Gabe Lyons: Can the Church Shape the Culture?

You talk a lot about the seven channels of culture. What are those, and why should they matter to Christians?

I’ve called them the seven channels of cultural influence. Different people would name them different things, and you could come up with eight or nine—to say there’s seven is simply where we landed on this a decade ago when we were trying to communicate this message of how society works. The seven channels are: education, media, government, arts and entertainment, the church, the social sector and business. And within each of those channels, there are hundreds of sub-channels and industries that you could group in these different places and professions. The important thing, though, is just to understand that over time, historically, when we look back at how cultures have shaped and been changed, it’s been through these institutions that touch every single human being within a society. Especially in a developed society, a Western or a developing-world society, you see these institutions working together regularly. This is part of the message Q is communicating: that cultures, neighborhoods, communities start to change when leaders in all those channels and institutions are working toward a common goal, collaborating with one another to bring creativity and innovation from their different kinds of expertise and disciplines. That only happens when there are relationships among real human beings across those different spheres.

The church is still one of the only places that regularly brings together people from different disciplines to talk about a common theme, and a common goal, and a common view of the world. This is a huge opportunity if the church can grasp this concept, can see that it’s convening leaders every week to think deeply about what’s going on in our world and what God’s trying to do in the world and how we can be a part of that. Recognizing and engaging that opportunity can give a sense of momentum and a sense of purpose to a church that’s very different from how we’ve thought about the church’s role in recent decades. It starts to point the church more outward—to recognize the power of these different channels and institutions, and to get leaders within the local church to work together toward a common goal across their different spheres.

How would you say this idea of cultural engagement and culture shaping is a form of outreach?

For a lot of people, the common way to think of the term “outreach” is as Christians going out to people and trying to bring them to our church so they can experience the church and be transformed by that. But maybe we need to switch the words and say it’s more about “reaching out”—about seeing how God is at work in the world through people in your church who are already invested in culture. Then asking ourselves how we can equip them while they’re “out there”—so they know how to think well about their industry, about their opportunities in that industry—to cultivate new ways of thinking, to innovate, to empower those around them, to bring justice in areas that need justice. In the church, we need to stop measuring how many people have shown up at our church events, but instead get comfortable with the idea of measuring how many leaders we’re equipping to go out and tangibly bring the love of Jesus into their communities, workplaces and industries. That’s a different way of thinking for a lot of churches, but it should be an exciting way of thinking. The pressure isn’t on church growth; this is about growing your church’s footprint—to see how people within your church are showing up in all these places throughout their community—public schools, local government, urban planning, health care—and bringing light and love and gladness and hope and creativity and innovation. It’s a vision of outreach that can bring a whole different level of incentive to the body itself, to make everyone feel like they are part of the mission. Church isn’t just a place we come together to hear messages and receive spiritual nourishment. The church is the place we come to find one another, to see how God is already using us in the world, and to find out how we can work together to tangibly express his love in our communities.

What are some practical ways church leaders can shift this paradigm of thinking, to begin equipping people in their vocations?

There are five very tangible things I think a pastor and a church can do. First, at the church level, on Sunday mornings, one very important thing the pastor can do is to platform vocational leaders within the community and pray for them as if they’re on mission. Bring on stage the teacher at the local school a week before school is about to start back up. Pray for that teacher and recognize God has that teacher on mission to a group of students and families the church may never touch otherwise. Bring up the entrepreneur who just launched a new business in the community and talk about what he or she is doing. Bring a group of business leaders onstage who just bought a bunch of dilapidated properties to restore in the hope of bringing life and commerce back to the community. Let’s celebrate those leaders.

The second thing I would say is for pastors, church staff, ministry leaders to begin using different language to talk about mission in the church—to gain a bit of acumen about cultural engagement, to study and learn the vocational opportunity that exists within their church. Have someone on staff focus on equipping and encouraging vocational leaders within the community. Train and equip other leaders—such as small group leaders—to have an understanding of vocation and how God is working in these different channels of culture.

That leads me to how small groups and Sunday school classes can be influenced by this. When you meet for that first time, instead of just going around the room and introducing people by where they’re from and how they came to know the church, let’s really put value on having people introduce the vocation and place God has put them in. What is their calling? What is their occupation? Do they love that job, or is there something else they’ve been dreaming about doing? Let’s make sure we’re getting to know people on the basis of what God has called them to be doing in our community, and not just see them as Christians who are coming together to learn more about their “spiritual” life.

If you go back just 100 years in American life, the church sat at the center of society—every conversation about the community came through the church, whether it was about a new building in town or what was happening in the school system. Over time, though, the church has moved out of that place within our society. So I think the fourth thing we can do as churches is to ask ourselves how we can get back into those conversations. I think it starts by inviting the experts within our communities—whether they are Christian or not—to come in and educate our parishioners on what’s happening within the community. Certain churches do this really, really well. African-American churches, historically, have been great about being organized and understanding what’s happening within their neighborhoods. But this hasn’t always translated into the white, Protestant, evangelical church. So I think there’s a real opportunity for churches to once again be a gathering place for the community.

Finally, I think the pastor has to broaden the church’s theological understanding of cultural renewal and the cultural mandate to steward and cultivate this earth. So, understanding Genesis 1 and 2, and Revelation 21 and 22 is key. These bookends in Scripture help a Christian understand God’s original intention for his creation (Gen 1:26-28) to be fruitful, have dominion, to cultivate the earth. Sin of course distorted that vision, but through Christ it has been restored. When our churches see that the desire they have to renew and restore the world is grounded in the biblical narrative, they will find new purpose and vision for how God may want to use them in this world.

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