Contextual mission or missional contextualisation or whatever you call it …

Mark Driscoll has recently been in Sydney and stirred plenty of discussion. Most discussion has  focussed on the 18 points which Tony Payne at solapanel described delightfully as "Mark Driscoll's 18 Theses nailed to the foreheads of the assembled Anglican leaders in Sydney". (In fact there were a scattering of others there as well as Anglicans, though not myself). You can see the report and read a summary here.

He says that we have to be 'missional' and 'contextual', and that is what I wanted to talk about and see if anyone out there (hello if you are the reader!) has a view and wants to keep talking.

On the one hand I am all for missional contextualisation. What I mean by that is we think and speak in the context of culture and society. Inevitably theology is shaped by who we are and where and when we live. I don't think we need to apologise for that or try to avoid it. We should admit it and enjoy it. The questions that press on us and the way we'll answer them are part of theology and preaching  and should be. As a theologian I take it as one of my exciting and solemn duties to help students develop ways to  speak faithfully about God to their world from Scripture  So not only should be we contextual, we are missional; we speak (and write and act) because we are part of what God is doing in his world. Once we've prayed "Your kingdom come on earth" we recognise the mission. So our contextualisation is not mere accommodation or compliance with the culture, it has to be redemptive and so will be subversive and counter-cultural.

So far, so good (for me, anyway).

My fear is that missional contextualisation is short-circuited. We read the Bible carefully against its own horizon and then move to express that in our context with our own horizon, but don't engage with how the church has understood and expressed the gospel and lived in the past. Older forms of thought and life are abandoned with apparent ease. Older forms of worship are judged not culturally relevant and simply  jettisoned.  I don't want to lock us into traditionalism at all, but I want to be part of a church which drinks deeply of the ways of the past, appreciates it, and keeps some and transforms some and leaves some, but thoughtfully.

I think that is why I find myself changing sides on the question of contextualisation. Some days I insist on it, but others it feels so shallow. When it is done well in conversation with the past I love it. When it is the thoughtless preference of the present for the past I find it sickening.

Am I on the right track? Are there better ways to analyse and address the issues? How do I as a theology teacher help students learn the tradition in depth, but still be ready to re-express the gospel?