All Peoples Community Church Pastor Kenji Adachi was gravely criticized in social media last week for a church planter training video where he implied that southern churches would become "more intelligent" if they lose their southern accents.
Church Leaders reported that the video was released by the SEND Network of the North American Mission Board, which is Southern Baptist Convention's domestic missions agency.
Adachi focused his presentation on 1 Corinthians 9 to stress to church planters the importance of contextualization. Adachi then cited an instance he met a church planter in North Carolina who disclosed getting a "voice coach to get rid" of his "southern accent" being a true-born South Carolinian. He then raised the reality of what Paul said to the Corinthians regarding being "all things to all people."
"Man, you talk about someone being all things to all people so that he can reach people for Christ. This is so critical as we think about who we are trying to reach, instead of just thinking about who we are. We need both. We need to understand the culture around us," Adachi said.
Church Leaders pointed out that in itself, what Adachi said was not offensive. However, a graphic appeared at the bottom of the screen that highlighted a 2012 study on intelligence and accents.
"According to a 2012 study conducted by the University of Chicago, people with southern accents are assumed less intelligent than their northern accented peers, even among children," the graphic said.
This graphic then raised an uproar on stereotyping people and made it look that those who have southern regional accents were unintelligent. Among criticizers was Texas' First Baptist Church Pastor Tom Buck who took to Twitter to raise how sickening the graphic's statement was.
"I'm sick of this, but people need to know how their @SBCCP & @sendnetwork dollars are used. NAMB church planters w/ Southern accents are encouraged to lose their accent because 'people w/ Southern accents are assumed less intelligent.'," Buck said.
"Final tweet of the day. Everyone knows if NAMB had said that an individual of a different ethnicity changed his vernacular because a study found that people thought talking that way sounded unintelligent, everyone (including me) would be outraged. And rightly so," he added in a succeeding post.
Theologians, on the other hand, had a discussion on the importance of cultural contextualization for church planting because of the video. Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Dean of Graduate Studies Keith Whitfield highlighted the "goal of contextualization," which is to make the Gospel easier to understand by people of various culture.
"The goal of contextualization is to see people and cultures redeemed and restored by God's saving work through Jesus, so that they may 'turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God' (1 Thess. 1:9). We contextualize to remove obstacles to communication," Whitfield said on Saturday.
"The task of contextualization is consistent with the call of Christians to be a light in the world. The church is called to persuade those who are living in darkness to the the truthfulness of the gospel. To do this, the message must be understandable," he added.
Buck then responded to Whitfield to point out that "there's nothing inherently wrong with losing" one's "accent for contextualization." What is wrong, however is the "reason given for losing a Southern accent--people 'assume you're less intelligent."
