What Every Christian Leader Needs to Know About Our Changing Culture

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What Every Christian Leader Needs to Know About
Our Changing Culture

• Graham Cray

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Culture is now an organised diversity with
little sense of defining centre.Alan Roxburgh
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THE ERA OF FLOWS

• FLOWS OF INFORMATION, IMAGES AND CAPITAL
• The old model thinks of a culture as a place
  where certain things are collected together and
  ordered. But there is no such place. Our primary
  data are patterns of flows and the structural
  forces which shape them. Nick Couldry

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FLUX

• Complex cultures are characterized by a
  multiplicity of perspectives and competing
  voices. In this context of flux and accelerated
  change, there are many voices claiming a place.
  Collectively they create a confusing,
  relativizing sense of choice. The verities of the
  early modern détente are no longer possible. New
  rules are being written, and everything seems to
  be in flux.Alan Roxburgh

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MENU

• THIS CULTURE
• Makes disciples
• Struggles with cohesion
• Is becoming a Bible free zone
• Is being changed by Islam
• Needs to meet the Church

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THIS CULTURE MAKES DISCIPLES
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Make your choice!

• The church is
• failing because
• people have better things to do with
• their time.
• Graham Tomlin

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21st C Worldview

• Structured for individuals.
• Individual choice - the core value,
• Consumerism - the satellite navigation system
• Constructivism - the new controlling story
• Makes disciples effectively

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CHANGING STORIES

• WE USED TO HAVE A STORY ABOUT MAKING THE WORLD
  BETTER.
• NOW WE HAVE A STORY ABOUT MAKING OURSELVES UP!

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THE HAPPY MIDI-NARRATIVE

• This world, and all life in it, is meaningful as
  it is. There is no need to posit ultimate
  significance somewhere else.
• Happiness is the goal of life this is simply
  self-evident.
• Happiness is the ideal you aim for. Jason

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THE HAPPY MIDI-NARRATIVE

• Implicit is this world view is the belief that
  the universe and the social world are essentially
  benign.
• Although difficult things do happen in life,
  there are enough resources within the individual
  and his/her family and friends to enable
  happiness to prevail.

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THE ILLUSION OF HAPPINESS

• I regard happiness as chimeric and temporary,
  akin to pleasure, and I tend to agree with the
  saying we were not put on this earth to be
  happy.
• My focus is on why we are so up, not with
  dangling a false promise of the false possibility
  of happiness. Oliver James

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Affluenza

• The placing of a high value on money,
  possessions, appearances (physical and social)
  and fame.
• Many international studies have shown that
  people who hold such values are at a greater risk
  of being emotionally distressed - depressed,
  anxious, substance abusing and personality-disorde
  red. Oliver James

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CONSUMERISM

• The religion of the twenty-first century?
• The chief rival to God in our culture Alan
  Storkey

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CONSUMERISM

• Idolatry (Misdirection)
• False hope (Seduction)
• Counterfeit assurance

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Misdirection

• Misdirection services the idolatrous element of
  consumerism.
• Misdirection is the advertising strategy of
  associating commodities with needs, desires and
  values that are not directly related to the given
  products. Misdirection works by encouraging
  consumers to fulfil more profound needs and
  desires through consumption. Vincent Miller

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Seduction

• Seduction is not really about the seductive
  qualities of particular products, but the ongoing
  process that keeps us moving on from one consumer
  choice to another.
• Seduction concerns our relationship to objects
  of desire. Contrary to what is generally assumed,
  consumer desire is not focussed on particular
  objects, but is instead stretched out across an
  endless series of potential objects. Miller

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Seduction

• Provides a consumer hope, a consumer promise of
  the future.
• Consumer desire is not focused on particular
  things it is constantly enticed to go beyond
  what has been acquired to consider something
  new. Miller

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Seduction

• Seduction spurs consumption by prolonging desire
  and channelling its inevitable disappointments
  into further desires. Miller
• Augustine You made us for yourself and our
  heart find no peace until they rest in you.
• Miller Consumer desire mimics the restlessness
  of our earthly pilgrimage.

