An Additional Thought on Culture and Pastoral Ministry

I had some time to reflect on my last post and so I want to add another thought regarding culture. I want to be careful to state that it is vital not to diminish the importance of understanding culture. It is necessary for us to understand culture and to connect with culture, but our relevance, or what sets our direction, or steers our engagement in culture cannot be culture. Culture does not set the agenda for our engagement, rather the reign of God does, however, culture is the context in which our engagement happens -- and so we need to understand it and take heed of it. As followers of Christ, submitted to living out our life in the way of Jesus, we live in our culture, whatever culture that may be, by the agenda set by missio Dei, by the agenda of the reign of God (see Matthew 5-7 for this agenda). We are called to live out, to demonstrate the reality of God's reign in the context of culture.

This is all to say that the way we lead as pastors is not to be driven by the agenda of the culture, rather we are called to lead, or better still -- to serve -- the purposes of God in the context of the cultures we find ourselves in. For this reason culture is important to understand. It is the context in which we are called to serve as pastoral servants.