I am studying this book with Dan Hudson, Kyle Phillips and Nate Liston. The last two chapters (4 and 5) were very good. In chapter four, titled "A Tale of Five Churches" Tim Stevens chronicles the journey of fives churches and their reaction to a Hollywood studio filming a not-so-nice-storyline movie in their small town. These five churches react in five different manners. We see the responses of condemnation, separation, embracing, ignoring and leveraging.
Tim Stevens shared that leveraging the pop culture to reach as many as possible is the correct response. I agree. I think he hit the nail on the head how most churches respond to the culture around them.
And by the way, we did have a very special 9/11 service immediately following that horrible event. I was in the midst of a sermon series at the time, but some things have to trump what you are doing. That was definitely one of those moments.
In chapter five Tim Stevens spoke about categorizing the culture into sacred or secular. I love the quote at the very end of the chapter, "It is easy to identify what's wrong with Eminem, but finding what's right, identifying and understanding what millions of teens connect with, takes much more work."
I believe, as I have said before, in the process of redeeming the culture. I like the group Apologetix. They take secular music and change the lyrics of it to a Christian message. That's cool.
I think it is really important that we help people in the church currently to be able to view pop culture through the lens of Biblical Christianity. They will be able to recognize spiritual themes and kernels of truth more readily. They won't mindlessly listen to music, because they like the sound...they will understand the message.
That is an important part of our role as Christians, to help others understand fully a Christian worldview. And then, as Tim Stevens says, we can leverage pop culture fully to help redeem lost people for Jesus!
1 comment:
I especially enjoyed chapter 4 with the examples TS gave. I think probably a major reason a lot of churches don't leverage the culture is because it takes work! And it takes a willingness to change and adapt the "master plan" for the week.
You said "I think it is really important that we help people in the church currently to be able to view pop culture through the lens of Biblical Christianity. They will be able to recognize spiritual themes and kernels of truth more readily." This is true and I agree, but in order to do this we as leaders need to be willing to educate ourselves on current culture ... even if it means switching the car radio over to the new rock alternative instead of the Christian station, or watching the E! channel (shudder the thought) or MTV.
We also need to be careful not to "create" truth just for the sake of finding truth.
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