Editor’s Note: If you have missed any articles in this series, be sure to check out the Introduction article, where you can find all of the articles that have been released.

“Time,” writes Os Guinness, “is too much for our minds to figure out and too great for our ingenuity to outwit.” At best, we hope to redeem the time God grants us. This requires that we seize moments that come during our ministries. So far, we’ve explored six. The seventh moment calls for even greater vigilance.

Will we lead the church to effectively impact culture? Standing atop Mars Hill in Athens on a recent journey, I tried to imagine the Apostle Paul’s moment of cultural seizure. It was here he sat and observed a world surfeited with gods. Idols crammed the public square—designer gods to fit every need. Gods, as Peterson put it, with all the God taken out. By all appearance, immanence had shoved transcendence aside.

The world Paul saw was collapsing under the weight of self-worship. The deceptive myths, the twisted philosophies, the overreach of an empire that demanded adulation of its emperor—they all led to a tipping point. He became incensed.

“Every age,” writes Robert Joustra, “has its own particular pathologies.” Cultures deviate from the norm. Our age is no exception. Like ancient Hellenistic culture, we have strayed from our worship of the one true God and replaced him with ourselves. We have bought into our own myths, namely that we are makers of our own meaning.

“Expressive individualism” is how one writer describes it. We have become devoted to ourselves and undevoted to God. At the same time, we are challenging traditions, times, places, and anything that tries to resist or claim itself higher than the immanent will of the person. This, of course, is madness. Only in fantasy do we live what story we please.

Some may speak of an emerging post-Christian moment, but it is already here. The most basic assumptions of reality have been deconstructed. Beliefs that were once reinforced are no longer strengthened. We live in an age some refer to as “after virtue,” where the morals the church espouses are no longer honored; they are denigrated.

It is imperative we act. Awaken the church. Tim Keller, a pastor who gave himself to both theological and cultural exegesis, could see the danger of misunderstanding and misinterpreting, and left this warning: “The relationship of Christians to culture is the singular current crisis point for the church.” What is required?

Pastors Must Develop a Keen Awareness of Culture

We can ill-afford to be naïve to our setting. An awareness of our context has an enormous impact on how we preach, lead, and frame ministry.

This begins with gaining a proper definition of culture. Narrowly, one thinks of it as language, music, and art, as well as food and folk customs. In a broader sense, culture is the total process of activity. This includes one’s worldview (one’s truth claims and values), as well as the history and stories that people tell about themselves.

Viewed in this way, it makes no sense to speak of culture as something outside of the church. Culture impinges on us, makes demands of us, and occupies us. If a church is to have any impact, it will need to be aware of the cultural setting it shares with everyone else.

Pastors Need to Critically Read the Times

A prerequisite to seizing the cultural moment is to be informed. The abundance of information and the speed of the news require an ableness to navigate through the avalanche of voices.

Beyond the daily op-eds, we must be attentive to those books that give a more penetrating analysis of our times. Who are the writers who have a grasp of history, whose insightful explorations explain how we have gotten to the place we are in? These are the voices that enable us to discern such issues as the long-range effects of the pandemic, the reasons for our present polarization, and the threats coming from unchecked technologies and artificial intelligence.

A book like Jeffrey Bilbro’s Reading the Times serves as an essential guide. He encourages us to immerse ourselves yet warns against getting caught up in the trivial. We must be selective for we can attend so close to the secular and the temporal that we desecrate our minds.

Reading the times, we can’t help but note that principles that once shaped the public square are disappearing. We have moved from a fixed and stable world to one that is “pliable as playdough,” one shaped by the shifting moods of the human will. It’s as if we have burned the past to the ground.

Our culture is also becoming less centralized. Power and influence are dispersed, giving way to networks that are now dominate. They are the primary shapers, leading to the loss of any center of gravity. They are also contributing to a growing resistance to the gospel. Christianity is increasingly perceived as a subculture that runs against society’s mores.

Pastors Must Determine a Biblical Posture Towards Culture

At some point, churches must determine a biblically informed stance towards culture. Given the confusion of our times, pastors must choose the right model.

