[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: And we are excited to have Matt Cook with us tonight. He's going to be talking with us about engaging our culture faithfully and sensitively and we are excited about him being here. For those who do not know Matt, he's been here before.
He's done, always done a great job. And one of the things that I would say about him that just in my listening and hearing what other people have to say is what speaks to me the most is when our kiddos go off to Freed Hardman and they tell you who some of their favorite instructors are. Matt Cook's name comes up quite frequently and y' all can all pay me for that later when this is over with. But Matt comes to us. He comes to us from Stantonville Congregation, which is outside of Henderson.
He is a professor of Bible Global Missions World Religions at Freed Hardman, again preaches for Stantonville. He's married to Sharla, has two kids, Gabby, who is age 15, and Connor, who is with us here tonight. And we're glad to have him with us. Just just a small note, he and Connor went golfing today and Connor shot an 81, so nobody talked to him the rest of the night.
Just kidding, buddy. We're glad you're here.
He also has two crazy dogs, apparently, so that's that's good. And Matt loves to camp, play golf, visit national parks. He's a native of West Virginia, so get this. Loves to cheer for teams like the Mountaineers, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers, Memphis Grizzlies and the FHU lines we can all agree on. FHU lines. We are happy to have you here with us tonight.
Matt does a great job of communicating and he's just one of our favorites to come and be here with us and excited to have him come and share tonight. Let's bow for prayer and Then I'll turn things over to him.
Father, we thank you again for an opportunity to be together. What a blessing it is to be surrounded by our Christian brothers and sisters tonight, middle of the week, to recharge and to be challenged from your word. Tonight, pray that you'll be with Matt. Help him to do his job well. Help him to bring us a message that will convict us and help us to be more what we need to be. Help us to realize how important it is, the way we engage people around us and how we can be sensitive to their needs, meet people where they are. And I pray that you'll just bless him as he shares this message with us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: So, I don't know, three or four years ago, we were traveling to visit family. Let me tell you a little bit about my family. Like Brandon said, I'm from West Virginia, pretty proud of that. And my wife is from Tennessee. So I came down to Freed Hardeman, married me a Southern girl.
I'm not northern West Virginia. We're kind of right there in the middle. We're normal, not Southern or northern. But my mom is northern. She's from northern Ohio. And so it's always fun when I get to take my Southern wife to be around my Northern family. That's my mom's family in northern Ohio. And three or four years ago, we were at some family event and my wife was sitting around talking to one of my cousins, and all of the second cousins were running around. And, you know, when you're about my age, there's all these second cousins. You don't have a clue who they are, who they belong to, because you just can't keep track of all that. So all these kids are running around, and my wife looked at my cousin and said of two of the cousins, she favors her.
And as soon as she said it, I saw the wheels in my cousin's mind start turning because she didn't know what she meant by she favors her. And so I kind of let it go for a second. And my cousin sat there and she thought and she thought and she said, yeah, they do like to spend time with each other. And I said, stop, stop, stop. Let me translate for you guys what my wife is trying to say to you when she says she favors her is she looks like her. Now, we were only 600 miles away from where we live in West Tennessee in the same American culture, talking to people who grew up in a similar. The same church culture. And yet my wife and my cousin were speaking a different Language.
Isn't it fascinating how our culture determines what we mean by words like these that make perfect sense to us but may make no sense to someone else? As a prime example of this, if we were to go around the room and we'll ask people what you call these things, we'd get a variety of incorrect answers, right?
And we'd get, why not for just fun. How many of you call the items on the screen a Coke?
Okay, there's the wrong answers. All right. How many Soda?
We got some sodas. How many? How many pop people? Any pop? Yes. My people. There you are.
Any others?
I think some people are kind of like, they try to be all smart, eloquent. They're like, I call it a soft drink. So maybe there's a handful of you who call it a soft drink. Whatever. What determines what we call the items on the screen? Culture. Isn't it? Our culture determines that.
I'm about to show you a picture of something. Well, let's think of it this way. If I were to say, what's a pepperoni roll? We might get some different answers about that.
Turns out that a real pepperoni roll looks something like this. It literally looks like a roll. And there's pepperoni inside of this. This was invented in my hometown or just outside my hometown in West Virginia by coal miners in the early 1900s. And these are best when you put sauce and cheese on them.
Now, you may have never seen a pepperoni roll, but it sure has been fun. My parents moved to West Tennessee a few years ago, and it's been fun to educate the people at our church about what a pepperoni roll is, and they love them. Now, what about a chili dog? Right, Everybody, you guys know what chili. You have chili dogs here. So in West Virginia, we have chili dogs, but you know what we put on chili dogs?
Hot dog sauce. Coleslaw, too. There's coleslaw, but you don't put chili on a hot dog. You eat chili, and you put hot dog sauce on a chili dog.
