Jesus told Christians to be “in the world”. We cannot leave it to its own devices. But at the same time, we are not to be “of the world”. We need to be separate from the culture but at the same time to be connected with the culture. How do we do this? How can we be Christian in this world without losing ourselves? More importantly, how does the church “be the church” in a world against the church? How do we engage with the culture to connect them to Christ and the church?
Culture is all around us. We cannot escape it.
So it is helpful for us to understand something of the culture. What is this “playing field” that we find ourselves in?
I believe that the church, especially in the last 50 years, has failed to understand the cultural field that we are in. So in this post I will dissect what I believe has happened in the western culture.
I believe there are generally 2 parts of culture: The centre and the margin.
The Centre
As the name suggests, it is positioned in the centre of the culture. The smallest but the loudest and most powerful. It will dictate where the whole culture would go. The centre is considered “high culture” or mainstream media. Things like Apple, Hollywood, the Music Industry, the News, and Politics. There’s a sense that what happens in the centre will flow out to all of the culture later on.
The Margin
Wedged either side of the centre, the Margin is the larger part of the culture, but sits under the control of the centre. This is where most people are in the culture, where they dwell and live. These are the places where we all are accustomed to. Our neighbors, families, schools, practises. This is where the general life would happen. The Margin may have many different faces and forms to it. But they all have the Cultural Centre in common. This could happen through what they wear, how they speak, what they watch, what they hear, and what they believe.
Now when one wants to deal with the culture, does it matter if you go to the centre or the margin?
Do you evangelise differently to them?
Is there a priority for one over the other?
I believe, for the last 1500 years, that the church has decided to go after the centre rather than the margins.
Here were two major thoughts they had:
1. If we influence the centre, we will influence the margin
That is, the centre controls the whole thing, so as Christians, we should just focus on the central part and everything should flow from there. Much like a fountain, we need to get to the source of the river.
2. We need to be visible to influence
The church cannot hide in the margins. We need to be a city on a hill. A lighthouse. Hence, the church itself needed to be a central institution. The idea is that if the church were off to the side, its power would be diminished. Therefore evangelism, discipleship, preaching, and ministry, needs to be done in a central way.
But are these ideas helpful? Did we go down the right track?
There’s a few things that we need to say about the Centre, and how it could be damaging for the Church.
1. The centre is a dog-eat-dog world
It is not a place you can comfortably occupy. There constantly will be other institutions that will fight for that central spot in culture. So the church would have to defend its spot. In worst case scenarios, the church would use military strength to keep that central spot.
2. The church is not designed to be central in its nature
If you are in the centre, you cannot help but be in a particular “posture”. You look down on others, you have too much control, you start to be proud and boastful.
Your goal for church starts to be dominion of the centre rather than discipleship of the culture.
3. The Margin is the larger part
We have missed the obvious. The margin is where the bulk of culture is. If the church focuses on the centre, it will see itself against the wider part of culture. It will be an us-against-them mentality. It would almost be like 2 different languages. It would make more sense for the church to primarily dwell and live in the margins.
Now what has been the effect on the church going after this missional strategy?
Being in the centre has affected many things, which I would like to outline now:
1. The church started to become top-down in its leadership
By the year 500 almost all churches started to be dictated by a particular bishop or leader. When looking at the early church in the New Testament, you did have leadership but it was more flatter in its nature, especially after the apostles. But slowly a group of individuals took the reins of the churches and led it the way they wanted. The church, in this authoritative structure became more “central”. This created the clergy/laity split making it feel that ministry is really done by a select few. The church, in its outlook, mimicked the culture in its “central thinking”, with a select few in the centre dictating the rest (those on the margins).
Control became the main game rather than fellowship.
2. The church became situated with a central visible geographical location
The early church were seen as a group of gathered people. But slowly that thinking changed. When it “centralised” itself, the church became this static visible building in the centre of the towns. It was prominent, ornate, central. This is where you would go to “church”.
It moved from building people, to a building for people.
Big bells, big windows, big doors. The church now was in a geographical location.
3. The church practiced extractionism
What a static building leads to is what’s called “extractionism”. Because it was in the centre of the culture and the towns, people from the margins were being extracted from their local situations to “go to church”. Because the church was now associated with a visible static location, you HAD to get pulled in. This also was at a time where every town basically had only one church. So every person was being extracted to the centre, from the margins. It became less “local”. This extractionism today is even more pronounced with the invention of cars, online church, and mega churches.
4. The Church and State became united
Because of its central posture, the Church increasingly became more political and controlling. There are some benefits with this, but it also affected what the church was supposed to be.
We started making Christians
but ended up making Christendom.
Everyone, if they were in our cultural field, were fed Christianity, or even forced it.
So there was a blurred line between Empire and Church. This led to each country being associated with a type of Christianity.
If you were in England you were Anglican.
If you were in Germany you were Lutheran.
If you were Scottish you were Presbyterian.
If you were Italian you were Roman Catholic, and so on.
Having a central posture gave rise to the Church and State merging itself together.
5. The church became Nominal in its nature
What this led to was that attendance in church was never a problem, because it was just the cultural thing to do. You would go to that building on a Sunday. This meant that much of the church comprised people that were not really Christian. They were nominal. Even some pastors and elders were Christian in culture. They professed the faith, but didn’t possess the faith. So on one level you could say that evangelism and mission didn’t need to happen, because everyone was extracted from the margins into the centre. But on another level, being in the centre meant that Christianity became much about the Culture rather than being this thing distinct from the Culture.
In taking over the culture we may have
lost the church in the process.
Now I believe that this sort of church continued from 500 all the way up to about 1960. Then something massive happened.
The church started to lose its central position
We were not dictating anymore. Bigger fish came in and started to control the agenda. Things like Modernism, Atheism, Evolution, Mass Media, Sport, other Religions. The church was still mighty big, but there were other big name players in the cultural field.
Much of the church slept during this takeover. Only until the 2000s I believe that it has become evident that the church has no “home game advantage”.
The church continued to try and be central
Even though it became evident that the church was no longer central, it either didn’t know that it had lost its position, or it tried to get back to the central position. The problem is, much of what we think “church” is has been saturated with “central” elements. Now if we are no longer in the centre, then much of our elements do not make as much sense.
But we continued to do them. We continued to do top-down leadership, we continued in static central located buildings, we continued extractionism, we continued the “come to us” model of church rather than “go to them”.
So, what do we do with church now? Do we take back the centre? Do we do church in the margins? What about the centre? Won’t that dictate the margins? Are we entering a totally Non Christian cultural field?
I think there is something bigger at play here. And it is actually good news.
I believe a total cultural flip is happening.
The old way of culture being centre and margin is now up for grabs.
I believe the Margin has engulfed the Centre to the point that there is no more Centre.