In a series of lectures in 1951, Yale professor, H. Richard Niebuhr, sought to identify possible options. These have been reframed in subsequent works.

In my ministry, I have urged the church to evaluate and choose from four basic postures. Each one has adherents who find biblical and historic support, but a pastor must skillfully lead the church into the one that most reflects the model of Christ and the overall teaching of Scripture.

The Posture of Separation

This is a position that ranges from cultural indifference to cultural aversion. It assumes culture is distinguishable from a life of faith—something you can, and must, withdraw from. Present society has become an irredeemable wasteland of godlessness, leaving the church with no other option but to separate.

Scripture seems to affirm this position. God has called out a people for himself and warns against aligning with a pagan world. Jesus exposed the darkness and declared his kingdom is from another realm. The Apostle Paul urged the Corinthians to separate from the godless age they found themselves in (1 Cor. 6:14-7:1), and James cautioned against friendship with the world, likening it to enmity with God (1 Cor. 4:4).

The Bible declares that the church is to be countercultural. Its role in society is to be itself in all its purity and holiness, a light in the dark. When it attempts to be relevant, it loses its identity and becomes largely irrelevant.

Must this be the posture we call the church to assume? Every Christian is against the world to one degree or another—against the sex trade, against oppression, against greed driven institutions. There’s something to be said for the courage to be contra mundum.

Still, given the times we are in, such churches easily become insular and entrenched. We ignore the petition of Jesus to be in the world (John 17:15). When Paul advocated disconnection, it was not so much separation from the world as disassociation from immorality within the body (1 Cor 5:10-11).

The Posture of Assimilation

Adherents of this model believe one can maintain loyalty to Christ without abandoning the things of this world. There is no merit in retreating to our spiritual bomb shelters and becoming irrelevant.

Cultural adaptation is part of the biblical story. Scripture reveals that God continually accommodated himself and his revelation to the world he made. When Israel went into exile, the people were called to assimilate into their culture (Jer. 29:5-7). Like Daniel, we as present exiles are called to integrate into the culture. As with Jesus, we are to enter into both the world’s neighborhood, customs, and parties.

Likewise, Paul sought to establish common ground when he addressed the pagan world of his day. He quoted from secular poets and made use of common sayings (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12). He made it his mission to be all things to all men (1 Cor 9:19-23).

Culture builds upon culture. Wesley did this with his early hymns, tunes that were borrowed from the music of his day. Copying has a way of honoring culture, recognizing that we are all made in the image of God; all of creation has the possibility of glorifying God.

In our age, there is wisdom in connecting, in tearing down the barriers that turn off culture (e.g. religious talk, judgmentalism, narrow thinking, irrelevant sermons, unappealing music, etc.). There is danger, however, in being naïve about assimilation. All too often, the church begins to accept the habits and assumptions of the world. The kingdom of heaven begins to appear little different than the kingdom of man.

Though not true in every case, those seeking to assimilate and accommodate end up imitating. The church begins worshipping many of culture’s idols—achievement, success, wealth, and self. When we swim in its currents, we tend to get caught in the rip, seduced by the same ungodliness.

The Posture of Domination

A growing number of pastors believe this is our cultural moment—to join with the structures of power and turn the tide. This is driven by the conviction the church is called to be in the world and over the world. It is time to aim to be triumphant in both the great commission and the cultural commission. God needs to be “re-enshrined” in the secular order, and a society once Christian needs to be restored.

Books like Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory report that roughly two-thirds of white evangelicals currently embrace this posture. This aligns with the Scriptural mandate that we mediate God’s rule—subdue, rule the earth, and advance his kingdom. It stands with Jesus who came to “plunder the strong man’s house” (Matt. 12:22-29).

Throughout history, Christians have taken this posture and exercised comprehensive cultural control. In the Fourth Century, the church shifted from a scattered minority with a persecuted status to an official one under Constantine. Church and state joined to bring the world under the kingdom of God.

