God speaks culturally

I've been reading Act's chapter 2 recently and as I was reading it something occurred to me. I have always looked at it as the model text for the church. Teaching, meeting needs and fellowship; the pillars of a growing body of believers. But as I reviewed the text, what stood out to me was not the model for the church, but the response of the people as the disciples began to teach prior to the formation of the church. There were many different cultures represented there and as the disciples began to speak, all of them heard truth in their own language. And they were blown away.

What made the church so successful and grow by great numbers that day was it's ability to bridge the cultural gap and speak everyone’s language. Suddenly, there was a multicultural, multiethnic congregation and a diversity that never existed before in history. Up until the time of Christ, God followers were primarily Jewish and any that claimed to follow God that were not Jewish, did not associate with Israel.

Overnight the followers of God took on a new face, the face of the people. And ministry was redefined in a moment. How things were done in the past would not work anymore. Church as they knew it needed to change.

So much of the New Testament teaching is culturally based and yet so much of our methodology for church programming springs from the pages of this book. What Paul was laying out for the church in His epistles was not explaining how Old Testament teachings applied to that day. It was new paradigms for life and ministry. Judaism was passing away and Christianity was being birthed.

I believe that we are in an age of new paradigms and as in Paul’s day, it's hard for the church to embrace new. New is dangerous. New is confusing. New doesn't fit the mold.

Well, I think it's time to break the mold. In fact, I think the church is a little moldy as well. Every once in a while we scrape of the old stuff and say it's fresh again.

It's time to start from scratch and create a movement of God that speaks the language of our culture and then watch the world marvel at hearing God's voice in its own tongue for the first time again. Then and only then can we begin to create a thing called the church as it will be determined by the culture and the culture will give it a new name, in it’s own tongue, that describes the what it sees…people who live like Christ.