Whenever this topic is brought up I think of Jerry Lee Lewis who was ejected from his Bible College for singing a worship song in a rockabilly style. From there he felt like he had to choose between using his talent and the church. He rejected the church to pursue his talent and his life was after that lived as though there was no grace.

The thing that many people miss is that the church isn’t stronger by cloistering itself, it is weaker because it alienates people who feel, in many ways, the divine draw to use the talents they have. When people have to choose between the talents, abilities and, often, the desires God has given them, and a church that makes unreasoned, human commands to not use them, the church will often lose. And that’s about as far from the gospel as you can get.

Daryle,

Are you looking for an opinion on the name or the organization, itself?

If the name, then I’m not sure I see anything wrong with it.

If the organization, I would have to study it awhile beyond a simple Google search to render an opinion.

Masters Commission is a tool used to develop youth to engage the culture through music, drama, art, the things alluded to earlier. It is a very good program. My wife was exposed to it several years ago when she and several others from our church went to Phoenix A/G. The one thing that stuck with her was the effective outreach into various cultures and lifestyles.

In one sense to be a Christian is to be totally counter-cultural. By living as a citizen of the Kingdom, we are saying that we are serving another master than those in the world. On the other hand, there are elements of the common culture such as language, speech, music that are almost impossible to separate ourselves from. I don’t really think that should be the focus of our separation.

What should separate Christians is our extravagant love and service to others. Sadly, though this isn’t the way it seems to work. We seem more content to separate ourseles through political causes and external moral policing of the world as a whole. We feel a need to take moral stands against sin in general, but we often neglect our call to actually serve and love those “sinners”. It is almost exactly opposite of what Jesus called us to do.

You want to be counter cultural try this: find your local sex crimes registration list which comes complete with names and addresses, knock on their door and invite them to church, or over for dinner.

I do not believe we gather primarily to attract the unbeliever. We gather to pray (?), and worship, and learn together. Conforming the gathering place to entertain and accomodate things we can get elsewhere sometimes emasculates the reason for gathering. Why not go karts, shopping malls, swimming pools, and anything else?

Because those things can be enjoyed elsewhere and they are certainly not the reason we gather. By the way, even in Ingrid’s type church as well as most others prayer is a perfunctory excercize which rarely goes over ten minutes. Why?

It is laborious, it is real warfare, and it is a reflection of the personal prayer life of the average believer. We seem to be more interested in providing for the unbeliever than seeking the face of God. Check out the Chinese home church and the place of prayer, and then compare it with the paltry offering we give God collectively on Sunday mornings. We actually say with our behavior “We can do it without you, Lord, but thanks anyway”. The Chinese have yet to have coffee rooms and the like, perhaps their growth is a reflection of their singlemindedness. They do eat together, though, and receive communion almost every Sunday. We might want to try that before we have bowling alleys!

Our problem is not relevance, it’s power.

Nathan,
Did you see that the post you referred to is mostly Bible verses, and that it is connected to the post below it: “In the post below, we have a man who claims to be a Christian. He takes the garbage from popular American culture and tries to weave deep spiritual insight into it for Christian little girls . . . ”

If you see the High School Musical as something with which a Christian should be involved, if you think that the words of the song given as an example were edifying, and that the girl’s dancing was the kind you’d like your (future) daughter to do, you are way too immersed in the world.

Hopefully you overlooked the connection between the two articles.

Do you think it’s possible to “separate ourselves” (using Phil’s term) from culture as far as our language (how and what we speak), music (some we might find to endorse activities such as drug use, etc)– in other words, we don’t engage in those types of behavior–AND yet still be able to engage the culture around us?

Chris–if I’m following your statement (I’m just a dumb ol’ country boy), are you lamenting people moving FROM the cities to more rural settings? And if so, what would be an acceptable reason for doing just that, as long as we don’t live like hermits/avoid engaging people all together?

Counter culture would be moving out of the Christian ghetto.

An interesting book is Richard Foster’s “Freedom of Simplicity.” In a way, this touches on that anti-consumerism theme mentioned above. Consumerism: part of our new Christian ghetto. We just put a little fish symbol on it or something.

Counter culture, by the way, always makes me think of diners and old donut shops. Seriously. With those raised glass cake holders on the counter.

Chris:
Interesting thoughts. I guess I fall into “white flight” category…I live in the city and feel trapped/squeezed/clostraphobic. I want to move out (I grew up in the country) just so I can breath…and actually see the stars.

Thanks for the response.

I live in the country.

In fact, the population is so far into a dwindling cycle that it’s getting to the point of being a “mission field” in that churches are closing and remaining ones can’t find pastors.

Interesting turn of events.

City is where the people are, and there are theories on “God loves the cities.” But there are a lot of lonely, lost people in rural areas. Rural areas bring their own set of problems: overly self sufficient (I don’t need God), alcoholism (very high), etc. Rural areas need Christ, too.

PA Native here myself Phil. Bloomsburg! Go BLUE!

“Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think there are elements in our cultures with which we need to be very counter cultural. I don’t think that these are things like coffee shops, music and fashionable clothes. I believe it has more to do with ideas, values, paradigms and attitudes that we are to engage and become change agents for.”

