From Catalyst
At the Borders of Culture
Discovering Ministry Vision at Your Corner Bookstore
By Rick James
The role of a Next Generation Leader is to translate biblical truth to a culture, but culture is a chameleon. Failure to identify it is the difference between a “voice calling from the wilderness,” and a “voice speaking to the wilderness;” it’s the difference between a ministry of leverage and impact versus a voice rendered innocuous and trivial.
Over the years, I’ve spoken or done ministry on as many as 150 campuses. In the world of youth ministry, that’s not so much a byline as it is an epitaph. If I have learned one thing ministering at “the fountain of youth” it is that relevance is maintained by swimming in the ever flowing stream of cultural ideas.
The whole idea of “in the world, not of it” often causes leaders in ministry to shy away from engaging in cultural trends and view. The fact is, while the vision and mission of the Church—and the message and hope of Christ—are timeless, our methods for communicating them must be relevant with the times.
Cultural Cues from the Apostle Paul
“For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” (Acts 17:23 NIV)
The apostle Paul was master of cultural relevance. From this account, we can imagine him in Athens, spending an afternoon window shopping … observing the culture, gathering ideas, and then sorting them out. All this to be able to speak directly to the Athenian people: refuting their errant views, borrowing from their own culture, and commandeering all manner of Athenian bricolage to build an on-ramp to the gospel.
What if Paul were here today? How would he employ this strategy of engagement? My guess is he’d spend the afternoon at Borders. Because let’s face it, a great place to find culturally relevant ideas is at your corner bookstore. If you learn to observe, gather, and sort ideas at Borders, you’ll always be on the crest of the cultural wave. So, let me guide you through an afternoon trip to Borders. Just like Paul, we’ll be able to recycle much of what we learn. Our strategy is to first observe and gather information, and then we’ll sort it out through a shelving method in order to apply it to our leadership and ministry.
The Business Section
I’ve seen Jack Welch’s face 18 times, so we must have arrived in the business section. Look, here’s Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Blink!. A tennis coach always knows when a player will double fault. … An art historian spots a fraud not discernable to computers. … We find a dozen other case studies to back Gladwell’s thesis that the intuitive wisdom of trained and experienced professionals is more valuable than mountains of research or the pooled ignorance of a focus group or committee. Branded the new corporate guru, Gladwell’s ideas are shaping corporate America.
Is this useful research to have at the ready? I don’t know … ever felt through your years of experience that you possibly knew better than the church committee or council which way was forward, and that it would be best to just trust your gut? Well then, I guess that answers that. There’s more here, but we’re a little underdressed for the business section so let’s join the retired and out-of-work over in History.
The History Section
Oh look, another page-turner on Ulysses S. Grant, and it’s the size of the Manhattan phonebook. That’s not what we’re looking for. We’re shopping for new ideas. Here’s how we find them: First, is there anyone we should be aware of? A new biography about someone who might have, or will be, gaining cultural influence? (I think Grant’s stranglehold on public opinion is clearly on the decline.)
You ask, “Couldn’t we find this out by watching the news?” Yes, but books are more reliable. Publishers like making money—lots of it—and they don’t invest in a book unless they think there’s an audience. So note who’s become worthy of a publisher’s investment, as it’s likely to be a trend. I’m not seeing any new authors, but in terms of new ideas, The Punch demonstrates the new way to tell history through the micro- event: everything leading up to, surrounding, and resulting from, a specific action or event. For example, the French and Indian War can be traced back to a singular insult.
Let’s stick this idea in the shopping cart because it could be commandeered in preaching from the Old Testament—the story of David and Bathsheba could be traced back to … The Glance.
Hold on … I just hit paydirt. Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood. As the Old Testament is drenched in the crimson fluid, the thoughts contained here may provide genuine insight as well as preaching fodder. I might actually buy this one or the book next to it, The History of the World in Six Glasses. Finding an organizing principle on which to divide history is a crazy-maker, and this author, bless his barstool, has lined it up by drinks.
Now why is this an idea worth noticing? Well, we currently live in a culture of speed: fast-paced information for a fast-paced life. We feed the culture of speed at the coffee shops found on every corner. A double espresso the drug of choice. The ideas in this book might make a beautiful introduction to a biblical series on our culture of speed.
