At the Intersection of Christ and Culture

How do church and culture intersect? One of the most difficult tasks in being a Christian is answering that question. The question is probably more important now than ever before, as our culture is becoming more globalized and with the continual growth of technology becoming more essential to the make-up and framework of the average man and woman. How does one live out his or her faith?

I must say that this question baffles me. And here’s why. When I first got into the ministry, I was learning. I had learned from professors, other godly and older Christians, and under their tutelage, embarked on a journey using the ministry methods and insights that they had learned from years of successful and fruitful ministry. I was told, though indirectly, “If you journey down this path, you will have success.”

As I journeyed down that path, I noticed a disconnect between myself, my mentors, and the individuals that I was ministering to. The ministry methods of the previous generation were inherited from their mentors. And their methods came from the previous generation before that. Most of the generations have done it the exact same way. There was one key area of commonality between them; their ministry methods were born in a culture where the Judeo-Christian message was well known if not intimately acquainted with. My culture was and is completely different. Theirs was, for lack of a better term, Christian, or at least from a greater cultural perspective, born in a society that was moderately religious, tolerant, and embracing of the Judeo-Christian worldview, because there simply wasn’t much else. In my culture, it was not the majority view, but simply one view, and not a widely held view at all. Pluralism, globalization, and technology have served to bring the world to their doorstep.

Perhaps an analogy will suffice here. If worldviews were ice cream, then the previous generation had vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry to choose from. Mine had 31 flavors, plus 100 more. The question then became for me, how do I modify the ministry methods I inherited from the previous generation (if I can modify them at all or do some need to be scrapped altogether)? Or, better yet, how do I put to death the methods that no longer work, embracing a view that allows me to reach the lost without alienating those whom I love so dearly? That is the question that I have wrestled with for the past decade and am still wrestling with. Others of my generation have bid a “sayonara!” to the previous generation’s ministry methods, but in doing so, have not only jettisoned the ministry methods, but the theology upon which it was built. Others have adopted the ministry methods in a spirit of homage and honor to the previous generation, but have filled their churches with the proverbial choir of churchgoers who have plunged their heads in the sand of Christian safety all the while ignoring the greater culture at large. What is one to do?

I believe that there is a new vehicle of ministry on the horizon that is loyal both to the biblical text and to the culture in which we minister. I am not sure what it is yet, but I believe it to be here, or right on the horizon. I just hope and pray that when it comes, I am not to dense to see it.