As a Christian, I’m eager to recline in my east chair this Sunday and watch the Academy Awards – or as we call them, “The Oscar’s”. I know this really freaks out legalists.
Yes, I’ll be in the wide minority of Christians, watching, enjoying and listening to the ‘real’ cultural ministers, teachers and scribes of America. The fact that I’m lonely on my couch watching saddens me.
A recent survey operated by LifeWay Christian Resources revealed how physically and intellectually ‘removed’ we are as Christians, and how intoxicated we have become to the juice inside of our ‘church bottle’. Honestly, how many ‘authentic relationships’ do you have with ‘the secular hearts’ in today’s community?
In a November 2006 survey asking ‘how informed the church, and her leaders are as it relates to today’s post-Christian culture’, the results are embarrassing. To be pithy, the church is clueless when it comes to the engaging an emerging post-Christian culture.
Get this, we’ll send a gang of missionaries to a foreign country to share the good news of Jesus’ Graceland. The deposited gang members will study their new culture’s pagan books, mystical music and theatrical entertainment. They study the culture to relate to a people – people that Jesus displays an excruciating love for.
Our blessed ‘missionary gangs’ will be ‘encouraged’ to watch local television, listen to local broadcasts, and even attend seasonal feasts, and pagan activities, all with great relational compassion – they may even organize a weekly visit to the corner coffee shop, knowing that the ‘real conversations’ take a latte or two. From fashion to folk lore fantasies, they engage their new community and its cultural essence.
Back here in God blessed America, according to the latest temperature of the evangelical church, what is being modeled is more drinking, less relating – “less fulfilling, tastes great”. Where are we catching this lethargic addition?
According to LifeWay Resources, ministers feel significantly less informed about the culture surrounding then than do their churchgoers. Twenty-percent of ministers feel very informed about the Internet, compared to only 43-percent of fellow church members who belly up to the weekly church bar; only 19-percent of the ministers feel very informed about what’s on television today, and only 31-percent of the Graceland Bar’s regulars believe the same.
Agreed, we live in a culture that enslaves us in the ‘business of busy’. We have the commitments of work, school, practices and ALL of those weekly church meetings to attend inside of the bottle (sarcasm). Alright, maybe you don’t have the time to tangibly touch the culture, but you can still relate. Have you read the memoirs, journals and inner-personal thoughts of today’s generation?
Magazines, publications, and the thousands of books that make The New York Times ‘best sellers’. Only 18-percent of the ministers are very informed about books people are reading, compared to just 27-percent of the attending crowd. People are trying to be heard in the millions. Today’s culture offers a personal thought in their pajamas and from their closet every day – it’s called a blog. They want someone to read them, pay attention to their ideas and confusion. Are we reading them?
It gets worse, only 16-percent of today’s pastors know what movies are being watched, and for Jesus’ ‘Gang of Followers’, just one out of four pay any attention to the silver screen that drives the beating heart of today’s community. If it’s the “Passion of the Christ”, we pack the theater and use it for the Kingdom – great. We can’t use other films of passion, protest and outrage just the same? (BTW, Mel’s’ “Passion” was an R-rated movie.)
Where are we people?
Well, I found us. If it has to do with “politics” in culture, put down the frosty glass of self-help recovery programs and run for the exits to a voting booth nearest you. Better to ignore the 30-million people watching and listening to the cultural play writes at the Oscar’s, so we can trust the ‘faith in votes’ relationship with the culture.
Let’s elect men and women to represent us, as they relate to the community on our behalf. Sure, I’ll study the issues and the candidates when the time comes, and I’ll make sure to represent the moral duty to country and Kingdom principals, but I won’t place my faith inside of a vote, a candidate nor a party to change the community around us.
So, give me a latte at the local coffee shop, a deep conversation about Britney’s ‘hair cutting episode’, and for good measure mix in a little side discussion that ‘all spiritual paths and religions end up together’ at the same time.
Pass the remote gang, I want to have something to talk about with Rebekka Eastern Religion, Tricia Tongue Stud and Susie Single Mother of Two at the local coffee shop come Monday.
Comments: erichogueshow@hotmail.com
