The relation of the Church to culture is a huge subject about which I can say nothing that hasn't already been said more exhaustively and more competently elsewhere. (Christ and Culture by Richard Niebuhr is by now the classic text on the subject, but T.S. Eliot's "old" Christianity and Culture and D.A. Carson's new Christ and Culture Revisited, among others, are quite helpful to the conversation as well.) The Church and Culture is a complicated issue with lots of fine lines over which many cross from opposite sides and many do not, and rarely are line-crossers synchronized. I cannot say everything there is to say in this short space, and I do not have the room to allow for every exception and caveat that I do admit exist. With this disclaimer, I am requesting your forgiveness ahead of time for the broad-brushing that follows.
Aside from their overarching desire to "seek and save the lost," the primary point of convergence between the "attractional church" and the "missional church" is likely their interest in and engagement with The Culture (whatever that means).
In this series I have been expanding on the proposed contrasts highlighted in the following chart.
In this installment we will be looking at the 10th contrast, in which I am positing a very fine -- but often pretty clear -- line between the ways the attractional church and the missional church handle "culture." Generally speaking, the attractional church is concerned with "cultural relevance" and the missional church is occupied with "cultural engagement."
The difference between these two occupations is this: A church aiming for cultural relevance seeks to feature, incorporate, and/or impersonate items from the prevailing culture, typically from popular culture (which is why attractional churches will often fashion a message series after a TV show or movie, but rarely a work of literature). This can include using a hit song from mainstream radio, where the idea is that "seekers" in the church service will be made comfortable or be made to feel connected in some way, or it can include showing clips from movies as part of the sermon. A church aiming for cultural engagement may incorporate some aspects of the attractional church's interest in cultural relevance, but a greater emphasis is placed not on featuring cultural items (aesthetics, entertainments, programs), but on interacting more meaningfully with people outside of a church service.
Here are some not-so-random thoughts related to the distinction I am drawing:
1. "Relevance" has become an idol.
It's just gotten silly and out of hand. Churches lusting after relevance to the culture take great pride in looking as little like church as possible, which is not just an arrogant aspiration, it's a stupid one. The church that makes relevance an idol seeks to blur the distinction between church and the culture as much as possible, which is dangerous ground given the clear distinctions between covenant community and "the world" found in all of Scripture.
There is definitely a need to apply biblical principles to real life practice, but as the presence of the gospel gradually disappears from our churches, it is full steam ahead on "Making Jesus relevant," which ignores the reality that Jesus is already relevant. Comparing him to Spider-Man (or whatever) ironically only diminishes his relevance. The need the idolaters of relevance propose to address is the seeker's absence of Christian behavior to make their life successful and happy. So it makes sense, in this paradigm, to compare Scripture to things that make seekers feel successful and happy.
2. The intellect and maturity of seekers has been greatly underestimated.
It always cracks me up (when it doesn't sadden me or make me angry) when a church falls all over itself to make itself look hip and "contemporary" and relevant. It's funny because I don't think these churches are really fooling anyone but the already-convinced. Only a handful of churches can actually pull off a worship service with the razzle and dazzle of a Broadway show, but that doesn't stop hundreds and thousands of others of thinking they must have the lights, the songs, the bells and whistles so that the unchurched will think Christianity is cool. The reality is that the quality of the average church's reproduction of the world's cultural entertainment sucks. If it's entertainment I want, I will stay home. There's much better stuff on TV than what's down at my local church. And I don't believe seekers go to church for entertainment, or to see the same stuff they can see on TV or in the cineplex. At least, they don't for long. All this stuff does is make the church people feel cool and like they're being -- you guessed it -- relevant.
The surveys being done nowadays are even bearing this out. More and more people expect church to seem like church. They don't mind singing songs about God or hearing about Jesus and they don't mind singing and hearing inside a building that looks "traditional." But that won't stop lots of churches from thinking they've got a model a message series on "Heroes" or else lost people won't be interested. Lost people have a lot better taste than we give them credit for, and very few of them are fooled by our churches' attempts at copying Top 40 radio.
3. Engagement trumps impersonation.
There is nothing wrong with playing a "non-Christian" song in a church service or with showing a film clip to illustrate a message. It's all in how it's done. And to be fair, there are plenty of so-called missional churches who engage in some form of "cultural appropriation" and plenty of so-called attractional churches who engage the culture beyond and deeper than merely aping cultural arts and entertainment from the stage. So whatever your church type or philosophy, surely we can all agree that actually engaging people outside the church walls, living counterculturally in the blueprint of the Sermon on the Mount, being salt and light, and being ready to give an answer for the hope that is within you beats wearing a "God's Gym" T-shirt any day.
This is where, generally speaking, the missional church shifts relation to culture into a higher gear. Missionalization derives from the missio dei and results in a "sent life," where believers are missionaries to their culture. This doesn't mean co-opting cultural detritus to make an impression; that too often results in being in the world and being of it. It means, instead, living incarnationally in order to serve and share with others.
4. Start with Scripture.
Missionary efforts go off the rails when they begin with the presumption that acting as much like the culture as possible will win people to the life of the Church. Many who go to this extreme will cite Paul, either from his contextualizing the statue of the unknown god in the Areopagus (in Acts 17) or from his saying he desired to be all things to all people (in 1 Cor. 9), as support for playing Gwen Stefani in the worship service. In the interests of contextualizing for the culture, they have decontextualized Scripture.
Paul did not preach and minister in this way in order so that the mission field would know Jesus is cool and wants them to be happy. He preached that way so the mission field would know that Jesus is Lord and wants them to be holy.
Too many churches begin with the aspiration of "relevance" and subject Scripture to it.
5. Know your audience.
If your first aim is to impress, stimulate, or entertain people, you will find it difficult to justify stopping at anything to do so. But if your first aim is to glorify God -- your real audience -- a good many other of your intentions for the mission field will take on a good and better light. It is the difference between pleasing God and pleasing men. It is possible to do both, but if we are pleasing God first, we will be displeasing plenty of men.
Relevance to culture, then, is a bogus aspiration. Engagement with the culture, with God's ground rules and Christ held preeminent, is a greater reflection of the heart of the Great Commission. Christ is always relevant. The culture? Well, to quote C.S. Lewis, "To go with the times is to go where all times go."
Jared Wilson is the pastor and co-founder of Element, a missional Christian community in
Nashville, Tennessee, and an award-winning writer whose articles, essays, and
short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
Jared's first book, The Unvarnished Jesus, releases Fall 2009 from Kregel.
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, he lives outside
Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
Encounter Jared's passion for the ongoing reformation of the evangelical church
almost daily at www.gospeldrivenchurch.com.
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