Mission is Contextual: Starting Where People Actually Are

I was watching coverage of the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza this week. The footage cut between Western diplomats in suits and Palestinian children playing in rubble. It was jarring. Two worlds. Two languages. Same moment, vastly different realities.

It struck me again: the gospel is always good news, but it lands in particular places, with particular people. If we want to take mission seriously, we need to take context seriously too.

This isn’t about changing the message. It’s about being like Jesus, who stepped into human history not in abstraction, but with sandals, dust, and a Galilean accent. He brings sight to the blind, fellowship to the excluded, and forgiveness to sinners. When Paul preached in the synagogues, he quoted Torah. When he preached at the Areopagus, he quoted Greek poets. When he preached to farmers he talked of a God who brought rain. Same gospel. Different window.

Contextualised mission means listening before speaking. It means understanding someone’s hopes and fears, their background and assumptions. It’s not about being trendy or chasing relevance—it’s about loving people enough to meet them where they are. If someone’s vocabulary doesn’t include “sin” but they feel deep shame, maybe we start there.

In Australia, our cultural assumptions are shifting faster than we can track. Post-Christian, pluralist, often cynical, but becoming spiritual again. Beneath all that, people still ache for purpose, beauty, forgiveness, justice and truth. People sense there is a spiritual dimension to life that is fundamental. The gospel speaks to all these things—but it won’t be heard if we don’t speak the language of our neighbours.

Mission is not one-size-fits-all. It never has been (though some thought it was in the 20th Century). It’s always relational, incarnational, and particular. That’s what makes it powerful. Not that we shout the same message louder, but that we learn to live it out with wisdom, humility, and context.

Jesus became one of us. That’s how the gospel started. And that’s still how it spreads.