes, even if it’s a foreigner doing it. That leads me to the position that those on the mission field who reject preaching are, in fact, doing poor contextualization. This is because they are missing, first, that it’s biblical, and second, that it’s locally effective. Good contextualization should be able to see both, but for some reason, many missionaries can’t yet perceive either.
Okay then, since I believe preaching is a sound method, does it then follow that group inductive Bible studies are poor contextualization? Not at all. Inductive Bible study is, in fact, sound and important contextualization as well. First, this is because it can also be easily grounded in the Bible (Acts 8:26-35, 17:11, 18:26). But second, when it comes to how inductive Bible study connects to the culture, the way in which it is good contextualization is different from the way that preaching is good contextualization. Inductive Bible study is good contextualization because it directly connects, not with a strong precedent in the local culture, but with a crippling weakness in the local culture. Remember, good contextualization will not only utilize redeemable inside forms but also introduce outside forms intentionally when there is an area of the local culture that is non-existent or woefully underdeveloped.
This is why, over the years, we have labored to preach and to raise up preachers while also laboring to lead inductive Bible studies and raise up locals who can do the same. Both forms are good contextualization because they are both biblical, though one runs with the grain of the culture while the other runs against it. Both, ultimately, serve the church. They are not meant to be pitted against one another, but to powerfully work hand-in-hand.
To do contextualization well, we must be able to see the local culture for what it actually is. Unfortunately, the scales of our own cultural background, assumptions, and training can blur our vision and prevent this kind of clear-sightedness. This is what seems to be going on given so many missionaries’ opposition to preaching in unreached places.
Today’s missionaries among the unreached overwhelmingly have an aversion to preaching, to white guy monologues, or even local guy monologues, for that matter. Missionary echo chambers keep reinforcing this belief. My hope is that someday they will come to see this for what it truly is – a strange aversion indeed. And one that is not ultimately serving the local believers.
We need to raise 32k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The first sermon I ever preached was to a bunch of Melanesian inmates serving time for murder.
Uncle Mike, a missionary friend from a charismatic evangelical background, had a ministry at a nearby prison, the one the provincial government designated for hardened killers. Although, you’d never know this from visiting these prisoners and worshipping alongside them at the services that Uncle Mike conducted. On the contrary, in spite of their hardened muscles and cut jawlines, the inmates seemed kind and respectful and even humble. Yet each person there who wore the faded blue and red uniform had murdered other human beings – crimes that were most often carried out with machetes, homemade shotguns, or more powerful weapons smuggled in from neighboring countries.
However, I learned from Uncle Mike that a small group of these prisoners had professed faith and a new church of sorts was forming within the prison. In addition, many others were also willing to gather for a service. This was prison in Melanesia, after all, so there wasn’t that much to do anyway.
I visited this prison with Uncle Mike and his family several times during my senior year of high school. I was glad to tag along, to observe the ministry, and to try to get into gospel conversations with the inmates who were willing to talk. But I never expected to preach. So Uncle Mike’s request came as quite a surprise.
“Hey, A.W.! Would you like to preach when we visit the prison on Easter Sunday?”
“Um… preach?”
“Yes! Preach. Preach a short sermon. I think you’d do great.”
“Uh… okay. But I’ve never preached before.”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s Easter! Just preach the gospel.”
And just like that, I had accepted my very first preaching engagement. I decided on 1st Corinthians 15, verses 12-28 if I remember correctly. Uncle Mike had told me to preach the gospel, and it was Easter Sunday, so I thought a straightforward text on the reality and importance of Jesus’ resurrection would be a good way to go.
I remember very little about the content of the sermon itself. I know that at that point I hadn’t received any training yet on how to study for, organize, and then actually preach a sermon. But I took to my task with all the gusto of a confident 18-year-old who has been filling his head with Passion sermons and missionary biographies.
