Pioneer Christian Monthly - September, 1992

Are We a Culturally Relevant Church? The Challenge of Relevance Without Compromise
Murray Moerman

Your Culture or Mine?

A young teen came into one of our Friday evening services which was geared, we thought, to appeal to 13- to 25-year-old youth. He stood for a time in the back of the sanctuary silently observing the proceedings. Finally he offered his brief, if rude, evaluation: "It sucks!" and departed.

Our youth group and supporters were enjoying the service. Why did this young man reject the presentation of the gospel he was experiencing.?

Some might be angered with the boy's crudeness. I was disappointed with his response not primarily because it was rude and arrogant (I too have lacked kindness and humility), but because our presentation had evidently missed his subculture, the very sub-culture we had designed that particular service to reach.

Culture is Inevitable

We are very aware of the distinct cultures of the ethnic groups in our cities. Some are less aware that youth also have a very distinct culture and subculture. So do yuppies, tradesmen, students and homemakers. To be unaware of culture is to miss important ministry opportunities.

All of us are a part of a specific culture. Culture has to do with our mannerisms, the style of clothes we wear, the images we use in our speech, our attitudes towards people and their values.

Most cultural differences are non-verbal. For example, whether one wears cowboy boots, polished business shoes or the latest style in sports footwear communicates volumes about who we are and whether the person we meet feels they are going to be wanting to relate to us, and we haven't yet said a word about the gospel.

There is no such thing as a culturally neutral person. We can not step outside of our culture.

Some people reject the gospel because of the call to repentance at the heart of God's invitation. There is little we can do in such a circumstance but pray. But others reject Christ unnecessarily because the gospel has been communicated to them through a medium which is culturally foreign. Where this is the case there is considerably more that we can do.

Using Culture

Culture can be a barrier or a bridge as we seek to communicate the gospel.

If we want to reach yuppies for Christ the illustrations in our sermons should lean more heavily on the paradigms of computers, modem technology and contemporary social experience than on those used successfully by Charles Spurgeon in 19th century England.

An increasing number of churches of late are using drama as a communication medium to supplement and illustrate the sermon. This has been for most congregations a positive experience. Drama communicates to much of our culture because of its familiarity to virtually all through the electronic media and because drama touches the human spirit.

In some segments of our culture suits and ties are commonly worn by men and hats by women. Yet these conventions can be a cultural barrier to reaching men who wear a suit only to weddings or don't have one, to women who are conscious of current fashion trends.

The same is true of the musical style of our worship. For this reason some congregations are experimenting with musical preludes and postludes drawn from appropriate sources in contemporary culture. Others are making the use of musical instruments more common to the experience of those in the culture they are seeking for Christ.

We need to avoid unnecessary exclusivism in sermons and hymns in regard to masculine nouns and pronouns simply because contemporary English has changed. The term 'all men', for example, is no longer commonly understood to be inclusive of all people as was the case even 20 years ago. Why be unnecessarily offensive? For the sake of the gospel I use language that reflects both women and men when I mean both men and women.

"Buzzwords" and idioms of speech change rapidly and reflect the culture or cultural period to which we most closely relate. We may need to widen our circle of friends to remain up to date. We need to avoid the use of the term 'square' when the terms 'nerd' and 'awesome' have already been replaced by more current idioms.

As the Church of Jesus Christ we are counter-cultural to the world in our ultimate values, seeking to reshape and transform the culture in which we live. Yet our intermediate goal is to use what we can of existing culture to reach our ultimate goal.

This was the method of the apostle Paul. When with Jews he accommodated to their culture to win them for Jesus. When with Gentiles he accommodated to their culture to win them to Christ. He explained: "I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.... I have become all things to all persons so that by all means I might save some. I do this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings." (I Corinthians 9:19-23)

Important Questions

As we evaluate the degree to which the style of our worship, preaching, small groups and programs are bridges into our culture for Jesus Christ or isolated islands within our culture, we need to be willing to ask ourselves direct questions. We need also to insist on specific answers from ourselves.

1. Who is our target audience? Unless we know at whom we are aiming with a specific program we will be unable to be culturally sensitive to them in our planning and will thereby minimize our effectiveness and fruitfulness for Christ. A program geared to youth will be very different from one geared to the culture and needs of single parents or university students. A program geared to career single women will be very different from one seeking to reach divorcees, 'empty nesters,' or young moms. The same is true of men, yuppies, farmers, and environmentalists. As we answer this question we need to ask further specific questions.

2. What is the culture of this people group? What is their preferred style of music, vocabulary, usual style of dress? What is the functional length of their attention span? What are their general likes and dislikes? Answers to such questions will address the style of our worship services. The content of the gospel never changes, The means of communicating that unchanging content must change as our culture changes. If it doesn't we will soon become a lonely, irrelevant island swept around by the winds of change and ignored. Because the church generally changes less quickly than the surrounding culture, an increasing number of churches are planning and developing two kinds of worship services.

One of these is geared to the needs and growth of those who have shaped the culture of the traditional church. This service assumes most present are already disciples and will feature exegetical preaching, traditional hymns, the Lord's Supper and small prayer groups. While this service may remain sensitive to 'seekers,' it does not seek to be 'seeker targeted.'

A second worship experience is geared to the culture of the people group the church wants to reach for Christ. This service will feature more special and contemporary music, drama if possible, briefer and more informal topical preaching, testimonies, and possibly baptisms. These services will also generally be two-thirds the length of the more tradition 'believers' service.

The traditional service will generally continue to meet weekly while the I seeker targeted' service may be offered weekly, monthly or quarterly.

3. What are the felt needs of the target group we are seeking to address with the gospel? The felt needs of those who have been believers are frequently very different from those who are not yet believers. The same is true of the felt needs of various age, marital and cultural groups.

Because of this, church programming must be very clear about both the target group and the felt needs of the group to which it is seeking to minister. Many churches are offering one kind of small group for Bible study and general pastoral care and '23 Step' and other kinds of recovery groups for the felt needs of seekers in the community. While a congregation cannot address all needs, it can focus on one or two initially.

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