Cultural Relevance - In the Church of All Places...

The Christian comic joked that all you have to do to become a Christian is tithe, buy a gun, and join the Republican Party. This drew laughter from the congregation due to the absurdity of the misconception by many non-believers about what the Christian “culture” is all about. Many on the outside of the Church see Christians as a mono-culture – conservative and driven by a few select moral issues. Part of the problem is that the Church contributes to the misconception in many cases by insisting, whether overtly or not, that those who join with us must become like us. They must act like us, dress like us, talk like us and certainly worship like us.

One of the reasons I believe that the Body of Christ is currently growing so fast in third world areas such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America is because, for the most part, the Church there is culturally relevant. Believers in these areas are able to incorporate their own culture and customs into the way they live their Christian lives and in the way they worship. Mission organizations learned a long time ago that they can’t successfully export the North American church to other parts of the world, though at times it has been tried. We would never try to force North American attire on believers in other parts of the world. Nor would we expect worshippers in Africa or Latin America to sit quietly and reverently through a worship service.

If we don’t try to push our North American church culture on believers in other lands, why then do we push it on seekers in our own country? To many non-believers in North America, the church has become irrelevant. Many Christian authors have written about the decline of the North American church – both in numbers and in significance to our society. We are in danger of losing a whole generation and it isn’t because they aren’t interested in spiritual matters, it’s because they don’t see anything relevant to their “culture” from within the church. When Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:22 that he became “all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some”, what he is talking about is being culturally relevant. In a lesson from the mission field, we must study the culture outside of the church and connect to seekers through their customs and needs. Then the Church will once again be relevant to those in our community.