This is part 3 of a series exploring Novo’s foundational influences and 40 year history. Read part 1 here.
In our last post reflecting on historical roots that have equipped us for our contemporary mission of multiplying gospel movements, we focused on the first necessary component, Activating Prayer. The second critical component for gospel movements is Engaging Culture.
Engaging culture means wisely undertaking an array of activities and actions—all of Kingdom value in and of themselves—which serve as powerful “bridges of God” for the good news of Jesus to take root and spread in a particular context. Such engagement means meeting the felt needs of people in the name and power of Jesus.
A look through the historical archives of Novo’s development over the last 40 years reveals several key influences that equipped us to understand and live out a commitment to engaging culture. These ministry practices are second nature to many of our staff and their work in cultures around the world, always uniquely honed to the people and context of each place.
These efforts to engage with cultures in unique and strategic ways take creativity and innovation—two words we often use to describe the ethos of Novo staff. We believe creativity is critical to sparking and sustaining the gospel movements we long to see, precisely because it takes creativity and innovation to build effective bridges to Jesus in different contexts.
Early Growth in Cultural Engagement
The earliest roots for Novo’s high value of cultural engagement go back four years before the launch of the organization—to 1976, when Sam Metcalf (current Novo president) and Novo’s first president, Chuck Singletary, enrolled at the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary.
The School of World Mission was the first graduate school of its kind, pulling together the expertise of leading Christian scholars and practitioners in the fields of anthropology, church growth, leadership, theology of mission, and the history of the Christian movement. Donald McGavran, the school’s founder, was an advocate for a return to classical missions, with an emphasis on evangelism and church growth (what we call the Human Redemptive Priority). While service is good, McGavran taught, it can never take the place of reconciling people to God. We’ve internalized this belief as an organization, and it helps us to keep proper perspective as we seek to engage cultures through acts of love and service. While good, we realize that acts of loving service are never an end in and of themselves. We always want to be thinking about building those bridges so that people far from God can become committed followers of Jesus.
Because of their training at the School of World Mission, both Singletary and Metcalf were challenged to understand the Mission of God (the Missio Dei) through the lens of scripture. They embraced more fully the breadth of God’s redemptive plan to redeem people from all nations, the ta ethne, a theme throughout the entire Bible that is restated with power and clarity in Matthew 28:19–20. For this reason, while Novo began as a US-based ministry, we have always had the expectation of training, sending, and multiplying disciples across cultures throughout the globe. We began to act on this goal by the end of 1985, a mere five years after Novo began.
The School of World Mission not only influenced Novo’s international launch, but gave Novo a high view of culture and ethnicity. Novo’s international teams make a significant commitment to learning language and studying the culture of the people and places they are called to love and reach with the good news of Jesus. As “sent ones,” Novo missionaries enter each place with a learning posture, taking time to get to know people, and discerning what the real felt needs are. In this way, we seek to engage relationally in ways that are meaningful and build unique bridges for the good news of Jesus in each cultural context.
Novo’s understanding of engaging culture was further expanded in 1985 when InnerCHANGE was added. InnerCHANGE is the Novo ministry among the poor and seeks to make disciples of Jesus among the marginalized. InnerCHANGE teams move into such contexts, building trust through relationships, service, and partnerships with local leaders. The dedication of InnerCHANGE personnel to such hands-on, incarnational ministry has been a model for the rest of Novo in effective cultural engagement. “InnerCHANGE has influenced [Novo] in the direction of biblical holism,” Sam Metcalf writes, “meaning an understanding that in scripture, the evangelistic mandate cannot be divorced from the cultural mandate. While we are strongly committed to the priority of human redemption, the Missio Dei (mission of God) means extending the Lordship of Jesus over every aspect of life.”
The Word, Deed, Power Paradigm
After InnerCHANGE joined Novo, Metcalf dedicated his doctoral research to understanding ministry among the poor, particularly in urban settings, at a deeper theological and anthropological level. Ultimately, he articulated a framework for effective ministry called Word, Deed, Power, which has been foundational in how Novo approaches ministry. The basic premise is that all three components—the message of the good news (word), meeting felt needs (deed), and the supernatural presence of God (power)—are necessary for effective ministry. All three components inform how we should engage those who are far from God and the variety of cultural expressions where these people groups are found.
Today, in every context where Novo works, engaging culture and the specific application of the Word, Deed, Power paradigm looks a little different. Over the years, it has meant starting businesses to employ local people, a weekly pancake breakfast for street youth in San Francisco, tutoring and teaching vocational skills like carpentry to young people in Central America, building outhouses and a community center for a marginalized people group in Eastern Europe, or forming a support group for mums in poor neighborhoods in the UK. During the global pandemic of 2020, it has looked like networking and distributing food to the most struggling families, offering Discovery Bible Studies on Overcoming Fear to middle-class families, prayer-walking neighborhoods and cities, and offering to pray for people.
All of these activities emerge as Novo staff pay attention to the needs of people around them and find creative ways to respond in order to be the hands and words of Jesus in human form. We do this in many countries and cultures around the world, in vulnerable communities, and in the US cities some call home. We traverse cultural, linguistic, and geographic boundaries to be with anyone in need of the redemptive good news of Christ, sometimes at great cost and considerable sacrifice. And it’s all done with a commitment toward movements of the gospel being launched, sustained, and multiplied—where people have been reconciled to their Creator and bring their families, their friends, and their communities to new life in Christ.
Want to keep reading? Continue to part 4.