CULTURAL CREATOR
The famous creator and sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, Gutzin Borglum, also carved the renowned bust of Lincoln that now resides in the capital building in Washington DC. While working on this masterpiece one day, just as the face of Lincoln was becoming recognizable through the large block of granite, a young girl who was visiting the studio, looked at the half-done face of Lincoln, and asked, "Is that Abraham Lincoln?" Borglum replied, “Well, yes it sure is!" The little girl, with a look of astonishment on her face asked, “How in the world did you know he was inside there? (Bits & Pieces 23)" The little girl’s reaction to his wonderful creation, is strikingly similar to our reaction, when we see Christ at work in our lives and our churches, and we ask the same question, “How in the world...?” It seems that Jesus is always laboring to create something wonderful, and this can be true also, of the relationship between our churches and the community of culture surrounding it. He wants to chip away the excessive debris and create a masterpiece!
So often, when we think of reaching the culture around us with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we start by laboring to determine a way to be accepted by the culture, by being relevant, hip, and cool. In a sense, almost tricking the culture to like us by pretending that we are one of them, when we are actually trying to get them to become one of us. How crazy is that? However, Jesus did not use those kinds of tactics in His ministry at all, and since He is our example, we must examine how He related to His culture. I read recently that, “Jesus was a cultivator of culture. (Crouch 136)” Initially, I did not like that assessment of Him, and believed it to be an inaccurate depiction of His ministry to the culture around Him, but the writer was only speaking about the years prior to His ministry. He later went on to describe Jesus as a creator of culture, a radical change agent that moved the horizons wherever He went, and I couldn’t agree more. “Jesus did not simply preserve and pass on his culture’s inheritance. Instead, whenever Jesus touched part of Israel’s cultural inheritance, he brought something new to it. (Crouch 137)” In like manner, the church should also be a creator of culture, not merely a cultivator of it.
Like the stone face of Lincoln, and like our own culture, the Jewish culture that Jesus was reared from, was only a partially completed resemblance of what His Father had intended it to be. They had long ago given up on their high and exalted commission of being a cultural lighthouse to the world, and had become satisfied with the status quo, which was far from completion in the eyes of its creator. When Jesus came along, He didn’t just blend in with the society in order to get along, try to be relevant, or adopt their worldly ideals, nor did He cause problems within it, just for the sake of making a name for Himself. Rather, He strove to awaken His people to the realization of who they were created to be, and that they were not achieving the spiritual and cultural goals God had designed for them to model to the entire world.
Jesus boldly challenged the passivity of His culture at every turn, and refused to compromise with the religious milieu they were accustomed to. As He began to take issue with their carnality, “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. (NKJV Mark 1: 22)”. This should be a staple of the modern church, but like the scribes, we are so busy chopping up God’s word and undermining its principles, in order to accommodate the world, we are giving away that God-given authority, rather than exercising it. Rather than using our pulpits as a means of waking the culture from its moral and spiritual slumber, the church, to a large degree, coddles and coaxes them back to sleep; reassuring them that they are going be just fine, in their shallow, lukewarm, and worldly christianese lifestyle.
After providing them with thirty minutes of high quality entertainment, loosely referred to as, “worship”, a dynamic young pastor, glides onto the stage, tells a few jokes, recites some interesting historical facts or modern poetry, and then deftly illustrates the premise of his motivational speech, with a verse or two of Scripture. Before you know it, the twenty-five minute ‘sermonette for christianettes’ is over, and everyone hurries to their feet and then their cars, mindful of the next thousand people that need to be seated for the third service. As they depart the church parking lot, they retrieve their cellphones in order to check off the box marked, “Religious Activity”, in their weekly planners. No service, no sacrifice, and no commitments required!
Now, I don’t like to bash or belittle the Bride of Christ, and of course there are many fine churches that are still preaching the word powerfully from their pulpits, and changing the culture around them as a result, but I’m very concerned with this ‘foot deep, mile wide’ Christianity that seems to be spreading in our culture today. We need to throw out the conventional wisdom of church growth doctrines and contemporary church planning, that caters to a shallow, seeker friendly audience, and just concentrate on continuing, “…steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. (Acts 2:42)” This may seem like a radical departure from the established norms, but it seems to have worked out pretty well for the early church.
Also, we are very conscious of the need to, as Paul told Timothy, "Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Tim 4:2-5)" How can we not begin here when trying to affect our culture with real change that is effective and impactful? “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. (Heb 4:12-13)”
Over and over again in the Bible, God describes His Word as the change agent that transforms culture, and yet this is the one thing that we minimize in our churches for the sake of relevancy, to our severe detriment. Coincidence? Not a chance!!! Satan knows all too well the power of God’s word and will stop at nothing to drive it as far from us as possible. Wielded properly, the ills of our culture are nothing compared to this powerful Sword of the Spirit! This is exemplified mightily by the prophet Jeremiah who records the Lord saying, "The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?" says the LORD. "Is not My word like a fire?" says the LORD, "And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? (Jer 23:28-29)” Whenever Jesus was confronted with a question from the world around Him, He responded boldly with applicable Scripture, and so should we!
By Pastor Glen Mustian
Works Cited:
Anderson, Leith. The Church and the Culture. Moody.Edu. Video.
Bits & Pieces. Borglum & Lincoln. June 23, 1994. Web. 06/02/2017.
Crouch, Andy. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. InterVarsity Press. Kindle. 2009.
New King James Version. The Holy Bible. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. Print. 2002.
