Sully Notes Special | 13 Marks of a Faithful Missional Church – Mark 5 of 13

Mark 5 – A Church That Understands Its Cultural Context – of 13 Marks of a Faithful Missional Church in the 21st Century American West  

Sully Notes are meant to provide you with direct quotes from some books I've read in the last year, so you can get a taste of the overall theme of the book and then begin to chew on what your life might look like if you applied what you read.

This series of special Notes are touching on a subject growing in recognition and discussion within the 21st century American church. What is the missional church? Is it something we do or who we are? What does a church look like that is living out the mission of God in their cultural context? How does a church remain faithful to the good news of Jesus, the Spirit of God, the Scriptures, the church throughout human history and around the world, and the mission of God that the church is called to join, while also meeting the questions, needs, and desires of the people God is sending us to in the cultures and contexts we live in today? I have found no better book to answer these questions than in Michael Goheen's A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story. 

For these 13 posts, my goal is to share the final chapter of the book – Chapter 9: What Might This Look Like Today – with you. In this chapter, Goheen shares from his pastoral and professional experience in answering the question, "Ten Things I'd Do Differently if I Pastored Again." The list grew from ten to a lucky thirteen. I think all thirteen are essential for considering how Emmaus City will be a faithful church for our city – Worcester, MA. 

Each blog post will feature one mark that will take about 5 minutes to read. Here is the full list featuring links to the previous posts:

• Mark 1: A Church with Worship That Nurtures Our Missional Identity
• Mark 2: A Church Empowered by the Preaching of the Gospel
• Mark 3: A Church Devoted to Communal Prayer
• Mark 4: A Church Striving to Live as a Contrast Community
• Mark 5: A Church That Understands Its Cultural Context
• Mark 6: A Church Trained for a Missionary Encounter in Its Callings in the World
• Mark 7: A Church Trained to Evangelism in an Organic Way
• Mark 8: A Church Deeply Involved in the Needs of Its Neighborhood and World
• Mark 9: A Church Committed to Missions
• Mark 10: A Church with Well-Trained Leaders
• Mark 11: A Church with Parents Trained to Take Up the Task of Nurturing Children in Faith
• Mark 12: A Church with Small Groups That Nurture for Mission in the World
• Mark 13: A Church That Seeks and Expresses the Unity of the Body of Christ

Mark 5: A Church That Understands Its Cultural Context

"Living as a contrast community will mean a missionary encounter with our culture. In a missionary encounter, the gospel challenges the cultural story instead of allowing the cultural story to absorb it. Thus to be faithful we will need to understand our particular cultural context well.

Four aspects of cultural analysis are important. First, culture is a cohesive whole, a unified network of institutions, systems, symbols, and customs that order human life in community. Second, the fundamental beliefs that underlie and form Wester culture are religious. Beneath the network of unified customs and institutions that make up Western culture lie foundational religious commitments and assumptions. Johann Bavinck puts it simply: 'Culture is religion made visible.' Harvie Conn stresses that religion is 'not an area of life, one among many, but primarily a direction of life.' Unfortunately, the church in the West has not always grasped this because of two myths: the myth of a Christian culture and the myth of secular or pluralistic neutrality. Western culture is neither Christian or neutral. To the degree that the Christian church has embraced either of these illusions, it is not equipped for a missionary encounter with the idolatrous beliefs of our culture.

Third, these idolatrous religious beliefs are also comprehensive. Religion is not one area of life among many but a directing force that forms all cultural life. And finally, these religious beliefs are socially embodied. That is, idolatrous belief is given cultural expression in structures, institutions, customs, practices, systems, symbols, and so on. People learn to live in a story by participation in these structures, which carry the beliefs of that story.

If we were to stop at this point, our view of culture would be rather pessimistic. But two further observations must be made. First, God's creational revelation or common grace continues to uphold his creation, including cultural development, and does not permit human idolatry to run its gamut. A second observation about Western culture in particular is that it has been salted and shaped by the gospel to some degree for a long time. Throughout the thousand-year era of Christendom and beyond, the gospel permeated many aspects of the social, intellectual, political, moral, and economic life of European culture, and the West continues to live to some degree on the capital of that period. But this should not lead us to think of the West, then or now, as a Christian culture. Powerful idolatrous elements are and always have been at work.

Our culture is shaped at its core by beliefs incompatible with the gospel. This leads to an unbearable tension between two equally comprehensive religious stories: how can the believer participate in an economic system or a political system, speak a language, think in a tradition, and so on shaped by beliefs other than the gospel? Hendrik Kraemer rightly states that the stronger the sense of tension between the gospel and the idolatrous culture story, the more faithful the church will be: 'The deeper the consciousness of the tension and the urge to take this yoke upon itself are felt, the healthier the Church is. The more oblivious of this tension the Church is, the more well established and at home in this world it feels, the more it is in deadly danger of being the salt that has lost its savour.

Often the Western church does not feel the tension of which Kraemer speaks. Lesslie Newbigin, who was shaped deeply by Kraemer, comments that the Western church has 'in general failed to realize how radical is the contradiction between the Christian vision and the assumptions that we breathe in from every part of our shared existence.' The more deeply this tension is felt, the more faithful and healthy church will be, and better prepared for its missionary encounter.

As the church more deeply feels the incompatibility between two equally comprehensive religious stories, the question arises of how the church resolves this unbearable tension. In the first place the church must assume a posture of solidarity with its culture. The church will always live out the gospel in terms of some cultural setting. The church must be at home in its cultural setting. But with equal force one must speak also words of separation. Since idolatrous religious beliefs shape every aspect of Western culture, the church may not simply say yes and affirm cultural development; it must also say no and reject the distorted cultural development. The church must also be at odds with its cultural milieu. If the church is both at home and at odds with its culture, it will be, on the one hand, a countercultural community that stands against the spiritual currents of death in its culture. On the other hand, it will be a relevant community in touch with the creational currents of life, embracing and celebrating them. It seems to be hard to be both at odds and at home in our cultural context.

This brief analysis underscores the difficulty of the task that lies ahead of us if our congregations are to develop a sense of tension. Yet it is essential, and it can be done. Much of the cultural analysis of Living at the Crossroads and the slides compiled on the accompanying website have come from teaching this material in nonacademic environments to equip the church. My own journey into pursuing worldview studies and the gospel-culture relationship in missiology began as a local pastor. As I began to preach a comprehensive gospel of the kingdom, it raised questions among my congregation: How does one live out the gospel in business, academics, and so on? What are the cultural currents that are shaping these areas of life? These questions led to increased adult education in these areas including study of Western culture.

This task will require that church leaders deepen their understanding of culture and be able to help their congregations see what faithful living in an idolatrous cultural context looks like. It will also mean that the congregation be serious enough about its commitment to the gospel to travel the long road of cultural analysis. It won't be easy, but if it is not done we are, as Kramer warns, 'in deadly danger of being the salt that has lost its savour.'" – pgs. 211-213

Tomorrow's post: 13 Marks of a Faithful Missional Church – Mark 6 of 13: A Church Trained for a Missionary Encounter in Its Callings in the World

– Sully

 
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