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CONTEXTUALIZATION

Chinese authorities were surprised to find that a machine designed to scare birds away from the Beijing airport did not work because the local birds did not speak the right language. The device known as a "scream machine" was imported from the United States and produced the recorded screams of American birds and the sounds of bird's natural enemies. The birds at the Beijing airport in Beijing apparently did not recognize the foreign sounds because they refused to budge.

The Beijing Evening News said, "The local birds did not understand the foreign language." Experts had to "translate" the bird noises from the United States, by recording noises of the bird's Chinese counterparts. The paper said workers were recording bird screams common to the Beijing area and were conducting tests with the new scare tactics.

—Reuters, Runway Scarecrow machine Lost in Translation, March 23, 2005. Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Jim Sandell.

If people are going to respond to the gospel, they will have to hear it in a language they understand. Certainly, I mean a language they speak, but I also mean within the context of a culture they resonate with.

1 Corinthians 9:22 (NASB) "To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some."