church on Pop Culture

Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. ...

In today’s world, holy is the most offensive of all four – letter words. It’s far more acceptable to say, “My life is so messed up,” than it is to say, “I am striving to be holy.” For many, Christiani...

Context Once Jesus ascends in Acts 1, the disciples are not immediately out on the street continuing his work. Many assumed Jesus’ mission would bring earthly power, but now they find themselves fear...

Context Once Jesus ascends in Acts 1, the disciples are not immediately out on the street continuing his work. Many assumed Jesus’ mission would bring earthly power, but now they find themselves fear...

Pop psychology is wrong when it tells you to look inside yourself and find your value. The magazines are wrong when they suggest you are only as good as you are thin, muscular, pimple-free, or perfume...

[Culture is] The collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others.

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...

One of the areas often missed in a lot of Christian apologetics is the social setting in which a person encounters the gospel. For example, it is far easier to espouse "rational arguments" f...

We believe that the gospel is best lived out when churches are firmly rooted in their surrounding community's culture.

The Church was the one institution whose mission depended on galvanizing attention; and through its daily and weekly offices, as well as its sometimes-central role in education, that is exactly what i...

We have the same biblical texts that earlier generations of Christians thought their way through, of course, but our reflections are shaped by six unique factors. (1) Especially in the Anglo-Saxon wo...

In most cases, the existing church culture is from a former era that is only meaningful to those in the church, not those in the community.

In this excerpt, author David Zahl challenges the common belief that religion is “in decline.” He argues that while Westerners, particularly younger generations, may be distancing themselves from the ...

If one looks at the world scene from a missionary point of view, surely the most striking fact is that, while in great areas of Asia and Africa the church is growing, often growing rapidly, in the lan...

By failing to come to grips with how cultural dysfunctions deeply impact the health of the church, our leaders will continue to fail to discern an essential reality concerning the nature of change: Cu...

Nothing illustrates evangelicals’ infatuation with politics more clearly than a story related by a Christian lawyer. Considering whether to take a job in the nation’s capital, he consulted with the le...

The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...

God built into the creation a variety of cultural spheres, such as the family, economics, politics, art, and intellectual inquiry. Each of these spheres has its own proper "business" and nee...

[Speaking of the early church] A cosmopolitan spirit grew, particularly in the cities, that transcended national barriers. Old tribal distinctions and identities were breaking down, leaving people rip...

In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an in...

The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...

The original language of Christianity is translation.

The disastrous and widening cleavage between the Church and the Arts on the one hand and between the State and the Arts on the other leaves the common man with the impression that the artist is someth...

The journalist Andrew Sullivan has some strong words of advice for the modern church,  If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, p...

Today, much of the church has gone in for theatrics, running a showboat instead of a lifeboat; staging a performance instead of living an experience; having a “form of godliness without the power ther...

Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith…in Acts 15, which declared that the new gentile Christians didn’t have to enter Jewish culture…. The converts had to work out…a Hellenistic way of...

A missionary family who has started organic churches in some of the most dangerous fields in the world once returned to the states for furlough. On the first Sunday back, they visited a large Baptist ...

Since 1991, the adult population in the United States has grown by 15%. During that same period, the number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled, rising from 39 million to 75 million—...

I grew up attending churches designed for church people. No one said it, but the assumption was that church was for church people. The unspoken message to the outside world was, “Once you start believ...