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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
wise, the future remains unknown (Stetzer 2010c: 252). Different
forms of contextualisation might well be appropriated more by second-generation
believers (JdO 2010). At the same time, indigenous
Christians need to be able to (and enabled to) critique past and present
ways in which Christian mission has engaged their culture, as
Priest observes in Gill (2009: 184).
In closing, therefore, the reception or non-reception of C5 and
insider movements will tell us important things about not just others,
but also ourselves. We also need to reflect critically on our situated
point of view: from a distance, contextualisation or syncretism
in others might appear very clear, dualistically so, whereas from
within a locale, the same issues might be more blurred, sophisticated,
ambiguous, complex, or messy (Ridgway, in Gill 2009: 181; cf.
also Gill 2008: 6; and, differently, Ajaj 2010). And so, proximity
does not in and of itself confer clarity. Ridgway suggests that scriptures
in an indigenous language are an essential precursor to contextualisation;
so, too, is a willingness on the part of Western Christians
to not expect unfairly or xenophobically more of MBBs than is
expected culturally of converts in their own secular, materialist cultural
settings (Mallouhi 2009: 7-10; Richard 2009: 179-180). Nor
should any church anywhere remain unchanged by its contact with
Muslim peoples (Hoefer 2009). We begin an analysis of insider
movements from a different position if we assume that any denomination
or congregation is syncretistic in its worldview to some degree,
such that syncretism is the norm to be confronted also in ourselves,
not the simply aberrant exception, the Other (cf. Kim 2006:
24). Even this assumption, however, is never neutrally held (cf.
Winter 2008). Likewise, some degree of extraction – and of insertion
– is similarly unavoidable in following Jesus. These issues need
to be faced among different Muslim ministries, especially between
higher- and lower-spectrum individuals, ministries and congregations
living in close proximity to each other (cf. Ayub 2009: 31-32).
Given vast diversities of local lived experience within insider
movements, the C-scale helps describe and compare, but does not in
itself legitimate or critique. Nor does it adjudicate on how high a
tolerance for apparent contradiction is appropriate within frontier
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