I do remember including a bizarre illustration that I had recently read in the local newspaper. Some farmer in our region had successfully performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a chicken (so, technically mouth-to-beak?) and the chicken had – amazingly – come back to life. I included this illustration in an attempt to contrast near-death experiences and resuscitations with the resurrection of Jesus. “The resurrection of Jesus is categorically different from what happened to this chicken!”
Needless to say, the lackluster response from my audience of convicts did leave me wondering if perhaps they didn’t find the story about the chicken CPR quite as funny as I did.
As I wrapped up my sermon in the local trade language, I leaned on my Baptist upbringing to transition to an altar call of sorts.
“With every head bowed and every eye closed, I want you to think about the good news you heard today about the death and resurrection of Jesus. And if anyone here wants to believe and be born again (literally “to turn your soul/stomach” in the local language), then just raise your hand. No one is watching you, every head bowed and every eye closed, just raise your hand.”
At this point, Uncle Mike thought it best to intervene. With all the fire of a veteran charismatic preacher, he cued the worship leader to begin banging the guitar, strode up next to me, and proceeded to bellow to the crowd,
“Jesus didn’t suffer and die in private! Jesus suffered and died in public! So, if you want to repent and follow Jesus, you need to do so publicly! Don’t be ashamed of Jesus! No! You stand up in front of everyone and give your life to Jesus! Open your eyes and come up here and follow Jesus!”
As the believers began singing and Uncle Mike kept hollering, I just stood there, a bit taken aback, though not at all upset that Uncle Mike had deemed it best to take over the invitation part of the service. In fact, at that point a full dozen men suddenly stood up, came to the front, and were now being prayed for by Uncle Mike as he laid hands on their heads, shouting out his confident prayers. He motioned for me to do something similar with a couple of the other men who were now kneeling on the packed dirt floor in front of me. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but if these men wanted to pray to follow Jesus, then I was all in to try and help them do so. I kneeled down next to them, walked them through a basic gospel outline, and prayed with them.
Afterward, the inmate who was the leader of the prison believers came up and thanked me publicly for preaching.
“And I think,” he continued, “this was maybe the first time Brother A.W. has ever preached.” He said this last part with a hint of a smile, just enough for me to pick up on the fact that it was probably a pretty rough sermon to listen to, all things considered.
I left the prison that day very encouraged. Not necessarily that my sermon had been good or powerful, but that God had used it in spite of it all. How had it happened that after a haltering, first-time, chicken-CPR, second-language sermon from a scrawny white kid, twelve hardened murderers had wanted to give their lives to Jesus? The answer, I realized, must be in the gospel itself, in the power of the Word of God.
After lunch at Uncle Mike’s that day, I picked up a missions magazine from his coffee table. There was an advertisement inside it for Christians to spend six months to a year in an Islamic Central Asian country, sharing the gospel.
“Huh,” I thought to myself, “Now that sounds really radical. Maybe someday I could share the gospel somewhere like that. Although, Muslims kind of freak me out.”
Little did I know that two years after that sermon, I would be in that very Central Asian country, taking part in the same program I saw advertised in the magazine that day. And just like in the prison, I would see God take some very imperfect evangelism and do something with it that was downright astonishing.
I’m so thankful Uncle Mike gave me a chance to preach in the prison that Easter. That first sermon may have been the worst one I’ve ever preached. But it’s the only one where I’ve seen a dozen men stand up and want to give their lives to Jesus.
We will be fully funded and headed back to the field when 31 more friends become monthly or annual supporters. If you would like to join our support team, reach out here. Many thanks!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Frontier church planting and missions can helpfully expose hidden weaknesses in Christianity where it is more established. Like trying to carve a homestead out of the wilderness, there’s something stark and clarifying about planting churches where there are none. You quickly find out there are certain very important skills and tools that you need, but which you didn’t really prioritize back home.
For us, our time on the field has exposed that many complementarian churches are not training even their most gifted women in how to teach and preach the Bible. They are training their women to value good teaching and preaching from the Bible, and to discern good teaching and preaching from the fluff – and these are very good things. Yet it needs to be said that sitting under good preaching and recognizing it is not the same thing as being trained in how to do it. One might sit under good preaching for decades and not be able to prepare for and deliver a good lesson or sermon. This is because training is needed that shows, behind the scenes, what the process looks like to faithfully study, structure, write, and deliver a sermon or lesson. And then that training needs to be cemented with practice.
