The second issue that confronts Stetzer's categories is that the categories themselves are based upon what I believe to be an unsustainable premise. Stetzer states in the article:

I believe that some are taking the same Gospel in the historic form of church but seeking to make it understandable to emerging culture; some are taking the same Gospel but questioning and reconstructing much of the form of church; some are questioning and revising the Gospel and the church.

To paraphrase, then, Stetzer seems to be saying that the desired outcome of contextual ministry is that the message remains the same, while the form can change (within scriptural bounds). It is this separation of content from form that I think is largely flawed. Is it possible to change the form while leaving intact the message?

One of the books on my (ever-growing, it seems) stack is The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture by Shane Hipps. This is an excellent book - in fact, I intend to blog more extensively on it in the next few weeks. The basic premise follows Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, "The medium is the message." While I don't want to enter an extended discussion of the book itself at this point, I am going to agree with Hipps' conclusions - form and content are inextricably linked.

Take, for example, the shift in understanding of the gospel that was brought about by the Reformation. There are very good reasons why the Protestant Reformation happened after the invention of Gutenberg's printing press and not before. Sola scriptura is a premise that is only sustainable in a literate society. To encounter God in the written scriptures in the Middle Ages was simply not possible for the vast majority of Christians - even if they were able to read, the expense of books would have prevented all but the most affluent from ever owning one. The introduction of the printing press, combined with translations of the scriptures into the vernacular languages of Europe, placed the scriptural text into the hands of the laity in a way that hadn't been possible before. The medium - in this case, the printed text - transformed the message into a gospel for individuals, shifting the course of church history.

Is it any wonder, then, that we encounter a shift in the understanding of the gospel now, at the beginnings of the twenty first century, when the last hundred years have brought about incredible transformations in the way that we store, transmit, access, understand, and use information? Hipps discusses, for one, the return of images as a conveyor of meaning. Images surround us - sitting here at my computer, I am struck by the number of images within my field of view that are attempting to communicate something to me, from the corporate logo on my laptop to the news feeds flickering on the television screen. Practically speaking, this represents a shift from sequential, linear, abstract thought to holistic, concrete, and intuitive thought. The media have shaped the way we process information - in other words, the messages we receive.

To Stetzer's categories, then, it's reductionistic to suggest that we can present the gospel using different media and not in some sense shift the way in which the message is heard. A change in form represents a change in message, even if that's only a shift in emphasis. Even for those communities that are in Stetzer's "Relevants" category - I'd assume he's thinking here of what I've heard called "candles and couches" - something changes with the form. This shouldn't be surprising upon reflection - if the form doesn't communicate anything, why change it? At the least, the use of visual media, with their inherent ambiguity of meaning, introduces the element of mystery and metaphor. Even if, at its worst, the form only suggests, "Jesus is cool and hip," the meaning has changed.

All of this, then, only points to an underlying reality - there is no such thing as an acontextual gospel. The gospel only exists as inculturated, incarnated truth - it's never an abstract concept floating in nowhereland for us to apprehend and import into our context. Stetzer's categories fail in assuming this acontextual state, resulting in a framework that is structurally unsound.

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