Christianity as a Sub-Culture

Scott is writing on Christianity becoming a sub culture far removed from the rest of Canada

It’s easy to talk about religious people reaching out to their communities, or about churches making a difference. There are scads of books being written about “being Christ in your community”. The pathetic reality is though, most don’t really even come close. Neither do churches’ attempts to reach into their communities, neither do outreach driven services. [Emerging] churches do little better.

The problem is that few people are willing to admit that Christianity has become a sub-culture. In many ways it is as foreign to the average Canadian as being a Seik, or Amish. Virtually all church growth strategies still mistakenly assume that the average non-churched person understands the language and culture of evangelical Christianity. The sad fact is, they do not. They don’t use words like “blessings” and they don’t “trust you’ll have a good day”. They are not even marginally interested in hearing some guy talk about an issue that is wholly irrelevant to their lives; let alone in a time slot that is inconvenient with music that they don’t listen to… repeated over and over and over.

I met with a denominational leader this week who admitted that he feels the denomination he belongs to, and the Christian world in general, has lost it’s poignancy and is probably obsolete. This is undoubtedly a hard admission from an individual whose entire career is built on encouraging churches to grow. We wondered together if there was any hope of the church actually connecting on a macro level with its community, based on what is happening now. This denominational head told me he doubted it would happen.

The solution, it seemed at the time, was for the church to finally come to grips with the brutal and almost ugly reality of incarnational living. Jesus Christ was far less mainstream and far more controversial than Christians are willing to be. His lifestyle was well beyond the acceptable range for behavior in your average Baptist or Free Methodist Church. He was accused, apparently in light of some supposed evidence, of living flagrantly and with moral license.

For my entire religious life I have heard the argument that as a Christian I must be careful when playing with fire, morally and culturally speaking, lest I get burned. The unspoken truth of that statement may be that most Christians are so afraid of being burned by the fire that they don’t even come near the heat.

Some of the comments on his post suggested the Christians were supposed to be irrelevant and the church is two worldly already but that isn't really what Scott is getting at (I will say that since we have talked about this for years).  It is a church that is so far out of the world that many congregations have to get consultants in to find out what is going on in their neighborhoods.  How does it get this way?  This is going to make some of you madder than usual but when I read Ron Sider's The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience and see those going to church and professing to be Christians to be no different than anyone else, we know something must not be working. Is it fear of sin or just fear of the world?

Scott mentions incarnational living which is kingdom values and living them out in the world outside the church walls which is difficult when many churches have to hire a consultant to see what their neighborhood is thinking.  In some ways it goes back to the turn of the 20th century with evangelicalism's struggle then to deal with modernity and we secluded ourselves in Christian camps, t-shirts, music, politics, and art.  Also while struggling with engaging culture, we have tossed aside Kingdom values and exchanged them for the values of power, control, and money which even the most committed opponent of the faith will say are the ways of Christ.  As John Wimber wrote, everyone seems to be able to see this except those of us in the church.

Folks, the world knows what this is supposed to look like. Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, "That guy’s drunk." I said, "No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine." He asked, "Do you know about church?" I said, "Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?" It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master's wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine. We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know. I said, "Answer me this one question." Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. "If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?" He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, "Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book." I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. "Oh, God." I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, "Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church."

When you joined the kingdom, you expected to be used of God. I’ve talked to thousands of people, and almost everybody has said, "When I signed up, I knew that caring for the poor was part of it—I just kind of got weaned off of it, because no one else was doing it." Folks, I’m not saying, "Do some-thing heroic." I’m not saying, "Take on some high standard, sell everything you have and go." Now, if Jesus tells you that, that’s different. But I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, participate. Give some portion of what you have—time, energy, money, on a regular basis—to this purpose, to redeeming people, to caring for people. Share your heart and life with somebody that’s not easy to sit in the same car with. Are you hearing me? That’s where you’ll really see the kingdom of God.

Technorati tags: John Wimber, Ron Sider, church growth, Scott Williams