When complementarian churches send their women to the mission field, where ministry must often be done in gender-segregated environments and where female missionaries vastly outnumber male missionaries, these women are finding themselves in contexts where teaching or preaching to other women is needed. However, they suddenly realize that they are unequipped to study a text, prepare it to be taught, and then deliver it skillfully. Once again, years of sitting under faithful teaching and preaching will not often lead to the ability to reproduce that teaching or preaching. Nor will years of personal and small group Bible study, as valuable as these experiences are.
This is a curious oversight because we convictional complementarians are not against women teaching and preaching. We just believe that God in his wisdom has designated specific environments for that kind of ministry to take place. There is some variation among complementarians on what is biblical and what is not, but in general, most believe that women are called to teach and preach authoritatively to other women and to children (Titus 2:3-5). And that certain forms of public verbal ministry are also beneficial in the broader mixed congregation as well, such as prayer, testimonies, and other related forms of sharing (1 Cor 11, 1 Cor 14:26, Acts 21:9). All of these common forms of ministry by women are understood as taking place under the authority of the church’s pastors, and can and do take place without women functioning in the authority, office, or role of elders/pastors/overseers. This kind of posture is, in my view, the best way to thread the needle given the nuanced picture the New Testament gives us for women in the church. It’s not a simple all-or-nothing, but a thoughtful yes and thoughtful no.
I assume that most of my readers will be complementarian, but even if that is the case, it must be repeated that we believe these distinctions are those of spiritual role, not of spiritual value or equality, nor necessarily of ability. Men and women are indeed created different in important ways, but they are both made equally in the image of God, and in Christ they are both equal coheirs of eternal life (1 Pet 3:7, Gen 1:27). Men and women can both possess strong gifts of teaching and preaching. But we believe that the Bible teaches that God has ordained that only qualified men take the role and ministry of authoritative teacher and preacher when the church is gathered for worship as a spiritual family. In our postmodern age, God’s reasons for doing this are increasingly hard for us to resonate with and understand, but it’s precisely places like this where we find out if we are Christians of the Book, rather than merely Christians of our particular slice of time and culture.
We should remember that women and children make up approximately three-quarters of most churches. That means that certain women will be spiritually qualified to teach and preach to around 75% of those in the congregation. Men won’t sit under the teaching and preaching of these women, but that’s no reason to assume that women don’t need training for the many opportunities they have to serve the other three-quarters of the church body. Few would say they want lower quality teaching and preaching in our kids’ and women-only gatherings, but if we’re not actually training the women in our churches to teach and preach, then we are in some sense showing that we feel a subpar ministry of the word for the women and kids is just fine after all.
To bring it back to a frontier missions context, if my wife or a woman on my team overseas has the chance to preach the word to a room full of Muslim or believing Central Asian women, I want her to bring it. We need her to be able to teach or preach in a way that is faithful to the text and in a way that is skillful so that the hearer is not distracted by an unclear or poorly structured message. But most of our female colleagues currently being sent to the mission field will need to receive this kind of training after they arrive, because they’re not getting it from their sending churches and seminaries. If we’re not training our missionary women in these ways, some of our most gifted saints, then are we training any women in this way?
My wife and I have raised this issue in a number of contexts over the years and the response tends to be pretty lukewarm. My sense is that there is an emotional discomfort with introducing more formalized teaching and preaching training for women because of a fear that that might somehow lead toward something egalitarian down the line. How exactly this would happen is unclear. But that anxious feeling is enough to keep us from wrestling with the problem until we have clarity – and then actually changing our structures to account for the need. Yet there is nothing about training complementarian women to teach and preach that means they will somehow become egalitarian in the process. In fact, if they are receiving better training in rightly dividing the word, chances are they’ll become even more established in their convictions.
