Kruse Kronicle
I’ve spent a lot of time watching (and expositing) culture to the neglect of personal bible study. Publicly, I’ve argued that we need to spend as much time lucubrating culture as we have given to expositing Scripture. Maybe it’s an unconscious neglect based upon a belief that my Scriptural knowledge far exceeds my ability to obey what I know (I know more bible than I’ll ever obey). I need to find my way back to the middle.
There are several versions of e-mails making there way across cyberspace insinuating that Senator Obama is secretly a Muslim who attended a radical Islamic school in Indonesia. One of the e-mails charges that as a Muslim he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Another e-mail claims that he was sworn into the Senate using a copy of the Quran. FYI—all of the allegations are false.
According to Snopes.com the Muslim scare is the “hottest” urban legend on the internet.
According to Forbes, 3.8 million Americans are in commuter marriages and the number is growing. Since 2000, 30% more Americans had long distance relationships where their work kept them apart for days at a time. Forbes says that technology has fueled the pattern:
But while innovations like e-mail, video chatting, instant messaging, Twitter and Second Life have increased the volume of Internet chatter, they haven’t necessarily made long-distance relationships any more successful, Guldner says. Communication’s quality, he says, has always meant more than its frequency.”Information technology has definitely led people to believe that long-distance relationships will work more than in the past,” says Guldner. “Whether that’s true is the big question we’re dealing with right now.”
-from PSFK; Piers Fawkes
Culture is shaped by a small number of gatekeepers. Majority perspectives have little bearing on culture formation. Instead, elites dominate. Neuhaus notes: “Even though [these elites] may be a minority of the population, they succeed in presenting themselves as ‘mainstream’ through their control of powerful institutions in the media, in entertainment, in the arbitrations of literary taste, in the great research universities and professional associations, and in the worlds of business and advertisement that seek the approval of those who control the commanding heights of culture.” Increasingly, grassroots political efforts to reverse the current cultural direction are proving futile. Politics reflects culture; it doesn’t direct it.
taken from The Challenge of Cultural Influence
by John Steel
I discovered an interesting post at Church of the Masses, a blog authored by a script writer/consultant named Barbara Nicolosi. In her post called Somebody Gets It, she references an article by a gentleman John Steel, (never heard of him). What I find interesting is the insightful advice Mr. Steel gives for influencing culture. This is important for the Christian community since culture has insipidly, over the last 50 years, shaped the Christian community. No longer does Christianity influence culture, conversely culture has become the engine that drives Christianity. Need some examples? Ask me.
Here’s an excerpt from the post.
Culture is shaped by a small number of gatekeepers. Majority perspectives have little bearing on culture formation. Instead, elites dominate. Neuhaus notes: “Even though [these elites] may be a minority of the population, they succeed in presenting themselves as ‘mainstream’ through their control of powerful institutions in the media, in entertainment, in the arbitrations of literary taste, in the great research universities and professional associations, and in the worlds of business and advertisement that seek the approval of those who control the commanding heights of culture.”
Mr. Steel attempts to provide a Christian sociology that would help Christians with money see their way through to investment in culture.
If John Steel is correct in his analysis then many faith leaders are now viewing “the culture” as a new, laudable strategic goal. But such recognition needs a deep theological perspective and appropriate cultural discernment to have any renewing effect.
John Steel gives Luke 16: 1-9 (specifically verse 9) a new twist.
I am still searching for the complete article in Provocations at The Trinity Forum
Three ‘trends’: economic, cultural and ecological are converging at the very same moment in time; creating (perhaps for the very first time) a counterweight powerful enough to balance America’s insatiable appetite. An era of pragmatism and restraint that this country hasn’t seen for quite a while. Projecting out further in the years to follow, Boomers may actually contribute to this trend. As they age, they will inevitably downsize their homes and their lives. Meanwhile, Generation Y will hit their prime earning years in an economy that is growing far less quickly and their ability to spend and therefore impact the economy will be muted.
Taken from a Coming Period of Pragmatism
Take a trip to your local college campus and what you’ll discover is that non-Christian religious groups conspicuously outnumber the Christian groups. Wicca, Bahai, Muslim, and Buddhist groups dot the campus landscape as never before. Religious diversity is not only encouraged but also considered supreme in this new culture. Harvard professor Diane Eck states that, “Before 1965, we could conceive of ourselves as mainly a Christian nation but the influx of people of radically different religions and conversion of others to those religions — Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism — has resulted in two kinds of change:
In the transition from the old era to the new we have a mix of people with copious worldviews. But in the very near future we will watch a generation be born in an exclusively unique environment. The United Kingdom, Western Europe, Australia, and Canada have been post-Christian for a decade or more. America is just now transitioning and Latin America is a decade behind us in this transition. This being so, we need to see ourselves as missionaries; what do missionaries do? They cross borders.
Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presense of Christ. Missional leaders now root themselves in a piece of geography for the long term. We survey the land for the poor and the desperate, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. We seek to plant seeds of ministry, kernels of forgiveness, new plantings of the gospel among “the poor (of all kinds)” and then by the Spirit water them, nurture them into the life of God in Christ. [read the complete post]
Today I’ve been thinking about how we have traditonally done things and why we continue to do them the way we do. Maybe the greater question is why we are so resistant to changing the way we do things when there isn’t any biblical basis for most of what we do (in method, style, or format).
Think about it. “Church” is now defined for people by what we do. And this has become a gigantic barrier for the church in being the church. I am sadden by the “fruit” – shallow, inwardly focused, culture driven, priority given to the service of felt-needs, and consumer oriented. What we have in the majority of our churches are people who “go to church” as opposed to Christians who are the church.
