Many churches feel pulled in two directions at once. On one hand, the churches want to speak to people in ways they can understand and connect with. They sense that talking about the gospel and "doing" church in the old, familiar patterns may no longer reach their world, effectively. On the other hand, they worry the effort to become "relevant" might give away too much of their core identity and dilute biblical truth.

From the beginning, the Church has wrestled with how to speak and live an unchanging gospel in the midst of changing circumstances. Fortunately, it isn't a question of choosing either faithfulness to the gospel or cultural relevance. Churches live in a tension between being connected to their culture on one side and challenging their culture on the other.

Being Culturally Connected
Some churches think that being true to the Bible means rejecting the culture in which they minister. They're mired in a bog of "holy irrelevance." The irony is that what they are usually trying to preserve is not some pure "Christian culture," but a familiar church culture-a culture that may have appropriately expressed Christianity in times past, but may seem like entering a foreign country to unchurched people today. This isn't the approach we see modeled in the New Testament. Paul, for example, told the Corinthians he was ready to adapt his social behavior to either a Jewish or a Gentile cultural setting to win both Jews and Gentiles to Christ (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). The first missionaries and theologians used familiar language connected with the religion, philosophy, and moral teaching of their Greco-Roman world to convey Christian truth (see Acts 17, John 1:1-18, Philippians 4:8).

Throughout the centuries, missionaries have understood the importance of identifying with the culture and using its resources so people can encounter the gospel in a credible and convincing way. The challenge is for every local church to become a missionary congregation. That might involve laying aside some comfortable language and strategies to speak a fresh word to a changing culture. How, for instance, can Wesleyans express and embody the message of holiness in a way that is both faithful to Scripture and our heritage and makes sense to a postmodern generation?

Living Counterculturally

Being creative and culturally aware doesn't have to mean becoming like the culture around us.

It's possible to be so concerned about relating to the culture that we lose the distinctiveness of our message and lifestyle. Jesus called his followers to be in the world, but not of the world (John 17). However, a lot of churches today are just the opposite-of the world, but not in it¹. That's a recipe for disaster. In a sense, the gospel will be countercultural to every culture. In the Roman world of Paul's day, people went to a temple to celebrate all kinds of meals involving food that had been dedicated to pagan gods' city festivals, private club or trade guild meetings, family gatherings, birthday parties, you name it. Refusing to participate brought negative social and economic consequences, no doubt.

Yet in both 1 Corinthians and Revelation we're told that for Christians to join in such a "normal" activity meant they were compromising with the idolatry of the culture (see 1 Corinthians 8-10, Revelations 2:14, 20). In this case, Christians needed to swim against the stream. Likewise, sometimes today the gospel confronts the culture. Our problem is that it's hard to distance ourselves enough from our own culture to see when it clashes with the gospel. In his book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, author Lesslie Newbigin says, "Trying to criticize one's own culture is like trying to push a bus while you're still sitting on it."

Difficult or not, we still need to "push the bus!" For example, how much has Western individualism seeped into our cultural expressions of Christianity, so we're tempted to see the Bible as a personal "self-help" book and overlook its teachings on Christian community and social justice? Or to what extent have churches embraced the values of a materialistic, consumer culture and settled for a comfortable gospel for the affluent?

Engaging and Transforming. 

Our task isn't to blend in with the culture. Neither is it to completely reject it.

Nor is it to retreat from the culture to some "holy island." Instead, the church is called to engage the culture from within in order to transform its values and practices. What will this look like? Let me give an example. It's no secret that marriages in many areas are under enormous pressure. Rather than following the culture's lead, the church needs to model a countercultural alternative. Christian marriages may look much like those of the wider culture from the outside. But basing marriages on the pattern of Christ's love for the church (see Ephesians 5:22-33) transforms the battered institution of marriage from within. That's something that both connects with the surrounding culture and reshapes it.

Churches today need the Spirit's wisdom for when to say "yes" to the culture and when to say "no?" when to connect and when to confront. We need to search the Scriptures for guidance and models of how Jesus and the first Christians engaged with their cultures in transforming ways. We need to learn from the experience of God's people throughout the world and through the history of the church.

Mission focused churches have one foot planted in their culture-enabling the gospel to make sense to people where they are-and one foot outside the culture, embodying a cross-shaped alternative to the spirit of the world.¹ "Church and Contemporary Culture-Always a Challenge," Catalyst online newsletter (Jan 2007).

Dean Flemming teaches New Testament at European Nazarene College in Bäsingen, Germany.

Holiness Today, May/June 2007

Please note: This article was originally published in 2007. All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at that time but may have since changed.