Well, this is one time where I think the title just about says it all.
I’ve been coaching a doctoral student on the intersections among learning style theories, generational differences and dynamics, and spiritual formation systems. After reflection on yesterday’s session, it occurred to me that part of what makes so-called contextualization a very different product is the paradigm of the contextualizer:
- In my observation, older generations and pragmatic-paradigm people in church leadership roles make changes to meet the felt needs of their audience, to match their programs to the desires of their “customers,” for maximum comfortability.
- Younger generations and holistic-paradigm people in Kingdom leader-developer roles adjust to meet the ways that those they work with are designed by God to participate at their best and most productive.
If this is anywhere near accurate, I think I’ll go with customization according to God’s providential design for a person’s productivity, not customer-ization according to personal desires for consumption, thanks. I’ll also skip on the consumerization on demand.
(For more on pragmatic versus holistic paradigms, see the category on Paradigm Profiling.)
June 12, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I wouldn’t have said it was so generational specific. I meet many young pragmatists and older holists.
June 12, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Hi Matt, and thanks for your comment. And … well … there I go again.
Although the title sort of said it all, the description muddled it all. Oh well. Maybe in a preponderance of words, there ends up less to ponder, not more.
I agree that there are holistic-paradigm people among older generations (e.g., ages 45+) and pragmatic-paradigm people among younger generations. As a generalization from what I’ve observed – granted, more in the US than internationally in the West and from an increasingly limited vantagepoint with so many more movements going on (who can keep up these days unless they’re paid to do so?) – the older holistics don’t seem to end up in typical church staff roles where they have authority to lead a paradigm transition. Many (if not most) of the older holistics I know work from side roles in churches or agencies, or off the official church radar from the sidelines, often teaming with younger generations.
Anyway, if I’d left generations out of the equations, I still have the same problem with the pragmatic paradigm and how it typically plays out in contextualization.
June 13, 2009 at 4:20 am
Some thoughts on contextualization here: http://mattstone.blogs.com/christian/2009/06/contextualization-is-often-misunderstood.html
Be interested in your thoughts.
June 13, 2009 at 7:27 am
Ooh – - looks like an important perspective! I skimmed the quote and will make an effort to get back to the quote and full article in the near future, Matt. As a linguist in the post-Babel world, it seems to me that all people groups have difficult tasks related to cross-cultural communication – both in clarity of our content and in respectfulness of our presentation, with prioritizing the gospel message without tainting it through accommodation. I’d already been drafting a short post about how much work it is to do this, as it is with related tasks of organizational transitions to keep ministries culture current. So … til later …
June 13, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Okay – I just posted some comments on Matt’s summation post after reading the entire (and very well balanced) article on Reclaiming Contextualization by Dr. Sills. Check out both:
Matt’s article – http://mattstone.blogs.com/christian/2009/06/contextualization-is-often-misunderstood.html
Dr. Sills’ article – http://davidsills.blogspot.com/2009/05/reclaiming-contextualization.html