WHEN YOU CROSS CULTURES - World Evangelical Alliance

THE CROSS-CULTURAL MESSENGER
is also fallen. Much of culture is neutral and can be affirmed. As the Lausanne
Covenant3 states in its section on Evangelism and Culture “because man is
God's creature, some of his culture is rich in beauty and goodness.” 4
In his commentary, John Stott explains “Culture may be likened to a
tapestry, intricate and often very beautiful, which is woven by a given society to
express its corporate identity.” 5
Common beliefs and customs are part of this tapestry. The Lausanne
Covenant warns against exporting “an alien culture” with the Gospel. The
Willowbank Report6 states, “Sometimes these two cultural blunders are
committed together, and messengers of the Gospel are guilty of a cultural
imperialism which both undermines the local culture unnecessarily and seeks
to impose an alien culture instead.” 7 All cultures ultimately must be tested and
judged by Scripture as the Lausanne Covenant affirms.
FUNCTION, FORM AND MEANING
Missionaries involved in church-planting must be particularly careful to
distinguish between function and form.
• A function is an essential activity with a purpose.
• A form is the pattern, structure or method used to perform the function.
New Christians need to express their beliefs and to worship in cultural
ways that are meaningful. They must have the freedom to reject alien cultural
patterns and develop their own. They are certainly free to “borrow” cultural
forms from others but they need to be meaningful.
A person with an Asian religious background would be accustomed to
falling prostrate in worshipping God rather than sitting on a bench with his
eyes closed. In Africa, drums are being used in some areas to summon people
to worship, although previously they were unacceptable.
In Bali, a council of church elders studied both biblical and cultural beliefs
and forms, and decided that a particular architectural style for their
congregations would clearly express their faith. Because the Balinese are a very
“visual” people, they expressed their faith in the Trinity by designing a
3 In July 1974, the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation in Lausanne, Switzerland, brought together 4,000 participants,
including evangelists, missionaries, mission leaders, theologians, pastors and national church leaders from 150 nations. A drafting
committee headed by John R.W. Stott incorporated the ideas of main speakers and submissions from hundreds of participants into
a document, now known as the “Lausanne Covenant”. The 15 tightly packed sections of the Lausanne Covenant spread the essence
of Lausanne’s emphasis on biblical world evangelisation, and helped spark what became known as “the Lausanne Movement”.
4 Section 10, Lausanne Covenant, Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation, 1974. The Lausanne Covenant can be found on the
Lausanne website
5 Lausanne Occasional Papers No. 3, The Lausanne Covenant - an Exposition and Commentary by John Stott, LCWE World Wide
Publications, page 26. This paper is available on the Lausanne website
6 The “Willowbank Report” is the product of a January 1978 consultation on “Gospel and Culture”, sponsored by the Lausanne
Committee for World Evangelisation and conducted in Willowbank, Somerset Bridge, Bermuda. Some 33 theologians,
anthropologists, linguists, missionaries and pastors attended. The report reflects the content of 17 written papers circulated in
advance, summaries of them and reactions to them made during the consultation and viewpoints expressed in plenary and group
discussions.
7 The Willowbank Report, LCWE, 1978. A copy of the Willowbank Report can be found in: Perspectives: on the World Christian
Movement, A Reader, Fourth Edition, 2009, Edited by Ralph D. Winter and Steve C. Hawthorne, William Carey Library, pages 506-
530. The report is also available on the Lausanne website
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