A Culture of Influence
All of us have questions we would love to ask Jesus. Here are a few I would ask if I was given the chance.
“Does God really know how many hairs I have on my head or is that a metaphor of how well he knows me?”
“How many stars are there in the universe?”
“How badly did Peter irritate you?”
“How excited were you when U2 cut their first album?”
“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”
There is one question though, that I really, really want to ask him. “How would you ‘create a culture’ of loving, forgiving, and caring Christians?”
I would want to ask him this because talk of culture has been a conversation that I have heard over and over within the context of the local church. Ideas abound as to how this is done.
People say things like, “We need to set the bar high” or “We need to call people to a Kingdom life” or “We need to cast a clear and compelling vision” or “We need to act and move with purpose.” All clever maxims to be sure, but maxims that reflect deeper philosophical underpinnings.
Ideas like these suggest that we need to create a culture that influences people. After all, it’s worked with the media. In our image-logo-slogan-laden society we have all been tricked by mass marketing to believe any number of things. Culture has influenced us.
In order to gain a share of this influence then, we must create a culture that will influence, right? I’m not so sure. Perhaps we should not try to create a culture that influences people, as much as we should cultivate people that influence culture.
Often I hear pastors, in positions like mine, always speaking of ways to influence people. The problem is their idea of what this looks like begins on a platform or from a pulpit. When this is the case they have forgotten something. Most people are not listening to pastors and politicians anymore … I said, “Most people are not listening to pastors and politicians anymore.”
Well, at least not when we are on a platform with a microphone strapped to us. Sure they’ll sit around for a while and listen, but communication research shows that people barely remember anything they hear during a speech, homily, or sermon.
In fact, I do not know many people who have experienced vast life change upon hearing a sermon. I know few whose life direction has radically shifted upon hearing an articulate presentation that casts a preferred picture of the future.
Perhaps we should think less about “creating a culture” and more about “cultivating people.” It’s hard work, slow going, painful, and much dirtier, but that’s real life isn’t it? Which causes me to wonder, "How much is “church” anything like real life?"
Many churches fashion themselves according to corporate culture. They create systems, structures, and plans that will achieve this or that. They create programs and tell people how they are going to journey toward God. This at times causes them to be guilty of commandeering some else’s spiritual formation. Some even contend we have to “strive for excellence.” In the end, much of our time and energy goes into plans, programs, and excellence.
All of this makes sense of course if we are trying to create a culture, but not if we want to live out a real, true, "everyday life." Everyday life is messy, confusing, unpredictable, and often less than excellent. We pretend that we have plans, but we don’t. We learn that plans change, shift, and fall apart. We go through life learning, sinning, growing, at times becoming bitter, and if we are fortunate enough stumbling into grace or maybe grace stumbles into us.
What I am learning is that few churches with all their slick programs, corporate strategies, and policies feel anything like real life. They feel more like a movie or a play showing that require us to suspend belief. They want to create a culture, and often fail to walk in the messy, confusing, unpredictable thing called life.
We should spend more of our time lovingly walking alongside whomever God brings along our daily path. Doing this, of course, in such a way that they will want to imitate that kind of love with whomever they bump into on their daily path. In this, they might learn something about the love, grace, and compassion of Jesus and we might learn something too.
This takes time. It is slow. It is never a straight line. It is agonizing.
Yet, as we allow the love of God in us to pour into someone else they may begin to see the intersection of life and faith in fresh ways. As we allow ourselves to be broken for others they may begin to learn about the God who suffered with us. As we show our scars and tell stories of our healing they may learn about the grace of God – the glue that puts us back together one piece at a time.
As we sojourn with others through the best of life and worst of life we all may begin to better learn how to imitate the Jesus, the human face of a loving, forgiving, suffering God. Perhaps then, we may see a people who, in their everyday lives, act as a healing agent and through that influence culture.