Now here's you say, some of you, I just saw somebody shaking their head at me. Let me tell you why this is the case. Look what's on. You don't want to eat that out of a bowl, do you? That's hot dog sauce. The first time or. My parents, again, moved down to West Virginia. We've got, like, this secret hot dog sauce recipe that's famous, and it's delicious. And so my mom, at some cookout at church, she brought a crock pot, a hot dog sauce. And there were some men in the church who took their bowls and they filled their bowls with hot dog sauce. And we had to say, stop, stop, stop. That's not chili, it's hot dog sauce. Now, that may sound absolutely crazy to you. What determines it's talking about culture, right?
We even have some of these cultural terms when it comes to our religion, don't we? If we were to.
This is not hard to imagine. If you were to maybe have something in the bulletin or on the slides that says there is a gospel meeting at such and such church of Christ 30 minutes away, we want to support them. So we're going to meet at the building Monday night at 6 o' clock and carry one of the vans over there. I said carry. That's very cultural, right?
I didn't grow up saying that. I learned that down here, right? We're going to carry a group of people over to such and such Church of Christ for their gospel meeting.
Many of you, not all, though many of you would know exactly what that is.
There might be some of you, though, if you didn't grow up in a certain culture that many of us grew up in, you wouldn't know what that was.
And it's most certainly the case that many people in this, in your community.
Now, again, I don't know what you do here. I don't think you have gospel meetings here that I know of. We were talking about that earlier. But if you were to put a big sign out front that said, gospel meeting coming up, you're invited. You know, there's some people in this community who would have absolutely no clue what that is, right?
Because words have meaning, don't they?
The word meeting has a meaning, right? And when most people in our culture think of a meeting, this is what they think of, understandably so. And so when you advertise a gospel meeting, maybe they just think, well, we're going to sit around a table, let's just hope there's donuts and coffee. Because that's the only thing that makes a meeting bearable sometimes. Right?
Now, again, that's not to knock gospel meetings. It's just to say there's cultural baggage with some of these words and what we mean by afraid what I understand, a gospel meaning to be may not have very much meaning to people in our community.
Now, all of this gets really challenging when you try to think about how we're gonna share the good news of scripture with the world around us. Maybe you can imagine it like three different islands, right? So imagine this first island to be Me and you.
And this is like our culture and the way we grew up. And we all bring cultural baggage into our church setting, right into sharing our faith. You don't believe me.
Where did I learn how to stand when I'm waiting on the Lord's Supper, which. That's a cultural phrase, too. How do you stand when you do that?
Everybody knows right here.
The real formal guys used to be in the military. They're like, they're going back here. But it's.
Where did that come from?
Well, it's certainly not in Scripture. Right.
That's cultural.
And so I've got my own cultural baggage. And we would like to say, well, my culture matches up perfectly with scripture.
You know how I know that the culture of the Madison Church of Christ does not line up perfectly with the culture of the Bible. I haven't seen anybody greet one another with a holy kiss tonight.
And don't you come up to me and try to greet me with one later either, because I don't want one.
That's culture. Right, we get that.
But then you got my own baggage and personal baggage in my culture. And then there's the culture of scripture.
Now, let's be real clear up front. This is the inspired word of God.
And everything we need to know about God, everything we need to know about following him is found in Scripture.
But we also have to acknowledge that there's some things in here culturally that make it hard for us to sometimes understand and live this out. Let me give you one Example. Example.
In First Peter, Chapter 1, Peter tells his audience to gird up the loins of their minds.
Now, I haven't seen anybody greet one another with a holy kiss here tonight. I've also not seen anybody in Alabama recently girding up their loins.
And Brandon will demonstrate. He's not in here now, right? He'll demonstrate that on Sunday for you. All right, just count. You can tell him there. I lost you for a second.
He'll demonstrate that on Sunday. What's girding up your loins?
Basically, it means get ready for battle. And so he's saying, gird up the loins of your mind. Mentally prepare your minds for battle. And so modern translations like the ESV translate it as prepare your minds for action.
The original language there, gird up the loins of your. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense for us. What is that? That's the culture of Scripture. And then we think about the culture that surrounds us, and we think, okay, somehow I've got to take my own personal experience and cultural baggage, Take the words of scripture that come from its own culture and then share it with the culture that surrounds me. And let's just acknowledge up front that that's really hard sometimes.
And we run into some speed bumps along the way, and we think we're doing a good job sometimes, and then we fail.
And maybe the proof that sometimes we fail at this is the decline of Christianity in our own culture.
Now, I'm not a doomsday kind of guy, but the statistics indicate that Christianity is declining. And maybe part of it at least, is we failed to connect to our culture. And it's depressing sometimes, isn't it, when you look at our culture and see all of the bad stuff that's going on, and we think, how can we ever connect with our culture that's just gone this far away from what seems like the right thing to us?
