Create A New Culture

"The only way to truly transform culture is to create culture." -Andy Couch

I have had two significant impacts this past week that led me to think about culture, the gospel, and our impact as believers in Jesus. The first is reading the memoir of hip-hop artist Lecrae. His book was gritty, challenging, transparent, and thought provoking. The second was a Vision Tour of the city of Denver through the North American Mission Board in search of a place to begin a new mission opportunity. While on this tour we met several church planters and heard their stories of mission for the gospel. Both the book and the trip impacted me separately, but also worked in tandem to reveal a fresh look at cultural engagement as believers.

The Book
Lecrae has been a culture changer since his career as a hip-hop artist began. He revolutionized the Christian hip-hop world and made incredible impact by packing theology driven lyrics to music that started to sound more like hip-hop heard on the radio. Eventually, Lecrae found himself in a place caught between two world, two cultures-  the "Christian" and the "secular". The result was a gospel-centered artist who began to take the message to the world. As he has put it before, he started making music for the church, now he is making music from the church. His sound and lyrics have changed, but the message is still clear. He explains that the change happened when he started engaging the world differently. He states in his book, "...being a Christian is not just about being saved from something but also being saved to something. Following Jesus doesn't just save us from a less fulfilling life or eternal separation from God. It also saves us to a life that can radically transform the world around us through the power of God." This quote was the key to opening my mind a little more. I've known what he says for a long time, but something rang even more true now.

The Trip
While on the Vision Tour we met pastors who were trying desperately to engage a culture that cared very little for ideas of church, gospel, salvation, etc. Over all, the people they were engaging were in the city for fun, escape, and fulfillment most which could be found in the activities the city offers. However, the one thing that was looked for and could not be fully found was community. Each pastor stated the majority of people they come across would leave Denver after a few years because they were lonely. They may know people, but rarely on a deeper level. So, these pastors began to create community, true biblical community, built on love, care, sacrifice, and connection. One particular story stuck with me. The pastor made a connection with a person in the community and this person and his wife were expecting their first child. After a relationship was built and the couple was nearing their delivery date the pastor asked if he could get some people to bring them meals to help out. The man was astounded that someone would even do that. He even said I've never experienced something like that before! Even more incredible was the church (just a handful of people) committed to providing three meals a week for three months!! In many churches I've been a part of, we are lucky to get a full week filled.

What does all this mean?
For some of you this may mean little. You may be looking for the next controversial blog about something that can cause a stir. Or you may already know what I am describing and perhaps are living it out. For most, I bet we haven't thought much about our culture and how the gospel engages it. Well, we have likely thought about telling the most people we can about Jesus (which is right and good) or we complain about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket(weird analogy thinking about hell as a place of fire; that hand basket would get burned up...). That's just it though! We do a great job complaining about culture, being absorbed into the culture, or copying it. What happens if we actually create it! Christians were some of the first to care for orphans, widows, and the ill. We were once a people at the forefront of building orphanages, hospitals, places of care for the outcast. Christians were once at the forefront of art; depicting the gospel through music, paintings, sculptures, literature, etc. Some are still doing this, but I fear we have stopped being culture makers and are culture complainers, copiers, or wrapped up in the culture. We are not to be separated from culture, we are not to create just a sub-culture, we are to be culture makers! We should be creating a culture that is dynamic in love, justice, grace, service, fellowship, meekness, and ultimately Christ. Practically, I think this dynamic culture making happens when families adopt or foster children (even the hard ones) as they show the value of life is more than just a baby in the womb. We see it when we live financially at a particular means and give away the rest to those who need it. Dynamic culture making happens when we are willing to tell our children they can go to the farthest places of the world, even dangerous places, to reach others for Christ.

The biggest issue of creating a new culture is starting. For most of us, it will involve getting out of our comfort zones, it will involve sacrifice, it will involve the unknown. However, it is our calls as believers to be culture makers as we are called into the mission of Christ to reconcile all things to Him. (2 Cor. 5:17-21) We have to start somewhere, the question is where are you going to start?