In our artist small-group Monday night, we were discussing Andy Crouch's book Culture Making: Rediscovering Our Creative Calling. Afterwards, as I was working on an essay for a class on cross-cultural missions, I tried to summarize a little bit of how I perceive culture, in the process of cultural transformation.
We, myself included, speak a lot about "changing the world" and/or "transforming culture." However, it is perhaps more precise to speak of this cultural engagement as the participation of the Church in the evolution of its broader culture.
Cultures are always evolving. It is a mistake to think of culture as something that is static, and in need of being transformed from one static shape to another static shape. Rather, any given culture is in a continual process of evolution.
As such, it is not so much a matter of “culture being in need of transformation” as much as it is a matter of in which direction an already-transforming culture is going to evolve.
There is a sense in which everyone -- whether Christian or not -- is "on mission" to their own culture. This is essentially the human vocation: to cultivate and create culture, influencing it in the direction they see most fitting.
The Christian church is only one of many collective voices who seek to exert influence in this way. Thus for the Church to be "on mission” to its culture is essentially to say that it is participating in that culture's evolution. Likewise, for a Christian to be "on mission" to her culture is essentially to say that she is carrying out her calling, her vocation as a human being.
Also, the reality needs to set in that it is not only we who are influencing culture; we are ourselves being influenced and transformed by our culture in ways we may not even be aware. And while this may be inevitable, it is not necessarily deplorable. In fact, I would suggest that along with seeking to influence our culture for Christ, we should also be seeking to find the fingerprints of Christ that already exist within our culture, and open ourselves to being shaped by that influence instead of another.
