The Church and The Culture – Article #2
We are the Church, a community where people discover who they are, who God is, and how they can help each other make significant advances against evil by bringing justice and mercy to people, by caring for the poor, widowed, and orphaned, by loving everyone in order to bring God’s Kingdom to earth.
The Church is the ONLY environment on earth where people can reach their full potential.
It’s where sin is confronted, confessed, forgiven, and redeemed.
It’s where sickness is discovered, healed, and made whole.
It’s where success is measured by the amount of love that is shared and not the amount of work done, or numbers impacted.
It’s where we realize that we are safe and yet on a dangerous mission to eradicate evil.
It’s where we realize that living abundantly does not translate into lots of stuff.
It’s where we feel the most sorrow.
It’s where we feel the most pain.
It’s where we feel the most shame.
It’s where we feel the most joy.
It’s where we feel the most love.
It’s where we feel the most hope.
It’s where we feel the most peace.
It’s where we feel the most ALIVE!
Since this is all true, and we continue to trust that it is then we should be about enabling a transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit that is of the most violent and yet tender kind that rips away the infection of sin and replaces it with the adoration of the Son.
We will create an environment where we will enable every individual: leaders, followers, and seekers, to be CONTINUALLY transformed into the likeness of Christ encouraging everyone to die to their self and rise with Christ.
We will create an environment where we will enable the community to be transformed both within the local congregation and within EVERY community into which our congregation sends ambassadors.
We will not follow culture for the sake of being relevant, but instead we will create a new culture by redeeming the redeemable, and by using the gifts of art in the forms of music, painting, drawing, digital imaging, technology development, sculptures, architecture, dance, and drama to transform culture. We will not withdraw from, but will draw in the outcast. We will not condemn, but will lovingly correct. We will not become entangled in sin, but will help free those oppressed and in bondage.
We will care for the creation that we have the opportunity to care for so that our neighbor might enjoy its fruits. This will involve reducing our waste and will involve making informed and conscious decisions about what we consume, and from whom we consume. It will also involve the giving of time, money, and talent so that no one within the Church is in need, and so that we might those with needs outside of the Church.
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p.s. robert, i like that you included the environment and our care of it in the original post. the church in the south (and i include KY in there) does a “piss poor” job (as my mom would say) of taking care of the environment. southern culture in particular sees “the great outdoors” as a recreational playground and a place to put more concrete or through your beer can from your truck. we’ve become so accustomed to the garbage truck coming by on monday and thursday mornings and taking away our trash to some unknown location that we don’t realize how much waste we produce. i’d love to see this change…i’d love to be a part of a church that preached (from the pulpit and otherwise) about how we care for creation once in a while…at least until i can make everyone read Wendell Berry.
first of all, i love my brother! and i am so proud of him, even when we don’t agree. that is not the case here though. like jerica, i can affirm daniel’s original post, even though i did buy one of those Creed cds…
not to rip on the “christian” music industry again, but like daniel, i see it as a prime example of where Christians created an overlooked subculture rather than influenicing the existing culture. i would have brought it up first if he hadn’t. the truth is a lot of people are influenced by so-called “christian” music, but think how many more people could be influenced by Christians singing so-called “secular” music. U2 for example has had a lot more play time than DCTalk ever dreamed of. sure, the ichthus festival in wilmore draws like 30,000 youth each year (and i hate to bash it since ben worked for them…) but a lot of “secular” artists play to that kind of crowd or bigger every weekend. rather than sneaking “out of the world” to do our own music we should have been getting into the world and influencing.
before we get stuck on music though, there’s a lot of other places where we as the church could do a better job.
for example check out http://www.tomsshoes.com.
ben and i saw these shoes for the first time at a youth ministry conference about a month ago in atlanta. the founder of the company was on the reality series The Amazing Race. after the show was over he went back to spend more time in the countries he visited. in Argentina he realized he was playing soccer with a bunch of kids who didn’t have shoes. so when he came home, he dreamed up and started a company that makes shoes, based on the traditional Argentinian shoes. for every one pair he sells, he gives away a pair in Argentina. no, not a ten percent tithe, but giving away exactly half of what they make. so now the guys out enlisting the help of WHOEVER, not just the church to sell and give away shoes all over the world. i bought a pair for myself. we also signed our youth group up for a special event where all our kids will buy white pairs of Tom’s Shoes and then have a party where we paint our shoes. we get to choose where the shoes are sent. we’ll probably pick a school in Ghana that a lot of people in the church here have already visited. then the kids in the youth group will have crazy painted shoes to where to school where hopefully other people will ask about them and all our kids will get to share the story of Tom’s Shoes and hopefully dream up more ways to change the culture and change our world. and my favorite part…it’s the part about how the shoes look like the shoes already in the Argentinan culture. they’re getting something familiar, not American nikes.
and right now i’m on a big art kick. i think christians have underestimated how art can change the world. i think we’ve also underestimated how art can help us worship. at any rate, the youth group here in Long Beach hosted an art show last weekend. at it’s most basic level it was a fundraiser for our summer activities. at a more important level it was an opportunity for the students to express themselves through painting, poetry, photography and anything else they could think of. some of them turned in art with a “christian” theme. a lot of them took pictures of the beach. one kid sketched his tennis shoes. another girl drew Anime characters. the show was a big hit, with the kids and with the adults of our church. everybody was surprised at how much art there was, how good it was (for the most part!) and how many people were interested in seeing it. i couldn’t help thinking that the next time we do an art show it should be better publicized in our community. how cool would it be for the people to see that church people have an interest in art and that every painting doesn’t have to be a cross or Bible verse?
one of my big critiques of the church right now is that in a lot of places churches are trying to steal and adapt the culture for worship. how many sanctuaries resemble concert halls or movie theaters? (you know with zero natural light, big screens, cool bands, and props?) it’s like dressing up the culture so we think we’re relevant to it. i think this misses the point. the church shouldn’t be a polished mirror of the culture or a subculture most people don’t care about or know about. the church ought to be in the midst of culture embracing and transforming it. i think the article was a good challenge and reminder of that.
…ever make me love you less or think less of you…
is what that should say…