Seth Godin :: Tribes

If you are leading anyone, anywhere, watch this talk.  If you’re not leading, we need you to lead.  Especially all of those Christian-leader types that I know read my blog.  Or the students who are dreaming about a better world.  Or the chronic complainers who can tell you everything that is wrong with the world but refuse to create an alternative.

Start something.  Connect with others.  Make a difference.  Watch this talk.

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The 3, The 12, & The 120

I think the church has been given a gift in Andy Crouch’s Culture Making.  Before I say anything else, I need to offer a command: read this book.

As Christian people we are called to create and offer culture to the world.  As human beings we are created in God’s image.  When we create, we reflect our Creator.  As Crouch illustrates in his book, this motif is evident in the Genesis account, but is not confined there.  Culture making takes place throughout the biblical narrative.  The biblical story, being our story, invites us to a life of faithfulness that includes creating spaces in our communities where the life of the Kingdom is found manifest.  This can be in a group as small as a family or tightly knit group of friends, but can grow to be larger.

In the third part of his book, Crouch illustrates how we can go about creating culture.  The task begins very small.  The context for culture making is named as The 3, The 12, and The 120.  The principle is simple.  Crouch cites examples from movies, books (writer, editor, publisher), and forms of government that focus centrally on about three people, widens to around 12, and reaches to approximately 120.  The numbers aren’t always exact, but they fall near that range.  Christians will immediately think of Jesus, his inner circle, the twelve, and then other disciples (the 70, for example) that Jesus commissioned during his ministry.

When we think of creating culture, whether we are lay leaders, ordained clergy, or other church staff, we never go about creating culture by ourselves.  We need others.  Crouch states:

Absolutely no one makes culture alone.  There may be periods of solitude where we work alone to shape our contribution to our own cultural sphere and scale.  But for our work alone to bear any fruit at all, we will need to join with a 3.  So one of the most important questions for our calling is, Who are your 3?  Who are the few people you trust enough to risk creating something together?  What is the cultural sphere and scale where you could imagine successfully proposing a cultural good?  Who might be members of your 12?  Who might be drawn into the circle of the 120 who will eventually lend their effort and energy to moving the horizons of possibility with you?

These are all great questions.  So, who are your 3?  Who are your 12?  And who are your 120?  And what are you creatively discerning and formulating together for the good?  What will you invite others to take part in?

Surround yourself with friends, dream big, and get to work.  May God bless your labors.

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The Curse of the Analytic Mind

The risk in thinking “worldviewishly” is that we will start to think that the best way to change culture is to analyze it.  We will start worldview academies, host worldview seminars, write worldview books.  These may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural goods.  And they will subtly tend to produce philosophers rather than plumbers, abstract thinkers instead of artists and artisans.  They can create a cultural niche in which “worldview thinkers” are privileged while other kids of culture makers are shunted aside.

But culture is not changed simply by thinking.

-Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Rediscovering Our Creative Calling

This week I’ve been reading Andy Crouch.  It has been quite enjoyable.  In fact, this is one of the best books I’ve picked up in a while that offers a helpful challenge to Christianity.  I’ve been convicted just as much as I have been encouraged.  That is the mark of a good book.

I’m analytical and critical.  I love to break down a discourse, a book, an event, a newspaper article, a poem, a piece of art, a movie, a play.  I enjoy asking questions.  And I enjoy sharing my opinions.

But the true desire of me heart, in recent days, has been to undertake a creative, cooperative venture with other like minded people to create something in our world that is helpful, hopeful, and true.

For those of us (myself included) who tend to analyze culture, I hope that Crouch’s words remind us that to think about and analyze our world is not alone sufficient.  We have to create.  We have to get about the business of bringing about new things.  You don’t like the current culture, whether it be national or ecclesial?  You’re discouraged by an institutional or communal structure you think is outmoded, outdated, sluggish, apathetic, restrictive, or errant?  Quit complaining and get to work.

As Crouch himself has written, “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.“

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Gospel Tracts a Thing of the Past?

