I’m a plumber and I live by four basic rules. Everything in my life seems to boil own to one of these rules. They are: 1) Poop (et al) runs downhill. 2) Payday is everyday. 3) Keep your fingers out of your mouth. and 4) If at first you don’t succeed, use brute force!

That pretty well covers most circumstances.

Where does Jesus fit into all this? Easy. He made all the mountains. He also had some part in making gravity, I suppose. Did He make the poop to roll down the hill? Well, sort of and sort of not. That’s where you have to have some perspective.

For instance, when things are not going per plan, you might be tempted to throw yourself upon the mercy of the 4th law. If you stop and think perhaps, “WWHD?” then maybe you’ll pray before using brute force. I’ve tried it both ways. Both ways work, but praying first usually saves some skin from my knuckles.

Well, I’m still thinking about all this. Thanks for the time investment.

:O)

My pastor and I were talking and he thinks contextualization, and the idea of being missional, are going to become the hot issues in our denomination.

Here is the problem, if you are ministering in an area over like say 10k people, you are limiting who you are reaching by embracing one culture over the other, and many people would rather have everyone feel a bit uncomfortable and a bit relaxed, than have a certain group love it and a certain group hate it. So they figure its better to also be a different culture rather than alienate some group.
On this side of contextualization I can really relate. Im not sure how Barnabus and Paul contextualized at Antioch, but when we get to Acts 13 and read of the leaders in the church we see this amazing multicultural church. I feel like the question is how do you speak to many cultures, both on their own and together.

Do parts of the world have a meta-culture?

I concur with your edict that churches must contextualize to reach their culture. Although, I don’t think most churches are digging deep enough. I have been thinking alot about this recently, and trying to figure out what the hell we have EMERGED from. We pretty much still go to our parents church except for a few aesthetic formalities. We can change the music, we can light candles, wear clothing from H&M at the pulpit and joke like Michael Scott during our sermons…but, have we really changed anything? It’s all an aesthetic change. In the worlds eyes you can dress the devil up like a woman, and attempt to make love to it…but it’s still evil. To our friends the church is still evil. It still is an institution of cyanide laced kool-aid drinkers.

What the church has not changed (certain churches like the one mentioned above) are the power structures and relationships. They have only re-affirmed the definition of insitution no matter what the flahy website proclaims. The church your right is flawed, not one is perfect. I lament that there never be a church I enter that I don’t witness back-stabbing, gossip, and utter bullshit that happens when you put a bunch of people together in one room. I am not innocent. But, I think we need to question what is different in this new generation of churches that proclaims postmodernity faster than it kneels to Christ.

I have enjoyed reading your blog the past year or so. Somehow you have managed to come over to the dark side!

I want to say that I agree with the theme of this but after being here ideologically for a certain amount of time I do find myself asking some questions like “don’t all institutions ask people to convert to their traditions?” I am sure when you hit that prosetgious campus you were greeted with a pride of tradition that you were asked to embrace and appreciate. This leads me to think that maybe what we feel (again, I totally agree) is so wrong with the lack of contexrtualization within the walls of our protestant churches is that the traditions are not old enough and therfore worth appreciating.

In other words, I am wondering if true contextualization is mixing reelvant traditions with present culture without the wierd. Most protestant traditions are just to new and come off to wierd to translate. However, most emerging churches are combining ancient liturgical practices with the tattoos and body percing culture!

So I am starting to conlude that the real problem is the abandonment of older and more tested traditions for the embrace of relativley new traditions is what gives us the creepies. This might explain why many young peolpe I know are attracted to the Catholic church. I mean, who doesn’t like going to one of those very ancinet looking buildings to worship. I’ll take that over and above the cold sterile drywall look anytime…and I think so will non-followers.

Looks like a good painting to me.