This past Sunday, we held our second mercyview lab to introduce people to the heartbeat of a new church community in the city of Tulsa and we had a great time together. I was particularly encouraged to see some new faces.
As I said last week, these “labs” are intended to give folks a “window into” what we believe God is calling mercyview to be in Tulsa. This will give many an opportunity to begin to pray about joining us in the birth of mercyview at the end of the summer.
In our first lab, I unpacked what is the “hub” of all of mercyview‘s ministry: the Gospel. Last night, I talked about what is looks like for a church to be a “city within a city” – an alternative society in a city that is “salt and light” (Matthew 5:13-16). Here are the notes from the evening:
Introduction
–One of the foundational issues a new church has to figure out where they come down on is their relationship with culture. This has to happen before they can talk about how to be the church in the community.
–There is a lot of talk about culture these days but not always much clarity about what it really is. The truth is that the tension between church and culture has been around since the church began. People shout about culture and how the church should or should not relate to it but we have to think discerningly about what it is and how we engage culture.
–So how do we unpack this issue? I believe it involves understanding three things:
1. Culture matters
2. Relating to culture the wrong way matters [1]
3. How the church should relate to culture matters [2]
Culture matters
[Acts 17:16-34]
–Culture mattered to Paul. In Acts 17, we see four things:
1. Paul finds a space within the culture to proclaim the gospel – the Areopagus [Acts 17:22]
2. Paul acknowledged their spiritual questions contextually [Acts 17:22-31]
3. Paul understood Athens – observed their idols as he walked through the city; quoted a poet [Acts 17:23, 28]
4. Paul understood how to respond to culture [Acts 17:29]
–There are basically three choices we have to respond to culture:
1. Receive
2. Reject
3. Redeem
–As we respond to culture, we essentially receive all of culture and within in that “reception,” we must choose which aspects of it to reject or redeem.
–What is culture? The common ideas, feelings, and values that guide community and personal behavior that organize and regulate what the group thinks, feels, and does about God, the world, and humanity [Harvie Conn]
–Culture itself is not evil but a composite of good and evil – as understood Biblically. In any given culture we can find both the imago Dei and idols because all people are made in God’s image and reflect that reality in some ways.
–Those who say we should not “engage the culture,” are using the word “culture” in a way that missionaries wouldn’t [Ed Stetzer]
Relating to culture the wrong way matters
[Jonah 1:1-3]
–Four ways that the church has related to culture:
1. Pietiest
2. Conservative activist
3. Cultural “relevant”
4. Counter-culturalist
–A pietist is someone who stresses Bible study, personal religious experience, and evangelism to the exclusion of trying to understand culture’s expressions: attitudes, customs, beliefs, ethics, and value systems. In essence, their attitude is one of indifference. They believe that since the world is going to burn up in the end, what matters is to convert as many people as possible. If we do that well, then society will be changed ‘one heart at a time.’
–A conservative activist perceives the main problem today to be the loss of moral absolutes. They believe Xians have become too much like the culture, which no longer believes in absolute truth. In this approach, young people are encouraged to recover a Xian worldview and to penetrate the higher reaches of the cultural economy.
–A cultural relevant, in reaction to the conservative movement, complains that Xians are perceived as too hostile and condemning and that they speak in language that is undecipherable to the average person. In this model, the church is called to deeply identify with felt needs of people – embodying love and truth by working against inequality and injustice in society.
–A counter-culturalist sees the main problem today to be that the church has tried to reform the world to become like the church. In this view, the church needs to follow Christ ‘outside the camp’ and identify with the poor and the marginalized. It needs to be a witness to the world simply by being the church, an alternate society and they shouldn’t try to ‘transform culture’ at all.
–Is the lack of very vibrant, effective evangelism for the church today a major problem? Of course. Thus, the cry from the pietists.
–Is it a major problem that Christians are vastly under-represented in many sectors of the cultural economy? Absolutely. Thus, the cry from the conservative activists.
-Is it a major problem that the evangelical church essentially exists in a subculture, not able to speak the Gospel intelligibly to most Americans, and perceived to be only concerned to increase their own power rather than the common good? Of course it is. Thus, the cry from the evangelical relevants.