So how do we bridge these gaps? What's it look like to engage our culture in ways that are faithful to scripture but sensitive to our culture? Now, let me just say this up front, because some of you don't know me, so I want you to know this up front.
The very first thing we have to say is the most important part of this puzzle of engaging culture is we must be faithful to scripture.
That's number one, right? We can't have any conversation without acknowledging that making sure that we teach the truth of scripture is first.
But once we acknowledge, okay, we want to make sure that this word of God is proclaimed to the community around us. How do we do that? In ways that are sensitive, we want to be faithful. How do we do that? In ways that are sensitive to our culture?
You know why this is important?
Let me show you a couple of verses. Why? Let me give you an example. First.
Can you think of a church, a congregation that either you grew up in, your grandparents were members of, Maybe there's some real sentimental value when you think about that church.
And one of two things has happened. Either it has dwindled down to next to nothing, or it has shut its doors.
You know any churches like that?
We all do. Especially if you kind of grew up in the context of churches of Christ. There are some churches that, man, you love the people there, and you've watched slowly over the years as it just declined and declined, and maybe you've even seen it close its doors.
And in many of those cases, there are lots of reasons that can happen, but at least sometimes it's because they refused to sensitively engage the culture around them.
That's why this matters. Listen, the church of Jesus Christ will never die, but local congregations will if they don't learn to engage culture.
Let me give you a couple of reasons why I think this is important. So in First Chronicles, chapter 12, verse 32, this is one of those passages that you might have skipped over if you were reading through your Bible, because it's just a list of tribes. But there's this little nugget in here speaking of the people of Issachar, and it describes them in this way. These were men who had understanding of the times.
They understood what was going on around them.
And then he adds this because they understood what was going on around them, they knew what Israel ought to do.
Isn't that interesting?
Because they understood their culture, they knew what the next steps were that needed to be taken.
Turn your bibles over to 1 Corinthians 9. If you're curious why I would come and talk about a topic like this. If this feels weird to you, let me tell you why. From this passage, I think this is so, so important.
First Corinthians 9 we're gonna pick up in verse 19.
So Paul says this. For though I am free from all, I've made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them. So he's saying, I'm not obligated to do anything that anybody, whatever they want me to do, I'm not obligated to anybody. But he says, I'm free from them, but I've made myself a servant. Here's what he does. Verse 20. To the Jews, I became as a Jew in order to win Jews to those under the law. I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. So he says, to connect with or engage with people from a Jewish background, I'm going to do Jewish things.
I'm going to connect with my own Jewish culture, to connect with people who come from a Jewish background. But then he adds verse 21 to those outside the law.
So Gentiles, non Jewish people, I became as one outside the law. Then he adds this, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ. So he's not saying I'm not living lawlessly. I'm not ignoring what, what God would call me to do. But for those who don't know the old law, I'm not gonna. Not gonna act as if I'm trying to keep the old law in a way that somehow makes any sense, that doesn't make sense to them.
I'm gonna. Gonna live as somebody who's not Jewish. I'm gonna try to engage them where they are.
Why? That I might win those outside the law. Verse 22. Here's his big conclusion. To the weak I became weak that I might win. The weak I have become. Here it is all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.
So he says, the reason I do this is so that people come to know Jesus Christ.
And then watch how he wraps this up. Verse 23. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them and its blessings.
You know why we ought to be talking about how to engage culture for the sake of the gospel, so that more and more people in our culture, in our communities, will come to know the good news about Jesus, the gospel. That's why this matters. Now, some of you may be saying, okay, that's fine, but, like, what do you even mean when you talk about culture? I'm gonna show you a. I don't know, a slide that, like, I might show to my students and then give them a really hard quiz on and make them list these characteristics of a culture. When we talk about culture, we. We're just talking about the way people live, the rules of the game of life. And so we're talking about, like, how do they make things? What's their money look like, their language, what do they view as beautiful?
You ever been in another country and heard their music and thought, boy, that's really strange.
In my culture classes, I try to tell my students, listen, we're not allowed to call anything weird or strange. It's just different, right?
Because I'm a bluegrass fan. Do you think people in other cultures ever hear bluegrass? Think, what is wrong with those hillbillies in America, right?
So what I find to be rather beautiful bluegrass music, other people might find to be. Some of you probably think it's completely weird.
It's what culture is, though. It's what we enjoy to do the way we do things. That's what we're talking about when we talk about culture. Now, some of you may say, okay, that's fine, but is this even biblical?
Or okay, Matt, fine.
Is it biblical to engage culture?
