What strategies does our enemy deploy against us? One is to make faith in Christ irrelevant to the “real lives” of children and teenagers.
When Jesus used fishing, farming, money, or common cultural practices to unveil his good news (bad news to some), he was bridging God’s transcendent truths into the everyday world of the people. We must do the same.
Don’t Retreat From the Real World
It’s time to stop retreating from the “real world” into a Christian subculture. Instead, we should reassert our identity as people who live in the world but are not of it and focus on training young people to think critically about their cultural influences. This is “in but not of” youth ministry.
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We must first be clear about what we’re doing and why. I think Steve Turner’s great book “Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts” (InterVarsity) is a crucial primer. In it, Turner dissects what the Bible says about the “in but not of” life.
What Is the ‘In but Not Of’ Life?
- The Bible warns against “the world” and “worldliness.” God deemed the world he created “good.” It remains “good.” “Worldliness,” on the other hand, is defined by Turner as the “rebellious system of thinking that’s at war with the kingdom of heaven.” Turner writes, “We become worldly not by engaging with the world but by allowing it to shape our thinking. Jesus prayed to God ‘not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one’ (John 17:15).” It’s God’s expressed desire that we stay right in the thick of the world while shrewdly, passionately countering its “rebellious system of thinking.”
- We can’t love humans but hate human culture. This is exactly why kids don’t believe the church has much that’s useful to say about their culture. Our “love” message seems two-faced. We say we love them but then say we hate their culture. We’re called to engage the culture with renewed minds and an unshakeable commitment to subjugate everything to the heart and mission of God.
Sadly, our kids don’t have many examples of this.
The Dichotomous Life We’ve Role-Modeled
We’ve trained our kids to look a lot like us—people who see no dissonance in living separate “everyday” and “church” lives, people whose primary focus is often to extract ourselves from culture—instead of being salt and light.
A couple of years ago I recorded a Dr. Phil show on parent-teenager conflicts. One segment featured a mother who was upset about her son’s rap music, primarily because of its profane lyrics. Dr. Phil read to his audience some bleeped-out lyrics from popular rap songs, then advised the mother (and the parents in the audience and millions of viewers) to collect their kids’ objectionable music and destroy it. Then he went to a commercial. I literally leaped out of my chair and talked back to the TV. What ridiculous, short-sighted advice! Though I mostly enjoy what Dr. Phil has to say, I think his response effectively advocates breaking communication with kids instead of gaining the opportunity to train them. Dr. Phil’s response is very much like the way kids experience the church’s response to their culture.
The Church Has Responded to Popular Culture in 3 Primary Ways, I Think.
- Denial and blind hope: Many in the church deal with the dissonance a threatening culture creates in them by denying it could be impacting their kids and assuming they’ll be alright no matter what happens. The truth is that these adults are afraid of the truth and deal with it by denying reality. Our real goal should be to have “unveiled faces” (2 Corinthians 3:18)—that means staring clear-eyed at the truth.
- Retreat and fortify: Another popular church response to a threatening culture is to raise imaginary walls in hopes of keeping the bad stuff out. That’s why we’ve created Christian versions of…everything. But that’s like building a corral under the surface of the sea. It looks like a corral, but it doesn’t really keep anything out—or in, for that matter. Adults who want to retreat and fortify are acting out of fear. Our real goal should be to act out of security, with strategies that are ultimately shrewd.
- Attack, attack, attack: When all else fails, the church attacks what is threatening to it. Call this the Dr. Phil paradox—when you attack and try to destroy the cultural forces that kids use as mirrors, you guarantee a break in communication with them. Our real goal should be to maintain communication so that we can train them to think critically and biblically about their culture.
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How Was Jesus Culturally Relevant?
Do we have real answers for kids, parents, and people in our congregations regarding pop culture? Most often, the answer is no. But we have a God-given and Christ-modeled responsibility to connect faith to real life.
