Gospel Contextualization in South Asia

Contextualization of the gospel is massively important in effective disciple-making. At the heart of contextualizing the gospel is the understanding that Christianity in America is not the only form of Christianity. Recently in a class I am taking on Byzantium and Islam, we learned that Christianity was the largest confessional community in Iraq of any religion. Christianity in the Late Roman Empire came in so many shapes and sizes and yet it was thriving all across the Eastern World. Even now we have to understand that God’s kingdom continually takes shape in nations all across the world. 

Recently, I was on an airplane and I sat next to a woman who was from Southern India and was living in Pittsburgh for a few months for a medical internship. We talked for our entire plane ride talking specifically about the contextualization of the gospel. She was a non-practicing Hindu and I told her that I was a Christian who had traveled to many countries to tell others about the gospel. I got to ask her many questions about Hinduism and how it operated in the specific region she was from. She articulated to me that Hinduism is very regional and the specific deity that your region identified as their main deity depended on generational stories that had been passed down. She then asked me what I had found to be the most effective way of sharing Christianity in Southeast Asia. The most effective way of sharing the gospel I had found in Southeast Asian cultures was through praying for healing and allowing those stories of healing to permeate throughout families. Most Christians in Southern Asian that I encountered had to come to faith through a personal testimony of healing or a story of healing from their family. 

Walking away from that conversation, I was struck at how the gospel was spread in a way that spoke to values already present in the culture. When considering gospel contextualization, it is important to remember that God’s heart is always to meet people where they are.