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“I only have the time to read or listen to a few extra things each month or two. One of the few things I can claim as my best treasure is the bi-monthly MARS HILL AUDIO Journal. The depth of each issue sharpens my ability to think more clearly with a Biblical mind, and helps me to understand the cultural air I and my congregation are breathing.”
—Pastor Michael Philliber, New Life Presbyterian Church, Midland, Texas
II. Dualism in literature, business, and sports
III. Discipleship in cultural context
IV. Discerning the spirit of the age
V. The duties of faithful shepherds
You can listen for free to the bonus tracks (more than 40 of them) of the CD version of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal by clicking here. Topics include: the current debate on technology and ethics; the music of Mozart; why the Church should be more welcoming toward the elderly; the life and imagination of C. S. Lewis; and, how colleges and universities can help students grow into adulthood.
Click here to read some of the letters that Ken Myers has sent to MARS HILL AUDIO listeners. Topics include the nature of Christian hope and the link between the humanity of Jesus and our own.
The dualism encouraged by modernity has narrowed the Church’s understanding of the task of Christian discipleship. For most, discipleship means learning to pray and read the Bible regularly, to cultivate character and attitudes compatible with Christian teaching, and to learn to share the Gospel with others. Discipleship is rarely understood in terms of the assumptions and practices that guide our political, economic, technical, aesthetic, and intellectual life. Our beliefs about the nature of law, the development of new technologies, the meaning of artistic expression, the nature of knowing itself, are all shaped without the benefit of theological scrutiny. Discipleship affects the heart, but rarely the activities of mind and body.
Contemporary Christians often mistake this dualism for “being spiritual,” by which they mean an indifference to the practices and institutions of earthly life. At times in the Church’s history, all cultural life was regarded as a necessary evil, to be ignored insofar as was possible. Today, Christians are less likely to avoid participation in cultural life. But many still seem to regard it as insignificant, even meaningless. Cultural practices, forms, and fashions are treated by most Christians in a utilitarian way, not as carriers of meaning.
The salvation Christ secured for us is as whole men and women. It’s not just our souls that are saved, not just the immaterial aspect of our being. Our whole personhood is the benefit of Christ’s work, and therefore there is no aspect of our lives, or of the way we organize life together, that isn’t open to scrutiny and challenge from the Creator of all things. Christian discipleship is not the cultivation of a narrow “spirituality,” but encouragement toward the thorough recognition of God’s order in all of Creation.
In every age, the Church must conduct its ministry in the context of specific cultural settings. Church leaders, called to wise shepherding, must work to distinguish opportunities for adaptation and collaboration from occasions requiring prophetic repudiation. Some cultural trends are a challenge to the plausibility of the Gospel, and create obvious problems for the Church. Other cultural tendencies may be useful to advance the cause of evangelism and Christian enthusiasm about salvation narrowly defined. But if these tendencies have destructive cultural effects, Christians whose growth in piety has been shaped by them will find it difficult to recognize their shortcomings.
For example, it may seem effective for churches to craft their identity in terms borrowed from commercial culture. Churches thus become providers of goods and services for consumers who are sovereign in their choosing. The paradigm of the market may be the most plausible model available for contemporary men and women. But the identity and obligations of consumers are different from those of disciples, just as the obligations of shepherds are more demanding and authoritative than those of salesmen. When churches accept a dominant cultural paradigm, they not only limit the scope of their ministry to what can be accomplished within that paradigm; they make it virtually impossible for their members to critique the validity of that paradigm in other spheres. Should education or politics or the arts or childrearing or medicine be governed by market principles? Christians whose discipleship has been commodified are less likely to be able to recognize the dangers of commodification in other spheres.
Configuring Church and culture,
part IV: Discerning the spirit of the age
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MARS HILL AUDIO
Ken Myers on Configuring Church and Culture
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© 2008 MARS HILL AUDIO