Over the past few years I’ve travelled to a handful of major U.S. cities, and during each visit, I manage to come across people handing out gospel tracts.  I’ve seen these people everywhere.  When there aren’t people to hand them out, sometimes I’ve found tracts lying in airport bathrooms.  My wife and I went on a trip about a year and a half ago where every time we had a layover I picked up a tract somewhere.  Everywhere I went these printed materials were ready to meet me.  Maybe I needed to repent and ask Jesus into my heart.  Yet, blessed assurance…

Out of curiosity I steer toward these people and take whatever they are handing out.  I can remember vividly interactions I had with two different persons while visiting New York City.  One person handed me a tract that stated “being baptized as a child” and “following the 10 commandments and basically being a good person” were not sufficient for salvation, sentiments with which I would agree.  These conditions were the foundation of the presentation which was to follow.  If you’ve seen printed materials which begin with a similar line of argument, you know that infant baptism and being a good person are portrayed as types of “salvation by works” which will be demolished by the proclamation of salvation by grace alone through Christ alone.

Again, as a Christian person I would affirm that salvation comes by grace through Christ.  I wasn’t too surprised by the basic message of this gospel tract.  What bewildered me about this gospel presentation was the fact that it assumed the majority of people reading it would have either experience baptism as a small child or have been familiar with the 10 commandments and considered the decalogue a reasonable basis for a personal code of ethics.  That day I was walking with my friend Ryan, and I told him that I thought this line of argument was no longer applicable to our culture.  The church no longer shares a common discourse or language with a nominally Christian public.  We are no longer living in a nation which intentionally engages with the texts and way of life as embodied in the Judea-Christian tradition.  Tracts like the one I received in New York City were written to another world which no longer exists.

As for that other person I can remember in NYC, he was outside Yankee stadium handing out tracts featuring Mickey Mantle.  Standing on the Subway headed home from the game, I knew I wasn’t the only one who had been handed one of these tracts.  I can recall seeing a man carefully reading through the material, then expressing his disgust to his wife who was with him.  I was saddened in that moment, but was unsure what to say.

This week I was reading a book entitled Holy Conversation: Talking About God in Everyday Life by Richard Peace.  In his 3rd chapter, “Really Good News,” he asks this question:

I do wonder if tracts are not a thing of the past?  You don’t see tractlike materials used in any other areas of life these days.

I thought this was a good question for the blog world, considering this may be one of the most prevalent forums in our culture today in which people can express their beliefs on faith, politics, religion, and public life to a diverse and broad audience.  The blog world just might be the contemporary tract, though the format and the means of engagement are quite different.

I am not someone who leaves “Tracts in my Tracks,” as one evangelist once exhorted me to do both in word and by walking the aisles of the church facility flinging tracts in the air.  My life and work are tracts which I hope point others toward a different reality called Kingdom which is constituted by a cross.

In order to open this up, I invite you to blog and link back here with your thoughts on this question: Is the tract still a viable means by which to communicate the gospel?  Or, has it ever been?  What are your thoughts on tracts?

If you don’t have a forum, feel free to leave a comment.  How effective is the tract?  What purpose does the tract serve?  Will tracts continue to be used by Christian people in the future, and will they maintain the same form?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Guitar Praise?

In yet another case of “Christ Against Culture,” video game developer Digital Praise is set to release “Guitar Praise.”  Here are some details:

NEW YORK —  For Christians who’ve always wanted to dabble in “Guitar Hero,” but can’t bear riffing to songs like “Cheat on the Church,” “Cowboys From Hell” or “The Number of the Beast,” finally, there’s a video game for you.

Next month, video-game developer Digital Praise releases “Guitar Praise,” a wireless guitar game that promises “inspirational fun” as players jam to 52 hits by the likes of contemporary Christian musicians TobyMac, Newsboys and Skillet.

Like “Guitar Hero,” the game requires players to hit the correct notes as the songs play, but unlike Activision’s popular Xbox, Wii and PlayStation 2 and 3 game, “Guitar Praise” is strictly a Mac or PC affair.

Set for release on Sept. 25, with a price tag of $99.95, “Guitar Praise” isn’t cheap. But developers see it as a game perfect for the masses.

To read the rest of the FoxNews article, click here.

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