Alfie MosseSelf-Theologizing and Church Maturity
A recent blog post highlighted three books written by Christian Ukrainian authors and scholars. In my view, this points to an often-overlooked fourth metric for church maturity.
Most church planters are familiar with the traditional criteria for church maturity or an exit strategy. We often look for churches that demonstrate the three “selves”: self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating.
These three “selves” do not always develop in a linear way. From my observation, Ukrainian churches have shown a strong vision and trajectory for self-propagation. Their progress toward self-sustainability (self-supporting), however, has been less consistent. At times, churches have looked too quickly to the West for financial support. This is simply my perspective.
The Ukrainian Church as a Sending Church
By 2022, the Ukrainian church was not only self-propagating. In practice, it had also become a sending church. Ukrainian missionaries were already serving among some unreached people groups.
The full-scale invasion significantly slowed this momentum. Many missionaries lost their support. Some returned home, while others moved abroad. The ability to sustain existing workers and send new ones decreased.
Even so, the desire to take the gospel to unreached places has not disappeared. Many Ukrainians in the diaspora have planted churches. Partner seminaries continue to offer missionary training programs and internships. While there are fewer students, there are still students.
The Often-Overlooked Fourth “Self”
The fourth “self” is self-theologizing. I first encountered this term through D. A. Carson.
In The Gagging of God (1996), Carson writes that young indigenous churches can remain dependent on outside institutions for theological reflection, education, and resources. At its best, contextualization moves one step further. Churches should become not only self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating, but also self-theologizing. In other words, they should think through theology within their own context and contribute their voice to the global church.
As I understand this concept, a young indigenous church begins to produce theology shaped by its own context. Its voice joins the wider conversation of the global church.
For many years, SEND International’s strategy in Ukraine has aligned with this fourth “self,” even before we used that language.
SEND’s Long-Term Focus in Ukraine
SEND did not enter Ukraine as a church-planting mission because Ukrainians were an unreached people group. By almost any measure, Ukrainians are a reached people.
Instead, SEND focused on assisting church planting while also developing leaders so that Ukraine could become a sending nation. When we joined the SEND Ukraine team in 2001, this vision was clearly articulated.
Much of our work centered on theological education. Ukrainian seminaries and Bible schools trained biblically grounded local pastors and cross-cultural missionaries. Over more than thirty years, we saw the Ukrainian church move from an indigenous, self-propagating church to a sending church. More recently, it has become a suffering church.
Signs of Growing Self-Theologizing
In recent years, I have noticed what seems to be a significant and unexpected advance in self-theologizing.
For decades, our primary approach involved sending full-time and part-time professors to teach in seminaries and Bible schools. A second emphasis focused on translating high-quality English theological resources into Russian and Ukrainian. Both approaches have borne good fruit.
We have seen a growing number of Ukrainian pastors, missionaries, professors, and authors emerge as a result.
In 2022, we were all broken-hearted as we watched the full-scale invasion disrupt much of this progress. Many missionaries lost support. Professors and pastors either entered military service or left the country. Those who remained carried an overwhelming load. They trained new leaders while caring for internally displaced people and those suffering from war-related trauma.
Theology in the Midst of Suffering
Despite this disruption, evidence of self-theologizing continues to emerge within the Ukrainian church. This development has the potential to benefit not only Ukraine, but the global church as well.
The three books highlighted in the earlier blog post offer tangible evidence. They reflect theological reflection shaped by suffering, resilience, and lived experience. This points both to the work of the Spirit and to the strength of the Ukrainian church.
Carson’s Nuanced View
About a decade after The Gagging of God, Carson refined his thinking on self-theologizing.
Last year, Zondervan published the African Bible Commentary, edited by Tokunboh Adeyomo. Much of the advertising hype focused on how this fat volume brings fresh eyes and new interpretations to the task of reading and preaching Scripture. Now that I have read much of it, I was much more impressed by another feature of the book: most of the exposition was the sort of faithful reading of the Bible that could have been undertaken by believers in India or Singapore or Chicago or London. True, a little more space was devoted to demon-possession than is typical of Western commentaries; there was more emphasis on communitarian interests and a little less on the individual. But faithful reading of Scripture is not so open-ended that it becomes impossible to say that no reading is wrong.
“Unity in Truth and Love” in NB News (Winter 2007): 8-10.
Reflecting on the African Bible Commentary, he noted that much of its exposition reflected faithful biblical interpretation that could have come from believers in many cultural contexts. While some emphases differed, the theology remained anchored in historic Christian truth.
Carson seemed less interested in radical theological divergence and more appreciative of how different contexts shed fresh light on shared truths.
Self-Theologizing as Faithful Reflection
Self-theologizing does not mean abandoning historic theology. Instead, it involves expressing ancient truths through study, contextual reflection, and lived experience.
An indigenous church will always be shaped, at least in part, by the churches and agencies that planted it. Yet through careful reflection on Scripture, that church can articulate the same truths in ways that speak clearly to its own culture and enrich the wider church.
I think of it like light passing through a prism. The light remains the same, but a color becomes visible that I had not noticed before.
To use a different analogy, a self-theologizing church can express ancient truths with a slightly different flavor that doesn’t change the essence of the truth but makes it more understandable. Without wishing the suffering of war on anyone, I think one of the results of the suffering that is happening in Ukraine is an acceleration of the depth and ability of the church to self-theologize. In Ukrainian, Christian, scholarship, I think we are seeing this mix of ancient truths being expressed through a new lens of suffering, trauma, and resilience.
A Call to Support Ukrainian Scholarship
It seems to me that Ukraine is now at a point where its growing theological reflection can be intentionally supported.
For many years, we invested heavily in translating Western resources. That work remains valuable. However, I propose a partial shift in focus. We should also invest directly in young Ukrainian scholars as they develop their own theological work.
If we commit to this direction over the next eight to ten years, I believe Ukrainian self-theologizing will become self-sustaining. I also believe the global church will benefit greatly from the uniquely Ukrainian expression of ancient Christian truths.
Editor’s note: This post was edited for clarity and readability with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot.
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