Cover photo from Culture-Making.com
Culture Making:
Recovering Our Creative Calling is a great book for studying how to be
cultivators and influencers of culture. God has called us to be creative and to
influence culture and we should, indeed, be attuned to this calling. Andy
Crouch gets us back to our call in this well-done and extremely helpful book.
Andy Crouch addresses culture making in his book Culture Making, as well as on his web
site, http://www.culture-making.com,
when he says: "It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient
merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just
consume culture."
We are to be leaders of culture, not just consumers of
culture. We are to be pioneers of culture who will determine the future of our
world. To quote again from Andy Crouch, from Culture Making, "The only way to change culture is to create
culture." If we are to change the world, we must be creators and
cultivators of the cultures around us by the power of God at work in us.
Crouch says, "The essence of childhood is innocence.
The essence of youth is awareness. The essence of adulthood is
responsibility." We have responsibilities to the culture around us as
Christians and should be seeking to be influencers and cultivators of culture.
Andy Crouch asserts in his book: "Something exciting is
happening at the intersection of Christianity and culture. Christians are
becoming dissatisfied with the postures they adopted toward culture in the
twentieth century: condemning it, critiquing it, copying it, or just consuming
it. More and more, we want to be people who cultivate: people who tend and keep
what is good. And we want to be people who create: adding new cultural goods
that move the horizons of the possible in places as wide as the world and as
small as a home."
This is what Paul asked the Colossian church to do in Colossians
3:23-24, "Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to
men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance;
for you serve the Lord Christ." Paul also talked about resisting
conformity to this world, and shaping culture, in Romans
12:1-2.
We are called to join in with God in His work, and cultivate
our culture. We are not to conform to this world, but be transformed by God,
and become transformation agents of God in the world.
As leaders, as believers, our calling is a high calling. We
are called not to mimic or imitate the world around us; we are called to shape
it. We are called to create culture and not merely fall into it, or be shaped
by it. We can lead, or we can follow. We can shape, or be shaped. The choice is
ours.
This is what Paul was telling Timothy in 1
Timothy 4:12. Paul said, "Let no one despise your youth, but be an
example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, and
in purity."
These were the elder Paul's words to younger Timothy and
they are equally as relevant to all of us today. Paul was telling Timothy to
lead, pioneer the way, shape the culture of the church and the world, to serve
and to influence, recognizing that it is not about him, and thereby shape the
world for Christ.
We are good to remember Colossians
3:17, "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord
Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him."
As Crouch asserts in his book, Culture Making, we are to be culture makers and cultivators to the
glory of God.
This book review was adapted from my review posted on goodreads. This review is also posted on Examiner.com.
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