with to you antique roche is used to asking some probing questions as the
senior editor of Christianity Today an award-winning magazine founded by billy
graham he's covered the church from just about every angle today he's moderating
discussions at the eight-letter conference held by the Epiphany a
network it's a wake-up call of sorts for the North American church Wendy speakers
say is complacent and confused is an appeal to seal but what is the source of
this confusion some might say it's a product of our culture one in which
anything goes but crouch says the church needs to get back to culture to truly
find its way in this world why write a book on culture I had the feeling that
we needed a new way of thinking about culture in the north american search
because you don't have to pay very close attention to realize that the
relationship between Christians and our culture has gotten quite dysfunctional I
think I think often it's assumed that we are just critics of our culture often
much of what you hear in the church about culture is very negative and I
wanted to give us a different vocabulary for looking at what were called to do
ask questions in the midst of culture right but it seems that we don't really
understand culture it's such a broad terms of can you try and define culture
for us
culture is horrifyingly large concept some people say it's a second most
complicated word in the English language after nature and so you know often we
use it to mean something we often use it just a mean high culture so you know the
opera or the fine arts but culture is not just the thing that cultured people
do
what I my favorite definition for culture is what people make of the world
what we make of the world depends a lot on what we believe but what if our
greater culture is one of unbelief that's the situation in which the Church
finds itself today according to crouch
but not necessarily bad news we have lost cultural power over a number of
generations and we're still frustrated that we no longer have the kind of
authority and culture that we once had I think we have to recognize many times in
history Christians have been a cultural minority and yet it's often been at
those times that they've been the most culturally created and have been the
greatest blessing to their cultures and certainly the early Christians were a
tiny minority and yet were able to be very culturally transformative in the
Roman Empire this loss has led some to feel alienated it's led some to withdraw
and others to engage but Crouch says neither is the best approach will that
idea of engaging culture Christians have been really preoccupied with how do we
engage our culture how to be culturally relevant you think that's a futile thing
to be searching for I do think engaging falls a little short of what were called
to do I prefer to other words cultivating culture and creating culture
so to start with creating we are made in the image of a created God and to me
engaging culture often stops with just sort of paying attention but we're
actually made to contribute not just to pay attention to culture or to analyze
culture or even just to try to be relevant to sort of keep up but we're
actually made to advance the human project of making something of God's
world with such as a matter of imitating being cultural like I'm putting a
Christian tag on it exactly and that's a very easy thing to do you know you can
take a popular advertising
and just tweak a few words and make it about Jesus you know and that's there's
just not that much
image of God in that he says humans not only bare God's image but his creativity
to that's why he says the church needs to reconnect with its words I'm curious
in your book you were saying that the gospel message is itself a cultural
message website how does that work
you know I think we often think that culture is one thing over here and and
then christianne in the Gospels this other thing but in fact the gospel is
essentially the good news that God has not given up on the world they got
hasn't abandoned the world to the effects of the fall and when God begins
his intervention to redeem the world what does he do he creates a nation the
nation called Israel he takes this one family the family of Abraham in a
particular time in a particular place and says I'm going to make really a
cultural tradition out of you so that when God decides that he is not going to
abandon humanity to our own independence from him but it's going to come back
into the human story he begins by forming a whole nation and then that
that story culminates eventually in Jesus who who lives in the midst of
culture and for thirty years Jesus does nothing except what every good he
provided which is absorbed Jewish culture absorb that story and then
fulfill that story in his own life and changed culture and in doing so he
unleashes the greatest cultural transformation of history
Jesus is a great place to start when looking at how to make culture but how
does that look today Jesus do not just deliver a message from a heavenly blimp
you know or even a heavenly broadcast but he lived in the midst of a
particular place in time and I think Christians are called to do that as well
at the same time Jesus did not just live according to the horizons of the place
in time where he lived he introduced radically new ways of relating to women
of relating to the sick
relating to those who are possessed by demons new teachings new forms of
teaching like the parable can you give a modern-day example of maybe how that
looks
there are two things happening right now at a remarkably unremarkable extensive
way that are great pictures of this one is an organization called International
Justice Mission which is a Christian human rights organization that is not
just a group of Christian saying oh we care about human rights to kind of a me
too and imitated kind of organization but is actually pioneered ways to help
the rule of law work for the poor in countries around the world and is now
influencing the way that other human rights organizations to do their work
the other example very different is the movie studio Pixar the most commercially
successful movie studio of our time which is not a Christian organization
but has several senior executives and directors who are deeply committed
followers of Christ and when you look at the movies that Pixar makes they're not
Christian movies they're not explicitly at all about proclaiming the gospel but
there are about offering a way to imagine what it is to be human being
that resonates with the gospel the reality is most of us are not going to
make films or be famous so where do we start there are things that you can do
that people who operate at these very high lead levels of culture cannot do so
we we need to sort of rid ourselves of the idea that only a few people create
culture we all are creating something and cultivating something and I think we
need to look right around us and asked what places got put man who is a given
me as friends and partners and what could we created our neighbors would say
wow that that brings Sholom brings peace flourishing into our neighborhood and
this touches on the very public nature of culture it's always shared and and
one of the mistakes we can make is is to think that all of our cultural
creativity should happen within the church and sort of for the sake of the
church and I would never want discourage anyone from
being creative and church and and and doing things and culturally excellent
ways in church but if all of our energy goes to activities within the walls of
the church the reality is most of our neighbors will never encounter if what
we create isn't just for our cells or people with the same background and
believes how do we know the date the other creations out there said the idea
of a culture war we're competing beliefs go up against each other has tainted the
redemptive role of culture we can't ignore the areas where we have to take a
stand
we need to balance that by taking a stand on some things where we have
something in common with our neighbors and we can say well I may not agree with
you about this but we should read about this let's say in the United States
education is just something we ought to audio to agree we can do better and so
an organization like Teach for America which is recruiting young people to
teach him and some of the hardest schools has a disproportionate number of
Christians there are more Christians volunteering for Teach for America than
from any other group that's a tremendous witness in the midst of cultural
conflict to say we care about a lot of the same things that are neighbors care
about this idea of transforming culture but not imposing changes on culture
often the culture wars are driven by the desire to control culture and we never
will and we didn't even really control it and we didn't do that good a job of
controlling when when we had control but culture is too big to be controlled so
rather than seeking to control culture or you've been seeking to transform
culture I kind of see that as God's job description God is committed to human
cultures because he's committed to his his creatures but our job is simply to
ask where God's put me right now with the people I've been given what could I
do that will reflect God's creative intent here and God is at work in our
culture whether we notice it or not according to crouch get up off
which brings us back to that wake up call if we just see ourselves as
consumers consumers are responsible for culture thing they're responsible for
its figure out what they liked and buying out and and critics are not
responsible either if all I do is just complain I'm not taking responsibility
but what if I asked ok not everything is as I wish it were as a follower of
Christ but what am I responsible to cultivating create here then I think I'm
being not just responsible but but faithful to God who's put me in this
time and at this place for a reason
in Toronto Denise lottie 100 Huntley Street