Similar to Christians who won’t partner with others who differ theologically because of a vague fear of compromise, Christians who won’t train women to teach and preach because of a similar angst first need to pursue greater clarity. Once they have conscience-clarity on the places and times where women are called and free to teach and preach, then they can go about the practicalities of equipping them for this ministry without fear. But if that basic work of clarity is not done, the anxious fog of potential compromise will often keep any movement from happening.
But would women preaching or teaching to other women or to children somehow undermine the elders’ ministry of the word? This is the main thrust of the objections we’ve heard over the years. This could indeed happen if such preaching and teaching were happening independently of pastoral leadership (the same goes for lone ranger men preaching and teaching). But healthy churches often train and raise up men to preach and teach who themselves do not become pastors, and this is understood to be simply another way the saints are equipped to do the work of the ministry. When a faithful brother is mentored in teaching and preaching and then goes on to do this at a men’s breakfast, at the homeless shelter, or at a student gathering, this is not viewed as a threat to the pulpit – but instead a submissive extension of it. The same can be true of women preaching and teaching other women inside and outside of the church.
What would it take for complementarian churches to provide this kind of training for their women who are preparing for ministry contexts such as the mission field, church planting teams, or women’s ministries? This will require not just answering the concerns and ambiguous fears we might have, but also creating structures that are more fully consistent with our beliefs.
At the very least, training and practice are needed. Women must be given access to training that will help them learn how to teach and preach expositionally – such as the excellent Simeon Trust workshops. But then, just like any learner, they will need opportunities to practice that skill on the front end in order to become proficient. They will also need opportunities to practice over time so that they don’t grow rusty, but instead steadily improve. The local church is the very best place for these opportunities to be offered.
Practically, many local churches don’t yet have women who can lead this kind of training, so pastors will need to find appropriate ways to listen to and give feedback to women who are learning to teach and preach. Can this be done without violating the principle that women should not teach or exercise authority over a man (1 Tim 2:12)? Given the fact that the pastors are present to train and assess, I would contend that there is no problem with the authority dynamics going on here. After all, a bible college student taking Preaching I is not somehow exercising authority over his professor as he preaches his sermon for a grade. For churches who might not be comfortable with this, there may be gifted women in sister churches who can instead lead this kind of time.
But I imagine the greatest hurdle toward training women to teach and preach is simple busyness. Faithful pastors are often swamped with the many needs of ministry. So, in the place of training, a very understandable trust and grateful relief are extended to the servant-hearted women who fill the teaching roles needed in the church. This may be accompanied by the (faulty) assumption that since these women are sitting under the faithful preaching of the word week in and week out, that will be enough. Or, that these women will be able to train themselves through reading, podcasts, and other resources – and to be fair, some do. But many will struggle, wishing they had the chance to apprentice in this weighty and dangerous work. It’s very understandable that pastoral busyness has prevented women from being trained to teach and preach, but surely even the busiest church could get creative and fit in a Saturday morning training every quarter or so. In the end, we will prioritize what we value.
Let us consider how much better it would be if we intentionally equipped our sisters to teach and preach. This is so that when they find themselves in the appropriate contexts, they are free to bring it – to proclaim the word faithfully and skillfully because they’ve seen it modeled. But more than that, because they’ve also been trained, given chances for practice and feedback, and given the freedom and trust to go out and do it well.
I know this would make a difference on the front lines of the mission field. I’d wager it would make a difference in your local church as well.
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Our home church in Kentucky is quite diverse. Over the years, there has been in-service translation in a number of different languages. Currently, we have a crew of Afghan believers who sit up in the balcony. One of them with good English translates the sermon for his friends sitting around him. Occasionally, a brother preaching will use a particularly confusing idiom and I will glance up at their section, wondering if the translator will even make an attempt at that one or just let it go. There are times where he doesn’t seem to know what to do with a given phrase, and even from far away I can see the struggle. Should he try to translate it, and risk communicating the wrong meaning, or just let it go and hope it wasn’t too important of a point?
