Now that I’m done with seminary (praise Jesus), I’m actually getting the chance to read some of the books that I’ve wanted to read for a while. One of the books that has been on that list for a while is Culture Making by Andy Crouch. While I’m only 100 pages into the book, I am really being challenged in regards to the way that I view culture.

In the book he points out:

  1. Condemning Culture: this is often the fundamentalist’s response to culture. They will withdraw and seek holiness by completely avoiding culture.
  2. Critiquing Culture: these folks analyze culture often for the sake of slamming it, but sometimes for the sake of using it to address pertinent issues. He points out Francis Schaeffer as the preeminent example of this.
  3. Copying Culture: this is one of the most humorous and the most common examples of how we as followers of Jesus engage culture. You see this all over the music world (too many bands to list…), the clothing world (NTW), the movie world (have you fireproofed your marriage?), etc.
  4. Consuming Culture: this is the attitude where we just soak it in without thinking about it at all. Many claim that this is one of the reasons that the rate of divorce within Christianity is the exact same as those who are not followers of Jesus. The list of examples could go one.

The place that Crouch is taking his readers to is that as followers of Christ we are not called to take any one of these postures or approaches. We are called, as followers of Jesus Christ to create culture. There is a big difference! I’m excited to explore this more and process how it might impact ministry at theWELL now, and in  future ministry as well.