This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Vision, Values and Structure, which you can download in it’s entirety here

Every generation needs to redesign or re-develop what the church could and should look like so that it remains connected to the culture it finds itself amongst. When we work cross-culturally, it is obvious that we need to contextualize both the gospel (what the words and concepts mean in that culture) and the structures (how we do things) if we are to connect at all to the people we are trying to reach. It is just as vital to contextualize to a generation, a socio-economic, an ethnic context.

The four main elements we need to work with are:

• The Message - while we must never add to or take away from the gospel as expressed in the Bible, it must be translated into the place we find ourselves.
  

• The Messenger - those who have embodied or incarnated the Message - people like you and I who are living the message of the gospel in such a way as to encourage as many other people as possible to follow.
  

• The Media - the various ways we carry or communicate the gospel. These obviously change with technological advances and culture changes. For example, websites, blogs, YouTube and social media were not mainstream communication forms even five years ago.

• The “Market” - our culture, society and communities are dynamic and ever-changing and so we must change with them, or be left behind as an irrelevant group.

The challenge and pleasure we have is to bring the unchanging Message to a dynamically moving Market, using appropriate Media and Messengers who embody the Message and are in the world but not of it.

DOWNLOAD GROW 2012 RESOURCES HERE

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