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AN ASSURANCE MECHANISM

• The deeper underlying human need for reassurance
  concerning the reality of the self.
• A kind of default philosophy for all modern
  life.

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AN ASSURANCE MECHANISM

• Consumerism makes religion seem unnecessary or
  turns it into a consumer experience!

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CONSUMER TRUTH

• 'When many voices can be heard, who can say that
  one should be heeded more than another? ... When
  the only criteria left for choosing between them
  are learned in the marketplace, then truth
  appears as a commodity. We hear the people 'buy
  into' a belief or that, rather than rejecting a
  dogma as false, they 'cannot buy' this or that
  viewpoint.' David Lyon

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CONSUMER FREEDOM

• The opportunity to shop around, to pick and
  shed ones true self, to be on the move, has
  come to signify freedom. Zygmunt Bauman

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CONSUMER CITIZENSHIP

• This pattern of individualistic engagement makes
  it meaning full to talk about consumer
  citizenship. Citizenship In Britain

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NO PLACE FOR THE POOR

• 'The postmodern era is perhaps the first not to
  allocate a function to its poor - not a single
  redeeming feature which could prompt solidarity
  with the poor. Postmodern society produces its
  members first and foremost as consumers - and the
  poor are singularly unfit for that role

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NO PLACE FOR THE POOR

• by no stretch of imagination can one hope that
  they would contribute to the 'consumer-led
  recovery'. For the first time in history the poor
  are totally un-functional and wholly useless as
  such they are, for all practical intents and
  purposes, 'outside society'.' Zygmunt Bauman

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RELIGION

• Wherever I went I found that religion seemed to
  be a powerful vaccine. I should not have been
  surprised, because the scientific evidence has
  long been there much to the consternation of
  social scientists, on average regular churchgoers
  suffer less depression or unhappiness than
  unbelievers. Oliver James

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OUTCLASS IT!

• The Happy midi-narrative will never be
  overturned by our criticism.
• It can only be outclassed by a Christlike way of
  life.
• May it be said of us, in this generation,
• What the soul is in the body, that are
• Christians in the world. Epistle to Diognetus

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CULTIVATING CHARACTER

• Just as Western culture is a disciple making
  process shaping individualist consumers,
• So the church needs to be a community developing
  Christian character and the capacity for
  discernment.

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STRUGGLES WITH COHESION
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Moral - But No Compass

• Changes in British society in the late twentieth
  and early twenty-first centuries are making the
  conditions for cooperative action relatively
  harder to achieve over time. This is because
  Britain is now a rapidly changing, multicultural
  society, with a lot of geographical mobility and
  diverse values. The long term changes in
  attitudes and behaviour are moving us in the
  direction of declining collective participation
  and weakening social norms. Citizenship In
  Britain

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INDIVIDUAL INVOLVEMENT

• The most common forms of political activity tend
  to be individualistic, like giving money, signing
  a petition, or purchasing particular kinds of
  goods. These can be done without the need to
  cooperate with other people in an organisation.
  Citizenship in Britain
• The Atomised Citizen
• NIMBY politics

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How can the Christian faith as public truth
contribute to social cohesion?
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THIS CULTURE IS BECOMING A BIBLE FREE ZONE
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Church attendance segmentation in 2006
Leaving aside the minority who are of other
faiths, the UK adult population segments fairly
evenly between the Non-churched, De-churched
churchgoers.
Regular (at least monthly)churchgoers 15
Other religions 6
Unassigned 2
Closednon-churched 32
Fringe churchgoers(at least 6x yr. ) 3
Occasionalchurchgoers(at least annually) 7
Open de-churched 5
Opennon-churched 1
Closedde-churched 28
Base UK All adults (unw. 7069 w. 7000) at TAM
Wave 2
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THE DEATH OF CHRISTIAN BRITAIN - Callum Brown

• What is taking place is not merely the continued
  decline of organised Christianity, but the death
  of the culture which formerly conferred Christian
  identity upon the British people as a whole. If a
  core identity survives for Britons, it is
  certainly no longer Christian. The culture of
  Christianity has gone in the Britain of the new
  millennium.

