The Church in Culture

By:  Dale Weckbacher

1 Corinthians 3:11

For no one can lay any other foundation than what has been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ.

(CSB)

The contentious nature of elections across the free world is indicative that there is a lack of foundation in modern society.  One election the electorate swings left, electing liberal and progressive candidates to office only to have the electorate swing right just two years later.  (1)  Such political swings indicate a lack of anchoring on some solid foundation.  While the mission of the church is to be that solid foundation, it has failed as evidenced by its even vacillating in adherence to its values or sitting as some morally supreme enforcer of Biblical values in the world.  Instead Jesus calls the church to spread the Gospel message as well as making disciples (Mark 16:15; Matthew 28:19-20). 

This calling requires engagement with secular culture which can tempt church leadership to compromise on foundational biblical values in order to be more appealing to that culture.  Learning how to uncompromisingly engage culture while maintaining relevance within that culture is the challenge faced by the church.  Fortunately, this is nothing new for even the Apostle Paul had to engage people from diverse cultures and managed to do so while bringing God into the discussion. 

Acts 13:13-41 records a speech delivered to a group of Jews by birth and Gentiles converting to Judaism.  With this group the Apostle Paul begins with a brief history lesson reminding the audience of God’s saving acts for Israel throughout its history (Acts 13:13-22).  This foundation served two purposes.  First it represented a reminder to the Jews on God’s concern and deliverance for them throughout their history.  For the Gentiles of the audience the conversation served as a lesson about the history of the community they were now a part of.  Acts 13:23-41 is where the Apostle Paul brings Jesus into the discussion using something familiar to the audience, Old Testament scripture that identifies Jesus as Messiah. 

Acts 14:8-18 records an encounter between the Apostle Paul and a group of Gentile non-believers in Lystra.  God presents Paul with an opportunity to demonstrate God’s healing power through his encounter with a crippled man in the city.  After hearing Paul teach, the man has faith to receive healing, something Paul picked up in the man’s eyes by looking at him.  After shouting for the man to stand on his feet, the man gets up completely healed.  Unfortunately, even after hearing Paul teach, the people of this heathen community attribute a god like status to Paul.  Similar to Peter and John praying for healing of the crippled man in the Temple (Acts 3:1-8), Barnabas and Paul tear their robes a typical Jewish response to blasphemy.  Now having the attention of these non-believers, Paul urges them to abandon their pagan gods and worship the living God. 

Acts 17:16-31 records an encounter with a culture of Greek philosophers in Athens.  This group is a culture of highly educated heathen.  Athens considered the capital of culture, philosophy, and thought in Greece was a place where these educated philosophers would gather to discuss deep philosophical topics.  Noticing a shrine to an unknown God, Paul proceeds to engage these learned people pointing to God as the unknown God who can be known through Jesus. 

Jesus also engaged the culture around Him through teaching in parables that presented theological and spiritual concepts in the context of the narrative of relatable stories (Matthew 13:1-58).  The agrarian culture of Jesus time would relate to these narratives and gain understanding of their deeper meaning.  Jesus also referred to the mission of the Apostles after he would leave them as fishing for men, something these fishermen would have related to (Matthew 4:19).

Like the culture of the Apostle Paul, the church today confronts a diverse culture.  Today’s church has churches that have lost their missional focus of pointing people to Jesus and instead preach a social feel good gospel void of mentioning the message of Grace (Ephesians 2:8).  The culture of today has its share of people lacking knowledge of the God of the Bible and instead view Christians as some group of radical close-minded people.  The culture of today also has elite intellectuals mostly in academia and media.  However, unlike the philosophers in Athens, these individuals are often close-minded to any absolute truth due to the deception of their postmodern philosophical foundation.  (2) (3). 

Over the next four Wednesday postings we will investigate ways the church can interact with four types of cultures.  We will look at church interaction with culture in the context of a hostile, anti-Christian environment.  The study will also look at church cultural interaction with spiritually dead and dying cultures as well as interaction with spiritually thriving cultures.  Please invite your friends through social media or email by sharing this post.  May God bless everyone reading this.

1. Paul Harris, Ewin MacAskill. US midterm election results herald new political era as Republicans take House. www.guardian.com. [Online] The Guardian, November 3, 2010. [Cited: November 4, 2018.] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/03/us-midterm-election-results-tea-party.

2. Dulgnan, Brian. Postmodernism Philosophy. www.britannica.com. [Online] Encyclopedia Britannica, October 31, 2014. [Cited: March 31, 2017.] https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy.

3. Saugstad, Andreas. Postmodernism and the Media. bolesblogs.com. [Online] November 20, 2000. [Cited: March 31, 2017.] https://bolesblogs.com/2000/11/20/postmodernism-the-media/.