Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Responding to the Culture Shift

This week I had a FB conversation with a person from my church. This person was stressing his distaste for the emergent church and his perception that they promote false teachings.

This conversation got me thinking and I jotted down my thoughts on how many Christians are responding to cultural shift and with it a sense of loss, uncertainty, and fear.

Some are responding by hanging on more closely to "Truth." With this is the understanding the Bible is a set of propositional beliefs that need to be accepted. In fact, although they wouldn't say they believe this, many demonstrate by practice that the Bible should actually be reformatted in order to "work" easier. They would argue the importance of Truth is in order to have certainty about belief.

In contrast, some have adapted to changing culture by grabbing onto a dynamic relationship with Jesus. They see the Bible as a narrative of God's salvation story and they seek to live within that relationship. They aren't worried about believing a set of propositions because they know the person of Jesus. For these people they often feel more certainty about their standing with God because of their friendship with Him.

This mental exercise reminded me of Leonard Sweet's book, The Church In Emerging Culture- 4 Views which brought together multiple voices from divergent Christian camps to talk about their way to responding to culture. Maybe it's time I take that book out and re-read it.
http://www.amazon.com/Church-Emerging-Culture-Five-Perspectives/dp/B005HKNNE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323801204&sr=1-1

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