A thought for the believing innovator.
Between the new iPhone, and the new Apple TV, the JobsClan certainly are often the first out of the gate (i.e. the first to present attractive technologies in accessible manners from behind secret doors) shaping the face of pop culture.
Fascinating. I’d love to see more believing men and women at the wheel driving well-resourced, highly innovative technological advancements, along with rehumanizing ideas, into the heart of the zeitgeist.
I don’t want to see that reality as a novelty or as just another example of a “Christian person we can point out as unique and inspiring;” but rather as an example of those who bear the thought that innovation/culturally-shaping achievement is “just the way those who follow the way of Jesus do life.”
Doing things lovingly, and well, and powerfully – could that be a resuscitating creational theology that embraces the high view of the human person God seems to hold?
3 Comments
Is the hope of such a thing to be found in and through individual christians alone? For those who know more church history than myself, when was the church last culturally relevant? Are there any mainline denominations that are committed to cultural relevance… I mean really committed… money, time, space, equipment, expertise, leadership, mentorship? My suspicion is that somewhere along the way culture was abandoned entirely, in favour of sub-culture, where the cost is not nearly so great and the influence though diminished is ever so much more confortable and easier to control. In our culture, areas like business and commerce support innovation in a much more comprehensive, committed and meaningful way than any denominations or churches that I know of do. With such insurmountable opportunities it is absolutely stunning to see how much influence the church has forfeited… what could we possibly have been thinking?
I love the question, Gord.
We might have been thinking “Hey, keeping up with culture may not be the highest good,” or “we’d rather have real community than the culture’s measures of greatness or effectiveness,” or “our theology is so convoluted by Plato’s ideas of sacred and secular that the only logical conclusion we could come to is that we shouldn’t try at all – it’s all “unspiritual” and “temporal.”
Or…
or…
or…
Great question, answered usually by the Church of one age following the previous. Aside from doing community well or not, how important is it that a people who choose to follow the way of Jesus stay “relevant” by holding to the same qualitative par as the rest of the culture (that we are a part of – our human family)?
Good missiology (missional community) would say “very important,” but sometimes good relational quality would say “in what basket do you want to put your eggs and money?” Beauty or pragmatism, or both; cloaked in spiritual or unspiritual terms, are ideas that often seem to be at the center of debate.
My answer? Sometimes we’ve been very relevant historically, but often in declaring an alternative value in the face of the misguided values of an age – vows of humility and poverty in an age of unbridled arrogance and affluence, or commitments to the poor and disenfranchised in an age of first world nations draining the lifeblood (and workforce) of third world nations.
Could we be excellent in beauty, in community (in marked contrast to the defining characteristic of our age – isolation and fragmentation), creativity, love and care for the weak?
“What could we possibly be thinking….”
A question you pose, for the age. I’m going to ask myself daily, in case I need to hear some new information.
Thanks for that, my friend.
I think your question must be asked age to age, day to day, moment to moment:
“What could we possibly be thinking?”
Hi Dan…
Nice to get your feedback. It would seem to me that human beings crave for meaning and will do a lot to find and establish some “meaning” in their lives (who among us wants to live a meaningless life?). In a similar vein, “making sense” is of tremendous value to most people… it is important to make sense out of life in one way or another. Far too often in the church, I think leaders (or supposed leaders) have found their personal “meaning” and “made sense” by limiting their scope and focus (in many cases far beyond that of the lay people they are supposedly leading). I think this leads to a very interesting “cultural” inversion. In a very real sense, the folks in the pews (or on the chairs) are very much left on their own when it comes to making a cultural impact and even when they do make an impact, their own church leaders may very well be the last ones to know. Why should that ever be the case? Jesus himself seemed to have a very real grasp on the work-a-day world and the people who lived there and the impact they could make. In so many ways, I think church today has become some kind of “alternate reality”… quite divorced from what most people would consider to be the “real” world and therefore the chances of making a cultural impact in that world is pretty slim indeed. Personally I can’t help but be grieved when the world outside the church is more than likely better able to see and use the talents, gifts and genius of people than is seen and used in the church. I would certainly believe that there needs to be a significant “cultural” shift within the church before you are ever going to see the church making a cultural impact outside of itself (and from what I’ve seen church leadership is more in need of “shifting” than the folks in the pews since in many cases they are much farther from the real work-a-day world where culture is formed). Also in many cases, “church leadership” has been defined and implemented so narrowly that not having any cultural influence is virtually guaranteed. The opportunity exists to break out of the narrow confines but will there be any heart found anywhere to do that? Can the old dogs learn new tricks or will it simply be a stumbling around until a newer generation of leadership has their go at it? Opportunities and challenge abound but will there be a significant response?
Incoming Links
Leave a Reply