The same thing that makes idioms so useful (and even fun) is what also makes them so dangerous. Idioms are phrases that vividly communicate a package of meaning in their local language context, but a meaning that can’t be understand from the direct sense of the words themselves. Because they are missing the cultural and historical context, an outsider listening isn’t able to understand that the meaning of the whole is completely different from the meaning of the parts. Consider English idioms such as “break a leg” or “shoot the breeze.” If you were an English learner, how would you ever guess that these phrases mean “good luck” and “casual conversation,” respectively?
This can be true even in the same language, as I have I sometimes learned the hard way. “Shotgun wedding” did not mean what I thought it did. And yes, I learned this by using it in the wrong way around my future in-laws. Growing up as an American in Melanesia with missionaries from other English-speaking countries, we also found out that there were certain phrases of everyday American English that had very problematic meanings in other dialects of English. “Say I had a nose-bleed, not what you would say in America,” is one of these early lessons that I remember receiving from an Australian auntie.
But if idioms can be problematic even from one dialect of a language to another, they are exponentially more problematic when it comes to translation from one language to another. I’ve written before about the hazards of second-language sermons, where you think that saying “we trust in the person and work of Christ” means, simply, trusting in who Jesus is and what he did. But your trusty local-believer-sermon-checker just laughs and tells you that you just said we trust in the relatives of Jesus, since “person and work of” is a local idiom for someone’s kinfolk. Never mind when you offhandedly say things like “on fire for Jesus.”
When preaching in another language, one learns quickly to purge your English manuscript from as many idioms as possible, since the idioms of your language almost never translate directly – and even seemingly-direct phrases can prove to be local idioms. But if you are not preaching in another language, and instead preaching in your own tongue, it’s all too easy to forget about your idioms. If any of your congregation are non-native English speakers, or if there is any translation going on in your service, then for the sake of clarity, you’ve got to watch your idioms.
If you want to pay more attention to clarity in this area, here are some practical ways to do this:
Know your audience. Watching your idioms is very helpful if your audience is linguistically diverse. But if you are speaking (or writing, as I am here) primarily to native English speakers or those with very high levels of English, this is not as much of a concern.
Make sure your main points are not expressed in idiomatic language. This ensures that everyone present is at least able to understand the main outline of your teaching. Instead of “Christian, Jesus calls the shots,” say, “Christian, Jesus is our leader.”
Scan your manuscript beforehand for any idioms that could be replaced with simpler, more direct language. Then, replace as many of them as possible.
If you really like a given idiom, you can still use it, just be sure to define it when you use it. A simple half-sentence definition following the idiom means you can (ahem) have your cake and eat it too.
Regularly ask your translators or non-native English speaking attendees if there are phrases you use that are hard to understand. If you have a regular rhythm of sermon review, this could fit well into that time. If you have not learned another language, you might be unaware of what is idiomatic speech versus literal. In this case, believers from other language groups can help you learn how to “see” the idioms your language is full of.
Americans, watch your sports idioms. This is a very common area where American preachers, preachers, and writers assume common understanding when it’s often not there.
Pray for interpreters and translators. Their job is not easy and they often have limited time to weigh the pros and cons of a more meaning-based translation vs. word for word. Strive to make their job easier, not harder.
Preachers, our goal is clarity. Paul asks for prayer that he might make his proclamation of Christ clear, which is how he knows he ought to speak (Col 4:3-4). If Paul needed help with this, then so do we. Paying attention to our idioms can be one part of how we strive for greater clarity.
I’ll leave you with a classic video that highlights what can happen if you are preaching through translation. While it’s rarely ever this bad, many a missionary can indeed resonate with what is parodied here.
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The sermon was a rough one. The visiting American pastor never had us turn to a specific text. Instead, his half hour encouragement was a creative string of allusions to bible stories, anecdotes, and illustrations. Everyone in the gathering who had gotten out their bibles eventually put them away.
