Part of my\nministry involves helping churches reach their full potential. That has meant\ninteracting with a lot of very different churches. The first thing I try to\nwork out at the start of these encounters is the culture of the church. Different churches may have different\ncultures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Culture is the natural way people live\nand relate within a particular context. The Business Dictionary puts it this\nway: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It is a pattern of responses\ndiscovered, developed, or invented during the group’s history. These responses\nare considered the correct way to perceive, feel, think, and act, and are\npassed on to the new members through immersion and teaching. Culture determines\nwhat is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong,\nworkable or unworkable. It encompasses all learned and shared assumptions,\nbeliefs, knowledge, norms, and values, as well as attitudes, behaviour, dress,\nand language\u2019.<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the book They’re a Weird Mob, <\/em>John O’Grady said the following of Australians:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018There\nis no better way of life in the world than that of the Australian. I firmly\nbelieve this. The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer\ndrinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men\nleft on this earth. He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludgers on no one, and\nacknowledges no master. Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself\naccepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed\nexisted. And once you have entered it, you will never leave it\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A tough physical environment produced\na tough people. This is a classic description of culture set in the period,\npost-war Australia, when we were still an embryonic, pioneering nation, largely\nconsisting of people of white Anglo-Saxon or European heritage, with limited\nacknowledgement of indigenous Australians and suspicion in relation to those of\nother cultures. Although remnants of this are still embedded in the Australian\nculture, the culture would be described quite differently by today\u2019s\nsociologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most\nof what a church believes about discipleship and how it is outworked is affected\nby cultural beliefs.<\/strong> Catholic\nand Orthodox churches are still influenced by the culture of the Medieval Era.\nMany Protestant churches are influenced by the culture of the Reformation era\nand the popular contemporary churches are influenced by the culture of 20th<\/sup>\ncentury American Evangelicalism which is based on the concepts of the Modern\nera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will only have space to look at the\nModern era which began as an historical period around the mid-eighteenth\ncentury and technically finished in the late 20th<\/sup> Century, even\nthough its influence still affects much of what we do and believe today. If you\nwan to read more about the other periods you can find them in \u2018Making Disciples in a Postmodern\nEra-Reviewing and Contextualising Historical Discipleship\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This cultural era brought changes\nin thinking, social interaction and economics in nations all around the world. A wide variety of terms are used to describe\nsociety, social life and the driving force behind this era. Some of these are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because most of us are very\nentrenched in a specific era, we consider what we think and do to be the correct\nway and do not realise where the ideas and beliefs come from. Even when we say\nwe are \u2018New Testament Christians\u2019 we often do that with little understanding of\nthe 1st<\/sup> century from a cultural perspective (the background of both\nthe Jews and the Gentiles) which set the scene for the growth of the Jesus\nmovement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This may not be a big problem\nif nothing changes but unfortunately for the church, we are moving out of the\nModern era into the Post-modern era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Post-modern\nthinking has been with us for a period of time but for the sake of clarity, I\u2019m\nsuggesting that the more intense effects of Post-modernism on the Western value system and on Christianity\nappeared around the end of the 20th<\/sup> Century. They coincided with the\ngrowing disillusionment with the Modern Era, especially the version perpetuated\nin the west throughout the 20th<\/sup> Century. The children of this new\nera have been raised in a world that is wrestling with the emergence of the\nglobal economy, the tension between notions of progress and the environmental\nconsequences, and the nature of war and terror.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A quote from Daniel Palmer (Senior Lecturer, Art History &\nTheory Program, Monash University) may help explain this era:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Take Matt Groening\u2019s The Simpsons.\nThe very structure of the television show quotes the classic era of the family\nsitcom: while the misadventures of its cartoon characters ridicule all forms of\ninstitutionalised authority \u2013 patriarchal, political, religious and so on\u2019.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As difficult as it may seem, we have\nto revisit the life of Jesus, the authority of the church and the key\nfoundations of our Christian faith in order to distil the elements necessary\nfor discipling in our post-modern and post-Christendom era. We need to think\nagain about the why and how of discipleship and how to make contemporary\ndiscipleship more effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Part of my ministry involves helping churches reach their full potential. That has meant interacting with a lot of very different churches. The first thing I try to work out at the start of these encounters is the culture of the church. Different churches may have different cultures. Culture is the natural way people live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n