As you move deeper into the rows and rows of ideas, you get faster at stripping useful kernels. But we’ve spent too long here so we need to either buy the memoir of Ulysses S. Grant or get back to browsing. Let’s move over to fiction.
The Fiction Section
Fiction for me is like bran, which I only consume because it’s good for my colon. In the two-story barn of Borders you’ll find both high culture and popular culture works of fiction. Pop culture provides immediate, quick, and flashy ideas. High culture, on the other hand, is slower and requires that you enter in … and in many cases tolls your patience. The taste for high culture is an acquired one, which describes why I loathe it. High culture does have gravitas, as it is weighty in topics and ideas. Leaders must always peck away at great writing and literature, because those who dabble only in pop culture will simply congregate and cultivate shallow followers.
Everyone should read the obvious classics; however, you will be left in awe by the talents of some of these more contemporary fiction writers: Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Flannery O’Conner (Christian), John Updike, Alice Munro, Rick Moody, Annie Dillard (Christian), Ian McEwan, Annie Proulx, or Tobias Wolf. Moving on…
The NPR Section
One of the treasure troves in the bookstore is the section entitled “In the Media” or “On NPR.” In this section, media programmers have done the legwork of idea filtering. They’ve looked at the landscape of ideas and identified these as looming largest on the cultural horizon. Take careful inventory of what you find here. With most books, the jacket cover and table of contents provide a sufficient map of where the ride is heading.
The Religion/Spirituality Section
We’ve now moved into the Religion/Spirituality section. I don’t come to Borders to harvest Christian thought any more than Paul was learning Christian theology in downtown Athens. Rather, I come here to get the pulse of spirituality in our culture. The fad for today’s celebrities is promoting their religion of choice, like Kabbalah and Scientology. You’ll no doubt find the popularity of spiritual exploration reflected in the diversity of religious literature.
Hmm, now here’s something interesting: M. Scott Peck (not a bastion of orthodoxy) has a new book, Glimpses of the Devil, apparently delving into issues of possession and exorcism. I’m not sure of specifics yet, but the idea of a Halloween outreach on campus and material from this book are two sticks I immediately begin to rub together in my mind. When the smoke clears, I may have myself an evangelistic talk … or just a lot of smoke.
The Science Section
Let’s take a quick peek in the science section. Of course, we do so knowing of the ongoing battle between those who see God’s hand in the universe and those who don’t. The debate has raged for eons; however new findings from DNA, microbiology, and astronomy have provided tremendous ammunition for Christians on the question of God’s existence.
Generally speaking, every year authors like Dawkins and Gould write books with titles like Blind Watchmaker or You’re Simply a Hairball Coughed Up by a Random Universe, and writers like Behe, Dembski, and Denton point the way toward an intelligent designer. At the popular level, Lee Strobel’s Case for a Creator is a great overview of the issue.
Christians have made tremendous headway in this battle, so unless a new book causes a ripple in the universe debate, I’ll just button up my lab coat, put my pen back in its pocket protector, and keep moving.
The New Non-Fiction Section
The most valuable books by far do not have their own category, but pop up in the new non-fiction section before they are dispatched to their appropriate phylum and genus. Many belong under social sciences/sociology. They are written by authors who are able to connect the dots of cultural indicators, cross-pollinate knowledge from various disciplines, and bring forth predictive analysis. The antiquated term for such meta-thinkers was “renaissance man” (or woman). Today they sometimes go by the label “futurists.”
I’m looking at three new books by well-known “big thinkers.” The World is Flat is Thomas Friedman’s third book on globalization. No one understands and explains the emerging interdependent world and its implications better than Friedman, so if Friedman writes it, I read it (or at least say that I did). The two others are Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Pulitzer winner Jared Diamond, and Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. For all I know these books could be horrendous … but do you see the type of book I’m trying to describe? They provide a compass to the culture by synthesizing enormous amounts of data and trends. These books are conceptual gold.
