Before contextualization, critical incarnational living: A study in discovering appropriate Southern Baptist missionary church planting roles among Chinese Malaysians

This dissertation was conducted for the purpose of discovering more effective means for Southern Baptist International Mission Board (IMB) church planting missionaries to accomplish the task of indigenous church planting, specifically, among Chinese Malaysians. For over fifteen years, the author has served as a IMB missionary. The field research interviewed 25 Chinese Malaysians and surveyed 450 Chinese Malaysians. Written reports, government data, books, and journal and periodical articles both informed and supplemented the field research.; The dissertation consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 presents the statement of the problem which seeks to discover and recommend appropriate church planting roles for IMB missionaries to play among Chinese Malaysians in order to plant an indigenous church. It also reviews related literature, develops a theoretical framework that will guide the study, and discusses the research methodology utilized in the study. Chapters 2 through 8 are divided into two major sections. Part One, Chapters 2 through 6, examines the unique features of the Malaysian context, with emphasis given to important social, economic, religious, and cultural factors related to the Chinese populace. More specifically, they identify twenty patterns of Chinese culture, the complex cultural context of Malaysia, the diverse Chinese people of Malaysia, the pluralistic nature of Chinese religion, and how Chinese Malaysians perceive Westerners, Christians, and Western Christians. Part Two, Chapters 7 and 8, discusses missiological and practical implications that derive from Chapters 2 through 6.; This dissertation explores relations between cultural context, indigenous church, church planting, and missionary role. It examines a particular cultural context in order to discover and recommend the practical implementation of planting an indigenous church. Moreover, it strives to discover the social identity of the host people—their national identity, their cultural identity, their ethnic identity, and their individual identity. Also, it focuses on how people perceive others. Additionally, it focuses on the collective identity as well as the individual identity of Chinese Malaysians. The approach I have used to discover and recommend appropriate church planting roles for missionaries in the Chinese Malaysian context is to understand a social setting characterized by complexity, diversity, and plurality and within this setting one finds multiple identities. It is argued that in multi-ethnic societies where individual identities emerge, there is a need for church planting missionaries to play incarnational roles. The author calls for missionaries to play roles that are less Westernized and less traditional, and more culturally relevant and indigenous in nature.