–Is a major part of the problem the “thinness” of our Christian communities? Of course, that is an enormous problem. Thus, the cry from the counter-culturalists.
–Every one of these groups articulates a crucial and irreplaceable part of what is wrong with our church’s relationship to culture.
–So what’s wrong? Two things:
1. An unbalanced view of themselves
Each group is responding more to the other Christian parties than to the culture. Because of this, they exaggerate the imbalances in the other groups, and thus, are blind to their own.
2. An insufficient grasp of the whole Biblical plotline
The Bible’s narrative arc is—creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. The problem is that each approach represents just one possible emphasis of the arc within a comprehensive whole. The Biblical teaching about Xianity and culture is very rich and should provide Xians in every century and culture with both boundaries and freedom to devise an approach that fits their time.
How the church should relate to culture matters
[Matthew 5:13-16]
–With the Gospel
Gospel ministry is not only proclaiming it to people so that they will believe it but it also shepherding believers with it so that it shapes the entirety of their lives, inside the church and out in the world.
For evangelicals to move forward, we must be able to come together around a richer understanding of God’s will for a renewed world without losing the sharpness and power of the classic understanding of the gospel.
–As Light
Jesus tells his disciples they are to be a “city on a hill” whose “good deeds” are a light that will lead non-believers to praise the Father in heaven. Christians are called to be an alternate city within every earthly city and they should be the very best citizens, seeking the “peace and prosperity” of the city (Jeremiah 29:4-7). Here is where the relevants and the counter-culturalists get it right.
Care for the poor is a thing so essential that the contrary cannot consist with sincere love to God. [Jonathan Edwards]
Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of redemption is not to escape the material world but to renew it. God’s purpose is not only saving individuals but also inaugurating a new world based on justice, peace, and love, not power, strife, and selfishness.
–As Salt
This metaphor is a counterpoint to that of light – it is more modest in what it holds out for us. Christian living (like salt in the meat) is quite important to keep culture from degrading but here we are being warned not to necessarily expect fundamental social transformation.
Salt is a more negative metaphor as well. Salt in a wound kept it from festering but it was also painful. This means that Christians are to stand for truth and guard orthodox belief and practice but there will inevitably be opposition. (1 Peter 2:12.)
The salt metaphor is different in another way as well. Salt must spread out and penetrate to be effective. Christians then do not only effect the world as a counter-cultural community (‘light’) but also as dispersed individuals who take the Christian message and world view into every circle and sector of society.
Conclusion
[John 17:11-19]
–The people of God (the Church) become an alternative city within a city to display, as a foretaste, what the eternal city will be like. (Jeremiah 29; Matthew 5:3-16; Luke 6:20-36; 1 Peter 2:9-12)
–Harvie Conn:
Perhaps the best analogy to describe all this is that of a model home. We are God’s demonstration community of the rule of Christ in the city. On a tract of earth’s land, purchased with the blood of Christ, Jesus the kingdom developer has begun building new housing. As a sample of what will be, he has erected a model home of what will eventually fill the urban neighborhood. He now invites the urban world into that model home to take a look at what will be. The church is the occupant of that model home, inviting neighbors into its open door to Christ…
As citizens of, not survivalists in, this new city within the old city, we see our ownership as the gift of Jesus the Builder (Luke 17:20-21). As residents, not pilgrims, we await the kingdom coming when the Lord returns from his distant country (Luke 19:12). The land is already his…in this model home we live out our new lifestyle as citizens of the heavenly city that one day will come. We do not abandon our jobs or desert the city that is….We are to seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which God called us in exile (Jeremiah 29:7). And our agenda of concerns in that seeking becomes as large as the cities where our divine development tracts are found.
–Motivation? God left the culture of heaven to enter the culture of man, to bring redemption and restoration:
“We don’t relate to God as a person on the first floor of a building relates to a person on the second floor. We relate to God as Hamlet would to Shakespeare. Hamlet’s only way to know Shakespeare is if Shakespeare writes himself into the play. In the incarnation, God has written himself into the story of this world.”
-Tim Keller
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[1] Adapted from “Church and Culture” by Tim Keller from London Church Planting Consultation, 2008-2009
[2] Ibid.
