The church is made up of people. People live in cities, neighborhoods, and interact with other people. Each person is influenced in both passive and assertive ways via means of tv and social media. So, how do we engage our culture? Should the church engage culture? How can the church leverage culture for the sake of making Jesus famous?

It’s hard for me to even begin this conversation without considering Acts 17:26-29. We learn that the city, the neighborhood, and even the street that we live in, was ordained and put into place by God. If we have been placed in a specific location by God, it would be good for us to also know the cultural and social climate of that place. In short, we have to be students of our culture. I love traveling and seeing what God is doing in various cities and communities. I love hearing pastors and church planters tell me how they are reaching their communities. There is a real danger for all of us to look elsewhere to see what is successful and attempt to replicate that system, process, or plan. The real work of ministry, in fact, is contextualization. It is looking at our culture and identifying where the Gospel informs the broken and hurting aspects of our communities and neighborhoods.

The church is in desperate need of active, intentional, and balanced contextualization – @Muddamalle
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3 Ways We Can Accomplish This

Be aware of your cultural blinders

We all are predisposed or bent towards a certain way. Tim Keller calls this our cultural blinders. This issue of cultural blinders affects every area of our life, not just the church. It is easy for us to assume a cultural perspective based on one that we lived in. All of a sudden we begin to create, build, and strategize around cultural assumptions that are derived from past experience. Possibly the first thing we must do is recognize that we do have cultural blinders and then intentionally deconstruct them so that we can accurately engage the context that God has placed us in.

Pay attention to your immediate context

We can learn a lot from the very streets that we live in. Each of our neighborhoods are made of people that have a culture, past, and story. It is very common for people of the same culture or group to live near each other. Our ability to learn and understand the motivation of these people groups will be vital in our ability to speak to them in a way that is affective and relatable. It’s easy for us to begin talking and sharing and speaking from our own perspective. However, in doing this we loose the opportunity to speak in a way that is winsome and directed towards the persons actual life and context.

Make a serious effort to acknowledge and understand their objections

Its easy for us to jump right into the conversation and begin to give a defense for the Gospel. But, have we actually seriously considered, thought about, and engaged with the objection that people have to the Gospel? We live in a world that is filled with tragedy, turmoil, and seemingly constant destruction. It’s not that difficult for anyone to become negative or pessimistic about the possibility of a good God in the midst of this fallen depraved world. However, its these very objections that serve as platforms to meaningfully engage those within our community in a way that speaks to deepest hurts that they have experienced. In fact, it is in these areas that we must boldly proclaim the good news of the Gospel.

Tim Keller captures all three comments perfectly.

The post Bridging Two Worlds: Culture and Church appeared first on Joel's Travels.

Easter is literally around the corner and in many homes there is a frantic rush to prepare for an epic Easter egg hunt. Interestingly, there seems to be a debate amongst some people if Christians should participate in Easter egg hunts. Some of the rationale stems from the following arguments:

Why NOT to do an Easter egg hunt:

• It puts more emphasis on getting candy in eggs than the real reason to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ.
• The focus becomes a bunny and not Christ. Some even say this is a form of idolatry.

There is definitely a concern that the focus of Easter can easily be directed towards candy, eggs, and bunnies and not the atoning work of Christ. However, I would argue that the issue here is not the activity of an Easter egg hunt but the intentionality of parents. The responsibility to place the focus on Christ lays solely in the hands of parents. Further, something as simple as an Easter egg hunt can become an incredible way to share the Gospel.

Why we should do an Easter egg hunt:

Engage a cultural norm:

Something as simple as an Easter egg hunt is a cultural norm. This is one of the few holidays that religious background is super imposed by a fun activity. So why is that important? As a kid I remember my Hindu and Sikh friends coming over to do easter egg hunts at my house or at the church. These friends would never come for a church service or even for youth group, but something like an Easter egg hunt was not even a question, of course they would come to find candy in these colored eggs. What an incredible opportunity to engage an activity that our culture has embraced to connect people to the Gospel. I agree with Tim Keller as he unpacks the importance of active contextualization in a balanced approach.

“To contextualize with balance and successfully reach people in a culture, we must both enter the culture sympathetically and respectfully (similar to drilling) and confront the culture where it contradicts biblical truth (similar to blasting). ” – Tim Keller

Opportunity to proclaim the Gospel:

Just because we leverage an Easter egg hunt to engage our culture does not mean we do not boldly proclaim the Gospel. In fact, in our bold proclamation some may be offended. I am thankful that it is our responsibility to clearly and boldly proclaim the Gospel and that the Holy Spirit is the one who convicts of sin and does the work or regeneration and sanctification. In fact, proper contextualization and gospel proclamation produces a scandal.

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Proper contextualization means causing the right scandal – the one the gospel poses to all sinners…
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I believe most of us fall short in this area of Gospel proclamation. Therefore we begin to say the issue is the Easter egg hunt, when the issue is our inability to boldly proclaim that while the act of finding eggs is fun, the hero is not a bunny but Jesus Christ who conquered sin and death and made it possible for us to live in right relationship with God who created us.

Related Posts:

Why I Love Exodus: Gods and Generals

What Can 50 Shades Teach Us? 

The post Should Christians Do Easter Egg Hunts? appeared first on Joel's Travels.

If you have been paying attention to my social feed at all you may have noticed an insane amount of Tim Keller quotes. There is a reason for this, aside from the fact that Keller is brilliant. I am currently in a church planting class in Seminary and Keller’s books “Center Church” and “The Reason for God” are key resources. These books are gospel saturated and leaves the reader longing for the gospel not just for themselves but for the gospel to transform the communities that they live in.

One particular section covers Gospel Renewal. Keller is immensely helpful when it comes to unpacking what biblical revival looks like, and points us to Gospel Renewal as the catalyst for Biblical Revival. Most importantly, Keller points out that revival is not something that we can cause, rather it is something that God does. The following are 6 quotes that encouraged me, and I pray also encourage you.

1. “Revivals and renewals are necessary because the default mode of the human heart is works-righteousness”
2. “Because we don’t really believe the gospel deep down – because we are living as if we save our selves – our hearts find ways of either rejecting or reengineering the doctrine (as in liberal theology)”
3. “All revivals are seasons in which the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit are intensified many-fold”
4. “You must let the gospel argue with you. You must let the gospel sink down deeply until it changes your views and the structures of your motivation. You must be trained and discipled by the gospel. The gospel, if it is truly believed, helps us out of the extreme neediness that is natural to the human heart.”
5. “Holiness affects both the private and civic lives of Christians”
6. “Ultimately, we can only prepare for revival; we can’t really bring it about. God must send it.”

What are your favorite quotes that relate to renewal, revival, and the Gospel?

Bonus quote:

“Personal gospel renewal means the gospel doctrines of sin and grace are actually experienced, not just known intellectually”

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