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RELIGION AS LEISURE PURSUIT

• Religious activity has become, for an increasing
  proportion of the population, a leisure
  pursuit one, moreover, which competes for the
  public's attention alongside all sorts of other
  pastimes. .... It is the nature of society which
  is changing, rather than - or at least just as
  much as - the nature of religiosity.' Grace Davie

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THE GOD OF MY CHOICE

• Religion mutates. Grace Davie
• 'I don't need some rigid set of rules and
  regulations to commune with the God of my choice.
  God should be there for you whether you've read
  his book or not. (Dead Famous Ben Elton)

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How can we sow the biblical story back into our
culture?
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THIS CULTURE IS BEING CHANGED BY ISLAM
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Secular - Religious - Christian

• Ken Livingstone remarked recently that there
  were two obvious things about London as he toured
  the various communities, that the population was
  still growing, and that it was an increasingly
  religious city.
• The truth is that London is secular, religious
  and Christian all at the same time and this will
  become increasingly true of the whole of the UK.
  Bishop of London

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CHANGING PUBLIC CLIMATE

• FEAR - Terrorism, Fundamentalism
• SHAME - You dont believe your book
• PARTNERSHIP - Abrahamic faiths
• DIALOGUE - Theologically informed
• EVANGELISM - A matter of integrity
• PRINCIPLE - The uniqueness and finality of Christ

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THIS CULTURE NEEDS TO MEET THE CHURCH
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JESUS YES - CHURCH NO

• Apparently the world is interested in Jesus. Its
  his wife that they do not want to spend time
  with! Neil Cole

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OUR PEOPLE?

• The Anglican pattern of ministry, built around
  parish and neighbourhood, can lead to a way of
  thinking that assumes that all people whether
  attending or not attending are basically our
  people. All people are Gods people, but it is
  an illusion to assume that somehow the population
  of England is simply waiting for the right
  invitation before they will come back and join
  us.

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OUR PEOPLE?

• The social and mission reality is that the
  majority of English society is not our people
  they havent been in living memory, nor do they
  want to be. The reality is that for most people
  across England the church as it is peripheral,
  obscure, confusing or irrelevant.
• The task is to become church for them, among
  them and with them, and under the Spirit of God
  to lead them to become church in their own
  culture.

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MEMBERS ARE A MINORITY

• In fact membership of organised groups is a
  minority activity, since 55 of Britons are not
  members of any group. In addition many of the
  people who are members of groups pay their dues
  and do very little else. CIB

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MAINTENANCE TO MISSION

• Churches have operated on a come-to- us
  philosophy, but this is no longer adequate when
  the church finds itself marginalized and existing
  as just one piece in a complex social
  kaleidoscope in which the pieces are constantly
  realigning.
• The church must be not only inviting but
  infiltrating the groups it seeks to introduce to
  the Saviour. Eddie Gibbs

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THE PRICE OF MISSION

• The church must always be willing to die to its
  own cultural comfort in order to live where God
  intends it to be.
• John 1224 Very truly, I tell you, unless a
  grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
  remains just a single grain but if it dies it
  bears much fruit.

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INCARNATIONAL

• Entering their world.
• Taking it as seriously as they do.
• Helping them to find Christ there.

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DYING TO LIVE

• The seed loses its previous identity, which was
  to be part of the sending church with its
  particular manifestation and culture. It will
  become something different from what it was
  before. Dying to live is inherent in the planting
  process. Mission Shaped Church

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INCULTURATION

• Inculturation is essentially a community process
  from below. Its purpose is to allow the gospel
  to transform a culture from within.
• No serious attempt at inculturation can begin
  with a fixed view of the outward form of the
  local church. Mission Shaped Church

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A FORTASTE OF GODS FUTURE

• The Church does more than merely point to a
  reality beyond itself. By virtue of its
  participation in the life of God, it is not only
  a sign and instrument, but also a genuine
  foretaste of Gods Kingdom, called to show forth
  visibly, in the midst of history, Gods final
  purposes for humankind. Eucharistic Presidency

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HOW DO I CHOOSE

• Ethics lies at the heart of mission. Roy
  Mcloughry
• Behaving
• Belonging
• Believing

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What Every Christian Leader Needs to Know About
Our Changing Culture

• Graham Cray