Thanks for visiting my BLOG. I am the pastor at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Rome, WI. I hope to share with you here some of the things that I am thinking about, that I'm challenged by, that I'm curious about. I hope this can be a place for us to encourage and challenge one another in our faith, so please add your comments.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Culturally Savvy
I was just reading an article in "Youth Worker Journal" that challenged me. Author Dick Staub offered the challenge that it used to be that Christianity/Christians influenced culture. Now, if anything, Christianity seems to be influenced by culture. We rush after trends in order to try and attract people. Even worse, I think, sometimes we try and remove ourselves completely from culture, even creating our own "sub-culture." Consequently, we end up with a shallowness or a Christianity-lite. Perhaps it's time for us to reclaim our place in culture and be the movers and shakers that God created us to be. It's time to rekindle our passion, experience the depth of our faith and begin being the influencing force that we are.
Maybe there will be a pendulum swing back to being In The World, Not Of The World. Or maybe more nuns and sisters and brothers, etc. and more
ReplyDeleteAmish, etc. I can see that it is hard to have one foot in both camps, so the separateness might appeal to some people.
I guess you're right, there is a place for both. Yet, I was struck by the example in the article of people like Bach & other great classical composers of the time. Their faith shone through their art. I'm just sort of feeling like we're living in a culture that has developed a perverse notion of separation of church and state and everything else (really). As people of faith I would hope that we not be afraid of the "real" world.
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