"Engaging Culture", "Reaching The City" - Some Thoughts On How We Need To Qualify These Statements

This weekend while Kim and I were at Together For Adoption, I had the privilege to sit down with all the conference speakers for a bit to ask them questions about their message or orphan care in general. One comment Dr. Moore made in our time together got me thinking about something that is prevalent right now in Christian ministry circles. Here is what he said:

Compassion can't be just broad and theoretical. People who love "humanity" very rarely love people.... I don't really want people to love orphans as a category. I want people to say, Jesus loves a specific orphan right now that he has called me to minister to. I may not know who he or she is right now. That is what we are called to.

I hear phrases like, "let's engage the culture" or "we need to reach the city" all the time these days. These sentiments are very well founded and as we seek to plant a church in Madison, WI in 2011 with Acts29, these phrases get kicked around quite a bit in our meetings and vision statements.

But here is the problem: I can't engage a culture or a city. It's way too broad. I fear there is an element of assumed homogeneity that doesn't equate to real life and doesn't translate to actual ministry.

Who's culture? What people of the city?

The problem is that throwing these phrases around sounds really good and can be a great rallying cry for a church leader, but until it gets translated to the one on one, real life level of actually hanging out with and being intentional with a specific neighbor or co-worker it will simply be a nice platitude that doesn't really go anywhere.

I want to be very purposeful in our vision casting for our church so that as we "seek the welfare of the city" we are sure to follow that statement up with, "and we do that by reaching one single person and then another one and then another one". If we all, as a church, do that together we can make some real traction in "reaching the city" or "engaging the culture". Similar to what Dr. Moore said above, I don't want people to love "the city" or "the culture" as a category. It's way to non-descript. I want our people to love and reach specific people. This is the only way we'll accomplish anything.

My fear is that it's easy to get people to be excited about a slogan that makes them feel missional, but it's far harder to get a whole church to consistently hang out with a neighbor who is completely apathetic towards anything eternal. I know this is a huge challenge for me and an area where I need to grow significantly. I pray God does this work in my life and also in the church that I will help lead.