Actually – I disagree with this. I think that clothes and coffee are both things that we need to be counter-cultural about – but only because of the ideas that lie behind them. If the coffee (or any product) is exploitative or damages God’s earth then we shoudl reject it on principle regardless of how trendy it is. It clothes are made in far-east (or even local) sweatshops we should also reject them. I think it is absolutely right for a follower of Jesus to reject the image-focussed materialism of modern western society that insists on a certain lifestyle at the expense of the poor around the world. God will judge us on that, and he will judge those ‘conservative christians’ who reject these sort of concerns just as harshly.

Ian,

I agree with you, as well – and it is very easy to separate ourselves from the sources of the things we consume. My wife just finished working at Starbucks to start her own business with a friend. While she was at Starbucks, she explained to me why ‘Fair Trade Coffee’ and shade-grown coffee were more compatible with Christian principles, which was eye-opening for me (despite me not drinking or liking coffee).

God puts value on people, period, whether they come in large groups or small groups. One can almost always find “one,” even if living out in the stix. There’s as much value to being a consistent and dependable friend to one needy person as there is being busy serving many, if that is what God wants one to do. In fact just having the one can be more difficult because it can be more intimate and the invasions on one’s “privacy” can be greater.

I live on several acres and am so thankful that God has provided this place for us, for now. I have had to live in an apartment and have had to live as the “focus of attention” wherever I’ve been (because of being a different nationality, and sometimes color, as those around me.) This will be happening again; for this time in my life I’m thankful for a rest from that. I love having the freedom to be outside watching the birds or working in the garden with no one watching but critters.

A man I know who I’ll call Jim lives in the country and loves working in his garden. Once he and another person were talking about a busy and well-known Christian leader who said something like “the day I’ll have time to work in my garden is the day I will have given up serving the Lord.” Jim talked about how he “talks with God while working in his garden, feels a sense of oneness and marvel at the way God has created things.” My view on it: what Jim is doing is what most Christians should be doing more.

Just for clarification, my lament was not directed at you per se Chris as much as what I find in general. A lot of people I come in contact with on a daily basis seem to think it is somehow more spiritual to be in the city than the country. I just think we ought to Bloom where God plants us!
What a great cliche!

Joe,

As Amy pointed out, everywhere you go is a mission field. My comments (echoing those of recent discussions from Mars Hill (GR) and elsewhere) were just identifying one of many potential ways to be ‘counter-cultural’ – not an exhaustive list by any means.

Keith,

I work for a chemical/pharma company as an engineer, and I feel your pain on US environmental policy (which is not always in line with good stewardship of the environment. I look to the banning of proscribed burning in the 90’s as an example of environmntalism gone wild, for example.)

Being green and being Christian are not incompatible – it is about good stewardship and sustainability. I think that when we remove ourselves from the debate, or align ourselves too closely with a particular political party, we lose the ability to have a voice in what it means to carry out God’s commands in Genesis to our responsibility of care for His Creation.

You asked:

Is it more important to make sure we don’t wear sweat-shop clothes, eat only free-range eggs (I just threw that one in) or not use products produced by “exploitive” mfg’s, than it would be to avoid things such as coarse language or watching movies that might have questionable scenes/material? Or are all of these things we should separate ourselves from?

I think that avoidance of coarse language and cultural/hedonistic excess are primarily related to personal purity and holiness – which is important.

I think that the issue of exploitation of other humans (such as with sweatshops) is a failure to love your neighbor and is a ‘right to life’ issue. Since we don’t see “those people”, because we are removed from them, we don’t feel the actual weight of what we’re doing and the effect it is having on other beings also made in the image of God.

I believe that unsustainable use/poor stewardship of the earth is something that we, as Christians, should deeply care about, because it, too, it a ‘right to life’ issue – from the health of people in our own generation to the health and welfare of people in our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s (many times removed) generations.

Our dependence on oil has to change at some point, because it is not an everlasting resource.

The push for bio-fuels is incredibly troubling, as well, though for different reasons (taking millions of bushels of corn to convert to alcohol to power automobiles when that same food could take a huge chunk out of world hunger – let alone the effect that modern corn farming has on the soil).

Personally, nuclear power seems, in many ways, to be a near- and mid-to-long term solution, but the same groups that provide much of the ‘green’ agenda in the world are the same ones who shy away from nuclear power because of the weapons potential for its products/byproducts.

These are not ’secular’ or ‘non-cultural’ issues – they are issues of life that we, as Christians, should care about but often don’t.

Nathan and Chris:
Thanks for the clarifications.

Although I wouldn’t consider myself to be “green,” I agree we should be good stewards of the things/earth God has provided. I drilled DON’T LITTER into my kids so much, they think it is an offense worthy of the death penalty. We just returned from the Grand Canyon–one of God’s better efforts–and we were SHOCKED at the number of people that thought nothing of disposing of their garbage wherever they were standing!

Chris, if you are interested, check out the Fischer-Tropsch process. Hitler fueled a large percentage of his air force with this stuff (I’ve been told).

I’m sure a “flux capacitor” is just around the corner. Anyone know where I can find an old DeLorean?