engage

my friend, ken is living in new zealand with his new wife, ellie and is doing youth ministry there. he wrote this about a month ago and i though i would post it. it's good stuff. . . enjoy!


I see it right now, sitting in Starbucks enjoying a coffee. The church and culture in contact.

I see this businessman dressed in fine designer clothes. He's got the hip orange tie, the sharp lined dress shirt, a nice matching (but not at the same time) pants and jacket combo, designer watch, thin-rimmed spectacles and Italian leather boots. He is here to do his work...on his lunch break no doubt. He has his macchiato and sandwich, his palm pilot nearby, at the ready. This man feels, and by no doubts is according to company standards, at the top of his game.

Then this girl walks in. She shoves the chair next to him out of the way with her thigh, there's a screech as the wood tears along the tile. The man is visibly shaken. She's dressed in a black and white outfit. This girl is hip, young, and modern. She looks half grunge/half chique, and like her get-up she just doesn't make sense sitting next to this guy.

He's here to do work, she's here to take a break from shopping and to chat with a friend. He's bought coffee and validated his right to sit down and stay for a while, by all rights she is loitering. Polar opposites, diametrically opposed, and yet sitting right next to each other.

Then she bumps into him as she shifts her things.

She apologizes quickly and forgets about it, continues her coversation, her life rolls on. The man's macchiato workspace has been disturbed. He gets uncomfortable and looks around the coffee shop for another place to sit, to reclaim his zen. He can't find one.

Moments later she leaves, easing the tension. She goes back ou into the world, he goes back to carefully unwrapping his plastic coated sandwich.

It shouldn't take you long to figure out the parallels between the church and culture and this little anecdote. The businessman = the church, the girl = culture. Do you see it now? Isn't so true? Our church culture almost doesn't understand how to process contact with the outside world. We, by our own standards, are doing fine. We are dressed hip and we are working hard. We have our worldviews all figured out, our little place in the world (but not of right?) to work out our own problems and figure out our own plans. But then these people, this culture gets in the way. It shoves things around, causes distractions, even has the audacity to bump into us and get in direct contact with our world.

What do we do then? Condemn it, look for ways to avoid it, get out of it. Instead of engaging with it we run from it. The sad thing is that instead of creating an opportunity for witness we instead allow the people of the culture walk away, we miss our opportunity to expand God's Kingdom because we were too busy protecting our own.

I understand that the world is a scary place, especially for people who have been living their lives out in the Christian subculture for so long. I know because I just emerged from a four-year-long Christian bubble up on a hill, enclosed by a gated community...no joke. The world, in all its confusion and contradiction is a scary place for Christians. Yet, we have no reason to fear and hide.

Instead we should be emboldened to engage our culture. To dialogue, to discuss, and when it's appropriate to defend. Jesus tells us in Paul's second letter to Timothy that we have not been given a spirit of fear, but "one of power, love, and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7). It goes on to say that with this we should "fan into flame the gift of God," to proclaim his Kingdom through the gifts he has given us.

Jesus Christ, by his Spirit, has given us each gifts and abilities that are unique to us for the expansion of his kingdom here on earth. He has also given us a holy calling in the world, our vocations, our jobs, the things we do day-in and day-out. He has made us technicians, builders, farmers, assistants, mechanics, teachers, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and children. It is within these spiritual callings where our gifts make sense where we can engage the world.

Furthermore, we have the confidence of the Spirit to lean back on. Christ promises us that as we engage the world, and as the world challenges, and yes even persecutes, us we will be given the words to speak, words that the world cannot contradict (Luke 21:10-19).

So, what am I trying to say here? Engage the world. Go out and engage. Don't retreat and don't look for another place to hide, engage. Get in dialogue with people who hold different beliefs, talk to someone at work or at school that you are diametrically opposed with. Don't hide yourself in a "holy huddle" of other people who think the same way you do and condemn the same movies you condemn. Instead, go watch the movie, talk with the person, and engage.