OK, I was really pumped about last week, what with Lindsey Nobles and Sarah Cunningham and Chip MacGregor and the announcement about my bible study on Jonah, and the weeks just keep getting better!

This week we’ll be chatting about culture.This is not a picture of our guest today. But when I think culture, the first thing I think is “Bachelor”. Call me crazy, I just do. Culture–pop culture, art culture, suburban culture, Christian culture–all worth discussing. How we experience it, how it colors our faith, and what our relationship should be with it. My first post comes from Justin Wise, creator of the popular blog Be Deviant and his church’s digital pastor. Yep, digital pastor. So you can imagine Justin’s got some thoughts on church and culture. Here’s Justin:

On Culture….

I read a quote off the back of Richard Niebuhr’s “Christ and Culture” once. Loosely paraphrased, it said:

“Culture is to human beings what the sea is to a fish. It’s unavoidable and all around us.”

It’s truth, though, isn’t it? Wherever human beings are, there is culture; a fluid collection of learned and unlearned behaviors, speech patterns, customs and social mores. Simply put, “This is what you do. This is what you don’t do.”

Jamaicans have a culture.
Lutherans have a culture.
Your family has a culture.

It’s unavoidable, whether we realize it or not. Where human beings are, culture quickly follows. Simply put, we inevitably create culture. We can’t help ourselves.

Jamaicans drink “Ting” and call things that are pleasant, “‘Cris”.
Lutherans eat strange Jell-O molds and lutefisk.
Your family plays Scrabble every Christmas.
These are all examples of culture.

Christians, by default, also create culture. We have elaborate systems of human communication surrounding the Gospel that manifest wherever and whenever Jesus is preached.

Baptists don’t drink (most of them, anyway).
The African American church has a distinct style of preaching.
Churches led by younger generations tend to adopt “lead pastor” over “senior pastor” (or drop the “pastor” title altogether).
These are all examples of culture.

If you hope to ever communicate something to or join one these cultures, you had better gain a proper understanding of how they work. Of how they communicate. Failure to do this is, frankly, rude.

There’s a larger cultural community that we all belong to; one that we as followers of Jesus have a primary allegiance to. That, of course, is the human culture. Above all else, Christians have a responsibility to speak the language of the homo sapien. We have a responsibility to study the culture that we find ourselves plopped in the middle of and become students. We become cultural missionaries seeking to learn, understand and respect the cultural values and boundaries of the different spheres of culture that we orbit in and out of every day.

One of my favorite missionary stories comes from a man named Hudson Taylor. Taylor was a missionary to China in the late 19th century and was known for his unconventional tactics. One such method was his adoption of the traditional Chinese kimono. The kimono was standard fare for Chinese apparel. It was part of the Chinese culture. So Hudson, being a good missionary, began wearing the kimono as a part of his everyday wardrobe.

This made people (read: Westerners) furious. They were upset that Hudson had adopted the culture of a new group of people, seemingly abandoning the culture of his home. “But Hudson,” they protested, “you’re becoming … like them!” Precisely. He knew that to be accepted as “one of us,” he had to speak the cultural language of the people he was attempting to reach. This meant stretching past his own comfort limits and the limits of those whom he loved and respected. Brilliant.

Hudson Taylor did this because that’s what Jesus did. Jesus, being past-the-stars Creator God, chose to study and learn the cultural customs of humanity, ultimately becoming an embodied member of the cutlture. Why? So we could better understand, embrace and accept the love of his Father. He chose, and continues to choose, to learn our culture and relate to us in a way that we can understand. As “one of us.”

What are you doing to better understand the culture you find yourself in? Have you demonized or marginalized people whose culture is different than yours? What’s the “kimono” in your life that you need to start wearing?