Christ and Culture on the Ground

Do you ever feel as if you have bitten off more than you can chew? I feel that way when it comes to questions of Christ and culture. I have only written three posts, and I find my thoughts running in dozens of directions. A new book by Andy Crouch has been published that seems to explore the questions I have been wanting to ask. I have been reading more resources from Tim Keller on ministry in cultural centers. There is more to think about and write about than I can possibly do justice to.

So allow me to ground these thoughts in my personal experience. After being on Staten Island for about a year, I felt lost. Perhaps that would put me in good company -- many a New Yorker has felt the same way after visiting the Forgotten Borough. But this is where I live, the place where I pastor, and my expectations for what living in a borough of New York City would be like were very different from the reality. I did not understand this place or the people here, and they did not understand me.

I picked up Mark Driscoll's The Radical Reformission around this time. Driscoll is no stranger to controversy. In fact he seems to enjoy it. Sometimes he is funny, sometimes he is crude. But I found this book helpful. Driscoll begins with the basic idea that Christians are called to love their Lord, their neighbor, and the church, and that fulling these obligations requires us to live in, observe, interact with, critique, and even reform the culture around them. In particular, I found his reformission questions at the end of each chapter helpful. Driscoll reminded and challenged me to get inside the attitudes and assumptions of this new culture by going to the grocery store, picking up the newspaper, and talking to my neighbors.

As I read and began to take another look at the world around me, I began to notice patterns, attitudes, and postures. This new world began to make some sense to me. I began to see things that were good that we as a church could encourage, or of which we could take advantage as we sought to reach our neighbors with the gospel. I began to notice things that were sinful and idolatrous in the community that I could address through teaching, counseling, and preaching. And I started to understand the ways that these cultural patterns, attitudes, and postures, both good and bad, had shaped the way people in the congregation thought about following Christ and belonging to the church.

If a sophisticated theological treatise on culture is what you are looking for, you will not find it in The Radical Reformission. For that matter, Driscoll is at best a mediocre writer; you will not be swept away by the fluidity of his prose. Much of what he does at Mars Hill in Seattle does not translate well to my context (I have the same difficulty with Tim Keller and Redeemer). But Driscoll is observant, and he asks good questions, and that makes his book worth reading.