I’m now a few chapters into Andrew Marin’s Love is an Orientation. I have to tell you I am fascinated by two aspects of the book.
1. How much homework Andrew has done. He knows his stuff. He knows the GLBT culture pretty well (from what I can tell) and he definitely knows Evangelical culture pretty well.
2. How much missiology he pours out. This captures my imagination! Viewing the GLBT community as a different culture helps me, a ton!
The thing that has jumped out to me so far the most has been the concept that white evangelicals dominate the church. In essence, our cultural mores control much of our church, dominate the culture, and define the agenda.
At the church we go to the leaders really get this concept and fight hard to push back against “white evangelical expectations.“The result is a church that is ethnically reflects the neighborhood we worship in.
Here are a couple things that I see us fighting for cultural reasons.
– The service will be tightly scheduled, so as to look and feel like we know what we are doing. To our Hispanic, African-American, and Souteast Asian brethren this just doesn’t work!
– The church should offer programs that are both entertaining and educational for children and youth. I see this as the biggest struggle our church faces. It’s an expectation of white evangelicals, but not as strong of a value to the other cultures we worship with. As a youth ministry person I see this struggle with parents of the people we’re reaching. The key is going to be creating a youth ministry that compliments the mission of the church.
– The music should be easy to sing. Yeah, this isn’t the case in our church by a mile.
– Small groups should be clusters of people just like me. Yeah, this isn’t happening and I hope it doesn’t.
See, there is much power in the dominant culture recognizing their position and making room to be uncomfortable for the sake of the Gospel. It is silly to expect other cultures to assimilate to us simply to hear the Gospel message!
No one would applaud a missionary who went to Africa and forced converts to sing Chris Tomlin songs in English, preach in English, and wear Western clothes. We would call that missionary a fool. We would pull his funding. And yet we applaud white evangelical pastors for creating churches who are comfortable only to other whites?
I have been a part of churches who made legitimate efforts to bridge cultures on Sunday mornings and I have been a part of churches who were ambivelent.
The question is: What are the things that churches need to be cognizent of as they reach out to various cultures?
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