Echo Hub

I have much more interest in building relationships with people and enjoying the things we have in common(movies, music, laughing at a Bill Cosby rap CD) than I am in ‘winning’ them. One sounds like real life and meaningful relationship, the other… sounds like a competition or a game.

The assumption that Christ is not interested in redeeming cultural fads and that being relevant is like pretending we all breath pure oxygen. The truth is, we breath in an atmosphere full of different things – yet they still keep us alive. The Bravery may not be singing an exhaustive doctrinal statement or confessing faith in Christ, but they are saying something that speaks to the human longing for more and Christ can make something out of it if we won’t sabotage His work.

I’m really interested in leveraging popular culture to help send the message of Christ’s love and redemption, but I think there is a careful balance that needs to be considered as well. As the survey respondent mentioned, our, “fickle culture” moves on constantly and trying to appease that may come across as “fakeness”. It would be like painting your church a different color every two years. The church may be in the latest fashionable color schemes but you really have to look into the resources spent on staying culturally aligned. The opposite is a church made from brick or stone, the town really starts to appreciate that the church looks and feels the same way for the last 100+ years, it becomes a classic and is enjoyed for being a classic and safe and unchanging. I could write a lot about this, more than a blog response, but I mostly agree with what Collide is about. I am always evaluating, however, what a church does vs. what God says we should do.

I believe that all followers of Jesus must become bilingual in order to get the message out in a relevant way. We must be able to speak to the culture in a language they can understand and appreciate. Often times this means we have to be up on what’s all-the-rage. We have to know what shows are hot, what songs are popular and what bands are in and which ones are out. We have to know such important things as what happened on “Lost” last week, (which by the way, I think is the more edgy post-mod version of Gilligan’s Island). This does not mean that we have to dive in wholeheartedly, but we should at least know what’s going on; enough to talk intelligently. All too often I run into Christians that have no clue what’s going on in the world and they always find themselves outside the conversation. Gone are the days when all you have to do to evangelize is open the doors of the church and wait for them to come rushing in.
On the other hand, we must also be fluent in the language of Zion. If we don’t speak to the absolute mystery of Christ we won’t be offering them anything that they don’t already have. We must speak to the miracle of resurrection and of ours to come. We must speak to salvation, offered to the entire world, and to the absolute enigma of the Holy Spirit, and the awesome power of prayer and the sacredness of sacraments. They must hear of covenants, and grace and mercy and most of all the power of agape love.
If we don’t become fluent in each of these two languages we will find ourselves losing this generation to the culture, the very culture we don’t want to hear more about, and facing the real chance that they might never be introduced to the countercultural Jesus!

So I totally neant to fill out the survey, but accidentally deleted it from my inbox. Anyway…I fully agree with where Collide as a whole is headed. As Bob posted earlier, we need to be able to speak to the culture around us in a way that they understand, and the only way that I know how to relate is to understand the culture around me. Yeah, I may never use Bill Cosby in my media, but understanding that he is recording a CD with life issue lyrics is a window into how our world is viewed by those who are in it. Jesus never watited for us to come to Him, He came to us, and so we should go. If we don’t understand the culture or have a limited knowledge of it we will not be recieved as authenticly caring for those who are in it. The way I look as it is this. I wouldn’t go into a tribe somewhere as a missionary and do nothing but speak english never trying to learn how to communicate to those God has sent me to. I would learn their language in hopes to communicate God’s Truth to them. In the same way we need learn how our culture speaks so we can redeem what can be and reject what can’t. Not just reject everything.

If we throw all this “pop culture” out the window, then we are throwing out what Paul said. “To the Jews I became like a Jew to gain the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) to gain those under the law.” We cannot ignore what surrounds us. We can’t simply say that what happens in the “secular” world doesn’t matter. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE STARBUCKS! I don’t know about you but my coworkers don’t know Christ. How am I ever going to relate if all I do is remove myself from what is up-to-date or, more importantly, what matters to them in our culture?

And in response to “How does (insert pop culture statement here) help me in my video booth? ” We have been called to do everything to the Glory of God. That includes an “excellence”, not “perfection”, factor. And in that excellence we need to be more sharp, more crisp, more current with how media, whether video, audio, lighting, etc., is presented because if it isn’t up to par with what the congregation is used to, they’ll probably check out.

I went to a Ministry School that shares your readers oppinions against staying aware of and relating to the populat culture we live in. What I find strange is that when I went through their missions training program they taught us how to study culture so we wouldn’t offend the nationals. they taught us how to meet their practical needs so we could develop trust. It saddens me that they are so blind to the mission field they stand in.

It’s definitely a fine line that I think a lot of Christian cross without realizing it.

I think a lot of us look at Jesus’ ministry one-sided. We say He was engaged in the culture, but was He? He got up early to pray and spent every day in the streets and homes, preaching and meeting needs. We don’t see Him hanging out at the gates of the city with the men just to chat and get updated on cultural gossip. He was always going somewhere, always ministering, always doing something.

Same with Paul’s revelation about being all things to all men. He spoke and ministered to people according to their understanding, but sometimes I think we take liberty too far in the name of becoming all things.

I agree that we’re in a mission field and we need to know the basic language and culture, but I think we need to remember to keep it at basics. Our lives should not look like other people’s lives. We should be practical and real with people, but if there’s nothing different about us except that we don’t sleep in on Sunday mornings who are we challenging?

I have had better ministry times when I don’t know. Teenagers that I work with often want to talk about The Office or some other show that they can’t miss week to week. I briefly explain that my husband and I don’t have teevee and why, and then listen intently as they tell me everything about the show that they wanted to tell me.

The 1,000 Foot View of a Fickle Public? (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog)

Scott McCellan recently posted a reader’s response to the very idea of a magazine like Collide.  To pull from the posted quote: 
You don’t seem to be interested in the 1,000-foot view. You take a myopic look at things like Facebook, etc. th…

To be in the world and not of it demands an awareness of what surrounds us. It requires that we internalize the values Jesus taught. This internalization, enabled by the Holy Spirit, is our only real defense against the pollution we wade through to get to those who don’t follow Jesus.

Living in a fortress of denial is not the answer. Allowing fear to drive us away is not the answer. Trying to be something we’re not is not the answer – you can’t fake culture. You either get it or you don’t. Either way, God uses the willing in spite of themselves. His sovereignty trumps our feeble debates.