Discerning worldviews: Pedagogical models for conceptualizing worldview distances

As in all disciplines, missiology employs models to describe various complex phenomena such as Winter’s E-Scale and P-Scale of cultural distance, Engel’s model of the “spiritual-decision processes,” the C1 to C6 spectrum of contextualization among Muslims, and Bevans’s models of contextualization laid out on a spectrum. Each of the models has value in facilitating discussion and understanding of a highly complex process and system. Similarly, worldview heuristic models can be used to discern and compare broad areas of reality between diverse peoples. One method of using these pedagogical models to discern worldviews is by investigating three primary components of a worldview, the spiritual realm, the physical realm and the interaction between the spiritual and physical realms. These models also identify five core perceptions of reality to compare between differing worldviews. Utilizing models assists in discussing and discerning differences in core perceptions of reality and provides a means to develop a scale of worldview distance between a Christian worldview and another worldview. Such models are what Paul Hiebert refers to as the “synchronic model of worldviews,” which helps a person to understand how people view the structure of the world or what Clifford Geertz refers to as a “model of reality” to make complex structures comprehensible. The models in this article are pedagogically helpful in assisting cross-cultural workers in discussing and exploring the significance of worldview distances in various cultures with similar or dissimilar core perceptions of reality. The differences in these perceptions have an impact on the contextualization process missionaries face and the worldview distances they need to bridge.