Don’t Forget the Magazine Rack
Well, our shopping cart is about full with ideas, but before leaving we should scan the magazine rack. Opinions vary on what magazines best keep you on the cultural cusp. Personally, I always look at Wired, Fast Company, Time, Newsweek, Entertainment, and Oxygen/Wallpaper (the latest in design, art, and architecture). But this brings us back to the question, “Why is Borders the best stethoscope to hear the heartbeat of culture? Why books and magazines over the internet, movies, or television?”
Clearly all the mentioned venues provide cultural insights—some indispensable—but books and magazines consolidate an enormous amount of divergent ideas all in one location. The internet is a billion cultural niches with few “Central Stations” for ideas. The exception, of course, are blogs or webzines (The Wall Street Opinion Journal, Plastic, or Slate for example), but most of these are confined to a single subject such as politics or entertainment. Also, remember we said that in order to get into print, an idea has had to demonstrate it is more than a social hiccup. Otherwise publishers wouldn’t invest the ink and paper. Content is king.
Movies and television do possess something that can’t be garnered from a book: emotional memory. For example, when I mention to you Frodo’s struggle in The Lord Of the Rings, I tap into the emotions that the film producers so excessively cultivated through music, sound, and story. While books and magazines provide me with a palette of ideas that I can use to influence, movies and television offer opportunities for emotional connection.
Out the Doors and Into the Culture
I leave Borders with several shopping bags full of ideas (I use plastic instead of paper, for everything I’ve taken is recyclable). As we take these books and ideas home, we’ll need to file them on the proper shelf for easy reference. What I mean is creating context in which to use these engaging ideas.
Contaminants Shelf
The first cabinet is for poisons and cultural toxins. As Paul was aware of, and addressed, the Athenians distorted thought patterns, and we should do the same. Borders is in fact filled with a billion venomous ideas, any of which could be spiritually lethal in the wrong dose. I would put Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code on this shelf. As a shepherd, I’m on the look-out for dangerous ideas that are having, or could have, a significant influence on the culture and therefore on those to whom I minister. I am not a prophet. I don’t know what trends or ideas will ever become a Class-5 cultural storm, but if I know what’s off the coast, sitting in warm waters and picking up speed, I can take the steps to prepare for or prevent damage.
Corporate Shelf
Gladwell’s Blink! goes on the second shelf for corporate ideas. I always sample the fruit of the business session, because while the Church is definitely a family and a mission, its administrative and leadership structure functions much like a corporation. There are ideas in business that help me lead and influence amidst the corporate functions of ministry. This is why I think every leader should read Good to Great by Jim Collins.
Conversation Shelf
While Paul was cramming specifically for an upcoming evangelistic exam at the Areopagus, my reasons for gathering are a little broader. I shelve some ideas for no other reason than that it aids in social proficiency. Ministry is relationships, relationships are built through conversation, and ideas fuel conversation. Lousy conversation is usually symptomatic of a lack of knowledge or narrow minds and the prescription is a book jacket.
Commandeer Shelf
“‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” (Acts 17:28 NIV)
Ideas have the power to influence. They sit hostage on the shelves of Borders awaiting liberation. There are a million ideas flying aimlessly around Borders. I look to hijack and commandeer them for use in ministry as Paul did in Athens. I’ll be glad to put to kingdom service the five years someone spent researching The History of Blood, whatever their motive for doing so. Capturing history through the lens of a micro -moment like The Punch … that’s brilliant! Hand it over, along with your other valuables, and I’ll put it on my shelf for future use … and I’ll be sure to include you in the footnotes.
Conversion Shelf
The apostle Paul scoured the city for raw material (ideas) that could be processed into a culturally relevant presentation of the gospel. Borders is filled with such bridges to the culture.
I’m sure there are other shelf categories, but none that begin with the letter “C” so we’ll keep it to five. Here’s a closing question to ponder: Would Paul’s speech to the Areopagus have been blessed even if he hadn’t done his homework on Athenian culture? I’ll let you wrestle with that, but I will note that we will never know for sure, because Paul did, in fact, do his homework.
Over the next few weeks, spend an afternoon gathering ideas at Borders or Barnes & Noble, or your local corner bookstore. Using these five general categories, begin to brainstorm ways you can use cultural trends as a tool for engaging others in the truth of Jesus Christ.
