Echo Hub

As someone who was submersed in the Christian subculture and withdrew from the existing culture around me for most of my childhood and young adult life before Jesus opened my eyes, I inevitably was intrigued by your March/April cover story “Our Parallel Universe”. I don’t understand how a website like GodTube could clam to be, “an evangelical outreach, period”. I believe in Christ’s Commission to us to bring Him to our fallen world, but really GodTube…How can us as Christians, contextualize the Gospel when we withdraw from the culture in which we are called to minister by creating our own? Don’t get me wrong, I do think there is a place for such websites, but I wouldn’t claim them as evangelistic. It really disheartens me when I see Christian comparison charts or “Christian answers to…” sites. It seems like we are trying to create a faith that is easy, where we don’t need discernment, we don’t need self-control, we don’t need to think, and we don’t need to strive to redeem what God created and the world perverts. Are we trying to create zombies who don’t have to internalize our faith because it is neatly packaged all around us? In order to evangelize to our lost world we need to be missionaries in its culture. Jesus left His culture of heaven to be a missionary to ours, let’s stretch ourselves to go into culture armed with God’s Word and His discernment in order to redeem this world and bring it back to Christ.

I have been in ministry for over 34 years, mostly in Baptist circles. About 14 years ago, God began doing some amazing things in my life and “removed the veil” to things of the Spirit that had been hidden through my “baptist” education.
I appreciate so much the freshness and boldness I see in Collide. I agree with Phil Cooke, “Why do we boycott and criticize Hollywood so much?” Indeed, why is the primary response to any worldly organization or person to criticize? It seems to me, from what I see in scripture, that Jesus was most critical about the “religious” people and religion itself. He said that we give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. A critical spirit never accomplishes any good. We should infiltrate every area of life and allow the sweet smelling savor of Christ to shine through in our excellence, creativity and boldness to “speak the truth in love.”
Did you ever wonder why so much of the world is coming to America? Could it be that we, like the early church in Jerusalem, have become too comfortable and self-indulgent. Americanized christianity has become an impotent force in the world. We need to wake up. When we as believers fail to follow the commisson of Acts 1:8, we are subject to suffer the consequences of Acts 8:1.

I have enjoyed every issue of Collide but this one was particularly well done. I have always giggled at the Christian sub-culture as it has always seemed to accomplish two things:
1. Insulating believers from the greater culture by mimicking the “palatable” elements of the very culture it is wanting to protect its adherents from.
2. Creating shallow structures in order to criticize and show differences from the broader culture.

I thought this issue handled the problems with isolation and lazy copies of art, media, music and entertainment as it is antithetical to authentic and organic creativity as well as a horrible method of evangelism. This issue also shed light on the reality that this “sub-culture” is large and not going anywhere. It is more than a sub-culture, it is more of a market segment which made Phil Cooke’s comments particularly relevant.