I sighed and looked around the room. Once again, half a dozen locals were attending the international church service. It was bad enough that the expat community was being served the equivalent of spiritual yogurt water (in case you’re not familiar with yogurt water, it’s not very much by way of sustenance). But locals tend to view Western pastors with a kind of awe, and often accept any content or form of teaching as faithful and worthy of emulation – simply because of the category of person who is delivering it.
I grimaced, seeing that a couple of our church-plant’s English-speaking local guys were in attendance, Darius* and Alan*. They seemed to be focusing intently on the sermon.
My wife and I shifted in our seats uncomfortably and I reminded myself that the mission field is merely a reflection of the state of evangelicalism in the sending countries. It’s not realistic to believe that our corner of Central Asia will somehow be isolated from some of the West’s more unfortunate Christian-ish exports. Joyce Meyer has already been translated into the local language, anti-Trinitarian cults have made their appearance (and are allegedly financing one of our former leaders-in-training), and the satellite TV channels are full of Benny Hinn-styled preachers. At least this sermonette’s main point was to encourage us to not be discouraged in sharing the gospel. Not a bad aim at all. But alas, the method and modeling were definitely lamentable.
After the service was finished, Darius made his way over to me.
“So, what did you think of the sermon?” he asked.
I bit my lip and half-smiled/half-grimaced, not sure what I should say. Darius has not always been the strongest when it comes to discernment, and tends to be quite drawn to the novel and the exciting. But he leaned in.
“That guy didn’t even have a text!” Darius whispered loudly, gesturing wildly with both his arms in the expressive body language of our locals (I have often maintained that our people group’s intonation and hand gestures make them the Italians of Central Asia). “He just told a bunch of stories… and he even added some details that aren’t there!”
My eyebrows rose in welcome surprise. Darius was not taken in by the creative delivery. Instead, his new – but apparently growing – convictions of ministry alarm bells had been going off.
“Darius,” I told him, “I’m very encouraged that you were concerned about that sermon. You’re right. He didn’t have a text he was explaining. He never asked us to open our Bibles. He did mess up some of the details of the Bible stories he told. Take note, when we have an opportunity to feed the people of God, we should attempt to prepare a feast, not merely pass out some snacks.”
Darius smiled and threw up his hands again. “What can I do? I learned from you guys about preaching.” Then he made his way over to the table where the sunflower seeds and chai were set out.
This final comment was particularly encouraging and humbling. My teammate and I who serve as temporary elders of our church plant are not eloquent preachers in the local language. Perhaps we will be five or ten years down the road, but right now we make it our aim to simply be clear, and to model basic expositional preaching in a second language – that is, preaching that makes the main points of the text the main points of the sermon and which seeks to faithfully explain the intent of the author. I’m still too tied to my manuscript. My colleague has more freedom in this way, but faces his own unique challenges while preaching in the local tongue from an English outline to our small group of believers. We often make comical language mistakes.
“We are insane,” instead of “We are not complete yet,” and “What should you do if you have a heart attack when you want want to give an offering?” instead of “What if you have a divided heart…?” have been a couple of our more recent bloopers. May God bless the long-suffering ears of these local believers who sit under our teaching week after week.
We have deeply invested in the simple method of steady, weekly, regular proclamation and explanation of God’s word. No flash, no bling. We sit in a circle of chairs and the preacher sits with another chair in front of him to serve as his pulpit. We took a couple years to get through Matthew and are currently taking a couple years to get through John, interspersed now and then by pressing topics or a recent series on the characteristics of a healthy church.
At times we are tempted to feel as if this steady sowing of God’s word is not accomplishing much. Much contemporary missiology calls into question the act of preaching altogether, alleging that it is a Western form import from the Reformation and not as effective as things such as DBS – Discovery Bible Studies. We don’t really buy those arguments though. Most of them betray a woeful ignorance of global church history (historically, preachers always, always emerge when new peoples are reached or awakenings take place), not to mention an under-baked understanding of the centrality of proclamation throughout the Scriptures.
