Posted on August 27, 2008 - by ray

A Tiny Rant

I don’t personally know Perry Noble. I’ve never met the man. But I’ve listened to some of his messages as the pastor of NewSpring Church in South Carolina (go gamecocks). He seems like a nice enough guy, his sermons are relevant, hip, and the church service seems to be the event of the week. I subscribe to his blog and a recent post caught my attention, but for the wrong reason.

Perry wrote about a person called “Bob”. Perry met Bob over a year ago at the gym and in Perry’s words “I invited him to church…and he came! (it’s amazing what a personal invite will do!)”. So Bob’s been coming to church the last year or so but as of yet has not become of follower of Jesus. Now I could go on and continue to give you the bullet points of his post, but it might be better for you to read it for yourself. After you’ve read it you’ll be better able to see where I’m coming from…and this is it: inviting someone to church is not missional living. It’s not incarnational living. It’s not the way Jesus did it. It’s not the answer for the overwhelming majority of people that want nothing to do with the church. It’s not going to reach those with a truly postmodern worldview.

I can give you countless examples of how I’ve invited people to a church service or an event the church was putting on and they never came. And they never will. Inviting someone to church is not living on the edge, it’s not radical christianity. It’s a twentieth century method for reaching a modern thinker. And please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not railing on Perry. I’m expressing my thoughts on the idea that is so entrenched in us as christians: if we’ll just invite them to church then the pastor and Jesus will do the rest. And don’t miss this either: I’m not against bringing people along to a church event/service. I’m against making that the way we try and reach those that don’t yet follow Jesus.

The point of Perry’s post was find your “Bob” and reach them by inviting them to church. I would say, find your “Bob”, and invest personally in them. Be a friend. Be real. Become a part of his/her life. Be Jesus in the simple things. And when, or even if, the time comes invite him to be a part of the church, not just the church you happen to attend.

Posted on August 25, 2008 - by ray

Cultural Acumen

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines acumen as “the ability to make good judgments and quick decisions, typically in a particular domain : business acumen“.

So having cultural acumen would mean that a person possesses the ability to make good judgments pertaining to the culture in which they find themselves. I wonder how long it takes to build up acumen. I’ve been here a little over 2 years and there are certain things regarding culture that I feel like I can make good judgments on. But there are still things, even after 2 years, that I’m no closer to feeling comfortable judging now than I was then.

This all came to light as I was reading a colleagues website regarding acclimation to their new culture. This colleague recently arrived to the country and immediately started language training. Within the first couple of weeks this colleague of mine wrote about how the city (that I live in and they study in) is one of the most spiritually dark places they’ve been, that people walk around with blank looks on their faces, and spend their time wasting away in the bars.

While I would agree with the last observation, people really do like to drink here, I would disagree with the first two observations. First, this city is alive. There are not many blank looks on the faces of the people here. In fact, most seem to carry themselves as though they have no care in the world. They have immense pride in their city and country and know how to have a good time. These things can’t be noticed and truly appreciated in the first 2 weeks in a city. Another thing worth mentioning, this is not a spiritually dark city. Places like New Orleans and parts of San Francisco are spiritually dark. This city is spiritually indifferent, which may be worse than being spiritually dark. The overwhelming majority here have no thoughts towards religion. They can take it or leave it, and most leave it. As long as your beliefs do not infringe on how they live out their life they could care less what you believe.

So maybe my colleague mistook spiritual indifference for spiritual darkness. Which brings me back to my original question…how long does it take to gain an appreciation for and understanding of a culture? I don’t know that I have the answer, but I have some principles that I’ve followed in the 2+ years I’ve been here:

• be quiet. just sit, watch, and listen
• go where the people are - downtown, parks, festivals, restaurants
• plug in - sign up for an art or photography course, join a knitting group, get involved in some athletic group/team
• ask a lot of questions, be patient in waiting for response, don’t judge the response or the response giver and then repeat the first principle

These are just a few things I’ve tried to incorporate into my daily life as I try to develop my cultural acumen.

Posted on August 17, 2008 - by ray

Site Update

I’m changing things around on the site, so excuse the mess for the next couple of days.

Posted on August 9, 2008 - by ray

Matt Chandler

For those that care Matt Chandler of the Village Church in the Dallas area has started a new blog. It’s called Dwell Deep, and can be found here. Having listened to Matt’s podcast for the last several years I can, without reading a single post, recommend this to you.