Culture Making: For the Church, For Christians, or Both?
- Filed under: Christianity, church, city, contextualization, culture making, Gospel, idolatry, incarnational, theology, urban, Urban Tulsa Weekly, video, work
- Date: Jun 28,2011
Is the church called to transform culture?
Are Christians supposed to engage their callings in society for the sake of the Gospel? If so, what does that look like?
I am passionate about Christ-followers living out their giftings in the domains of society. In fact, I think the church would do well to develop a more robust theology of work for their people. Far too many see the work of “ministry” as relegated to only a select few. Not until we “clergify” everyone will we see culture renewed and restored. But what about the church as a whole?
The Gospel Coalition posted a video this morning via Twitter that I think gets at this conversation in a very helpful way:
Chandler, Horton, and Keller on the Church in Culture from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.
After watching the video, you can see this is a difficult discussion to wade through. The church as an institution should be slow to see itself as a “culture maker.” But as Matt Chandler says, I believe the Bible is clear that the church is supposed to champion individual Christians enacting the Gospel through their gifts and callings in society.
We all make up the priesthood of believers (1 Peter 2:4-10). All that come to Jesus are being built up into a spiritual abode. We are the stones being placed together to proclaim the excellencies of the Chief Cornerstone. This happens wherever we are. And whatever we are. Pastor, firefighter, politician, homemaker, student. In these spheres, we have the opportunity to shape culture.
I have always loved to write. God instilled a love for words at an early age. My mom tells me I would read the newspaper to my grandparents as “entertainment” when I was the wee age of 3. One of my college professors would always tell me that I was in the wrong line of work (music) and that I should seriously pursue something in the English field. I didn’t listen to him. At least not in the way he saw it.
A couple of months ago, I was having coffee with a fellow church planter and friend in town and he asked me if I had any interest in contributing once a month to the religion column in the Urban Tulsa Weekly. UTW is Tulsa’s independent weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 35,000 distributed to the metro area. It truly is Tulsa’s alternative news weekly.
I told him I needed to pray about it but would get back to him soon. Within a few days, I felt like God wanted me to pursue this. I’ve had the honor of writing a few articles for UTW and now, I’m writing three times a month for their “Above and Beyond” column. It is an awesome privilege.
What does this have to do with culture making? Well, as a pastor, I am regularly getting the opportunity to winsomely share the Gospel in a secular news medium. Like much printed media in today’s world, I don’t know how many people read the UTW (although I’ve been told its readership is quite high), let alone a religion column, but I believe I’m doing Kingdom work “outside” of the institution of the church. Is this culture making? I think so.
I am praying that in some small way, God uses this opportunity to make Himself famous. I’m thankful to bring the good news of Jesus within the pages of a weekly that is passionate about many things that I’m passionate about: urban development, the arts, issues of justice, etc. But I’m also excited that this column is able to sit alongside other columns that reek of some of our culture’s idols. Amidst the cornucopia of issues in the UTW, I’m praying Jesus shines through.
I will be reposting my UTW articles here on transformission.com so stay tuned. Let me know what you think. Engage in conversation. Shalom…