The hardest doubts to handle have to do simply with how slowly people grow and change. After five years of this kind of unpacking of God’s word, how is it that more has seemingly not sunk in? How is it that character is not maturing more quickly and knowledge taking deeper root? Are we doing something wrong?
In faith, we believe that an unrelenting teaching and preaching ministry will eventually result in faithfulness and fruitfulness. But it sure is encouraging when we get to see a glimmer of that future. Darius noticed some very important things during that English church service. That noticing was evidence of growth in spiritual discernment. And spiritual discernment – that comes from soaking in the Word of God.
Preachers and teachers, keep on preaching and teaching, in season and out. And if by chance you ever get to preach on the mission field, please, for our sake, preach the Word. Don’t dumb it down either for the missionaries or for the locals.
Pass on serving mere yogurt water. Instead, serve them up a feast of some good solid meat.
Today I preached to our local church plant from John 12:44-50, a passage often titled “Jesus Has Come to Save the World.” Preaching today meant that yesterday I sat down with a local believer, *Harry, to go over the sermon manuscript, checking for language mistakes and smoothing out the grammar. For the dozens and dozens of times that I have now preached in the local language, God has never failed to provide me a local brother to help with this important prep work – and every time that local brother manages to save me from at least a couple proverbial foot-in-mouth situations. Last night was no exception.
“Jesus teaches us here that it is his words that will judge us on the last day,” I read out loud.
“When?” my friend asked, raising an eyebrow.
“The last day,” I repeated.
“A.W.,” Harry continued, “in our language ‘the last day’ means Friday, not the final day of judgement. To communicate your meaning you have to say ‘at the final age.'”
“Ohhh, thank you. I’m definitely not trying to say that Jesus’ words will judge us on Friday!”
“And when you say ‘the final age’ don’t forget that short vowel in the first syllable of ‘age.’ If you forget it you will be saying ‘at the final tongue!'”
We laughed, sipped our hot drinks, and continued. A little later my friend put up his hand again for me to pause.
“Stop,” he said, “Read ‘Jesus Messiah’ out loud for me again.”
“Jesus Messiah,” I repeated.
Harry shook his head. You are saying it too fast and skipping over the final throaty H in Messiah. When you said it just now, it sounded like you were instead saying ‘Jesus of the squeegee.'”
I chuckled. This was not the first time I had made this kind of mistake. Preaching through Ephesians years ago I had publicly proclaimed, “The Squeegee is our peace!” instead of my intended meaning, which was “The Messiah is our peace.” That tricky throaty H is one of the old nemeses of us English speakers attempting to learn this particular Central Asian tongue.
Idioms especially can be like hidden bombs, ambushing the innocent speaker who is merely attempting to speak in literal and clear ways. Just a couple weeks ago I was doing sermon checking with *Darius when I learned that I can’t say “the person and work of Christ” in that simple form.
“‘Person and work of’ together like that,” he told me, “is always an idiom for someone’s closest circle of relatives. You don’t mean to say that we are saved by the relatives of Jesus Christ, am I right?” He laughed. “That sounds kind of Catholic!”
Then there’s those tricky words that are spelled the same and sound the same, but differ in meaning based on the context and construction of the sentence. This kind of similarity between the local words for canary and shore led to one of my more famous blunders, when teaching through the parables of the Kingdom in Matthew.
“And then Jesus sat down in the boat, next to the canary, and began to teach about the kingdom of God.”
The local believers leaned into their Bibles trying to figure out where the song bird I was referencing had suddenly come into the text.
Last night Harry and I finished our editing work together around 9 p.m. I thanked him sincerely for his help, knowing that his investment of a couple hours with me would mean greater clarity for the rest of the church on the following day, Friday, when our church plant is able to meet.
As we parted ways I shook his hand and said to him, “See you on the last day, brother!”
“What?” he said back.
“Tomorrow is Friday. You know, thelast day.”
Harry laughed and shook his head. “Right! See you on the last day indeed.”
Entrusted to the Dirt 