Can Christians Crack the Culture Code?
In this seeker-sensitive age of megachurch complexes, satellite churches, and stadium seating, it seems the Big Idea of today's church culture is empire-building, in which the most successful churches are the ones with the most attendees, the largest square-footage, or the furthest reaching TV broadcasts. Within this framework, the top-down church hierarchy is organized much like a business, where pastors are the CEOs, the elders are the board of directors, and laymen serve on endless committees many of which are subconsciously designed to please the people and maintain the empire. Was this design the original intent? Methinks, no. This organizational approach has the propensity to place the onus on the leaders to produce a formulaic, all-too-often fabricated Sunday experience for the consumer congregation, entertaining enough to draw the crowd back week after week but largely ineffective and dare I say shallow. It can slowly become easy to begin to rely on hype and emotion to generate the excitement of a "perfect" Sunday experience, with a luster easily lost upon walking out into the real world. The problem with this approach is the overwhelming tendency to create a church culture that exists largely in the pristine bubble within the church walls, detached from the culture of our times, unrelatable to non-Christians. From the outside looking in it can seem faux-idealist, impractical and even exclusive. What if there existed a new paradigm, one more closely linked to the example portrayed by the early church of the Book of Acts? What if the focus shifted from drawing the crowd into the fancy, cushioned multiplex to equipping believers to the point of practical release into their homes, neighborhoods and communities? Indeed, McDonald's is not successful because they built one gigantic McDonalds, but because there is a small McDonald's on every corner. In similar fashion, the church, less focused on empire building, and more focused on equipping believers to the point of release would be so much better poised to meet real people in the raw places of life where the rubber meets the road. This can't be done in a top-down spectator forum where the many are content to simply watch the actions of a few. It must be done practically, by the many, in the places where real life is lived: the home of a struggling single mother, the workplace with its stressful demands, the hospital room of a terminally ill patient, the classroom of the students whose friend died too young. Imagine this: a church without walls, free from the confines of a brick and mortar building. A group of believers and non-believers alike free to process the deeper questions of life together, without the shackles of religious dogma. A group free to serve collectively or individually in a soup kitchen on a Sunday morning or simply to hang out and enjoy each other. Is there a place for large, corporate gatherings? Sure, but it's not the end all. Christ did not come (nor did He teach us) to abolish popular culture, in favor of establishing a new, churchy one, but rather to inject a New Hope into already-existing culture, affirming the qualities of already-established people and inspiring relationship among them with God and others. In this intimate, vulnerable place we can tackle real life head-on together and build God's Kingdom not out of pulpits and pews, but out of hearts and lives. Boom-sauce.
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