This pattern has continued in parts of Europe. In the Netherlands, leaders like Abraham Kuyper were committed to forging a distinctively Christian culture. Other advocates include the Puritans of the 18th century, who sought to reform the world through the church. Their hope was to build a city on a hill and a light to the nations.

In the 20th century, theologians like Francis Schaeffer gave a militant defense of America’s founding as a reformation movement, calling America back to its original calling. Many continue to believe our country has been chosen by God for a special mission, a special destiny to redeem the world.

Cultures typically change from the top down, so it makes sense to lay hold of higher offices and gain control of the levers of power. Or does it? History seems to warn that whenever the church attempts to be an arm of government, it is compromised and becomes more secularized. The church becomes imperialistic, every aspect of life becomes politicized, and power does what it does—corrupt.

The Posture of Engagement

“To be Christian,” writes James Davison Hunter, “is to be obliged to engage the world.” This stance counters a posture of disengagement that makes the church irrelevant, a posture of assimilation that compromises the church, and a posture of domination that often abuses and ultimately alienates. These are postures that, in the main, have not worked. There is only one legitimate posture, one that engages, but what does it mean?

1. Engagement Involves Listening

What is the dominant worldview? What are the issues captivating people’s attention? What must we address? In their book, Cultural Engagement, Joshua Chatraw and Karen Swallow Prior identify nine cultural issues that are part of the panoramic landscape of the church’s present engagement: sexuality, gender roles, human life and reproductive technology, immigration and race, creation and creature care, politics, work, arts, and war, weapons, and capital punishment.

1. Engagement Involves Tension

We live between two worlds, one in the present which serves the gods of power, wealth, pleasure—and leads to ungodliness, and one in the future which serves the kingdom of God—and leads to godliness. We are citizens of both, giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God (Matt. 22:21). We are in the world (John 15:19; 17:14-15), yet “strangers” who live alongside (1 Pet. 1:17).

In this tension, we are both for and against. We engage and disengage, align with as well as distance ourselves. It amounts to a dialectic of affirmation and antitheses. We live in this contested space, where we love and identify with our setting, yet we must be willing to critique and challenge. To engage is to be world-affirming as well as world-denying. It requires the courage to challenge laws that contradict God’s laws. We must call people to repent of false loyalties to other gods and choose Jesus as their eternal hope.

1. Engagement Involves Honoring Boundaries

To engage is to immerse ourselves in culture, yet stay within established sacred lines, connecting with culture without compromising divine holiness. If we are called to the halls of power, we exercise power to serve, not coerce. If we are to quote from the world’s poets or refer to its art and entertainment, we steer from that which can corrupt.

1. Engagement Involves Subversion

The work of reaching the world for Christ is often hidden. This was part of Jesus’s mode of engagement. The main tools of subversives are Word and prayer. In explaining his use of parables, Jesus noted that the work of God’s kingdom is mainly underground (Matt 13). His power often amounts to a covert operation. Power resides with the Spirit, whose movements are like the wind, penetrating and unpredictable (John 3).

1. Engagement Involves Creating

To change culture, the church must give itself to both connecting and creating. We are, by divine intent and nature, world-makers. To transform culture is to do things people have never thought of, constructing rather than simply deconstructing.

Conclusion

Our response to our cultural moment has generally been late. The church has been behind the curve in reading, responding to cultural change, slow to respond to those things shaping culture, be it film, technology, leaving all too many to view the church as an irrelevant and outdated institution. James Davison Hunter describes the culture of the church as one that is weak, for it has no coherent collective identity, and it is often divided within itself—often with unabated hostility.

Nonetheless, the church is God’s instrument to advance his kingdom and affect the culture. It is the indwelling of God (1 Cor. 3:16). Filled with the Spirit, it can offer an alternative to that of a dying culture. Because of the divine power that resides within—and because God has broken the sovereignty of history and society—the church can do more than any could ever think or imagine (Eph. 3:20-21). All that is needed are pastors determined to engage.

John E. Johnson is an adjunct professor of Pastoral Theology and Leadership at Western Seminary in Portland, OR. He has served as a lead pastor for thirty five years, and currently is a writer working on his fourth book, as well as serving as an interim teaching pastor.