Right after here in First Corinthians 9, if you still have your bibles open there, right after Paul says, hey, I became all things to all people that I might win some, he mentions a couple of sports. Look in verses 24 to 27. Do you not know that in a race, all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we and imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air. So he's got racing and fighting. But I discipline my body and keep it under control as after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. Now we can spend some time talking about what that means. But what's Paul doing in a city, the city of Corinth, that had a kind of a second level Olympics games, not quite the big Olympic games of Greece, but kind of a second level one. These people knew sports.
And so when he tries to describe the way he views the gospel and disciplines himself, what does he use to connect to them? He uses what they know.
And every preacher who's a sports fan is like yes, we're allowed to do sports illustrations because even Paul does it. And some of you are like well you do it a whole lot more than Paul did. So I won't do any more sports illustrations for those of you who don't like that. But what about James?
James, chapter one, verse 14. Remember this? But each person is tempted. He's talking about temptation when he is lured, enticed by his own desire. Those two words respectively are hunting and fishing terms.
What's James do? He uses language that people knew and uses that language to relate their struggles to daily life. Jesus ever. Here's another one from Paul. So Paul in Acts chapter 17, he's on. He's in Athens, on Mars Hill. And near the end of his little sermon, as Luke records it, he says this, yet he God is actually not far from each one of us. 4 and then you'll see quotes in your Bible. In him we live and move and have our being.
Who's Paul quoting from here? Is this like an Old Testament quote?
No, this is a quote. This is way too much info. But it's important to the point. This is a quote from Epimenides of Crete and a poem that he wrote to the God Zeus.
He's quoting from a worship song to Zeus to talk about God.
I mean even for me that's like eh, that's kind of crossed. It's getting pretty close to the line there, isn't it Paul? Why would he do that?
He's using language, in this case poetry that people knew to show them something about the true God. He's engaging culture. Did Jesus ever do that?
Of course he did. Right. Matthew 13. He tells the story all through Matthew 13. He tells his parables. This is the parable of the sower.
Now, you tell the parable of the sower in an average in Huntsville, Alabama, a lot of people, I'm guessing there's some of you who might have some idea. But like most of us, we don't know a whole lot about farming or planting seeds. What was Jesus doing? He was telling a story that made sense to his audience. He was engaging his culture. Or you go to Matthew or Luke chapter 15 and other places. What kind of stories does he tell A story about sheep.
Again, Madison, Alabama. Do we have a bunch? Any sheep experts in here?
Anybody who knows just a little bit about sheep? Probably maybe a handful. This story doesn't make a ton of sense to us. We're just used to it from Scripture. Why does Jesus tell stories about sheep?
I suppose if he was here, he would tell stories today. He would tell stories about rockets or something, or engineers, I don't know. But, like, this is what made sense to people. He's engaging people. The same with fishing. He tells the story of the parable of the net in Matthew, chapter 13. He tells his disciples in Mark, chapter 1 that he's going to make them fishers of men.
What's he doing? What's Paul doing? What's James doing?
They're meeting people. Where? They're engaging culture by using culture to talk to them about the most important things in life.
So is it biblical to engage culture?
Paul seemed to think so. James seemed to think so. Most importantly, Jesus seemed to think so.
So if that's the case, what's it look like to do this?
How can Christians today and churches today engage culture?
For me, at least, it's rather simple. Let me simplify it for you guys in a way that makes sense to me at least. All I mean here is we need to meet people where they are.
We look around us and we see people who don't know Jesus.
To engage culture simply means I'm gonna meet people where they are.
Now, I'm guessing there's some people in here who are naturals at this.
You ever known somebody like that who's just. Man, it doesn't matter who it is. They can talk to anybody. And they just. They're so good at meeting people where they are. I can think of a couple of older men at the church at Stantonville. They wouldn't. You wouldn't necessarily. They're kind of unspoken leaders. They're not, in fact, never up front, never have a microphone. But no matter where I go in McNary County, Tennessee. When people find out I preach at the Stantonville Church of Christ, they will say, do you know so and so or so and so? And there's one guy in particular, never has a microphone, never up front. But everybody in McNary county seems like knows him.
Why is that?
He meets people where they are.
Now, here's what's fascinating. Some of the people who are best at this, individually, like the guys I'm thinking of, and I'd say this to their face, they struggle with this. When churches start thinking about doing this, they're good at doing it kind of one on one. But when we start talking about, okay, as a church, we need to engage culture, they're like, ah, hold up. Now, here's the deal. Maybe you can think. I look at Madison, I think, okay, here's a church that's engaging culture.
But you can think of churches probably that don't necessarily do a good job at this. Or maybe you've come from a church like that, or your grandparents, whatever.
You know that every church does this at some level.
Every church, regardless. You ever walked into a church building, it felt like you were stepping back in time about 40 years. Just when you walk in their lobby, right?
Even those churches are engaging culture at some level. If they are doing anything with the Internet or with a projector, what are they doing? They're adapting to culture.
If they're using a Bible translation that is in English, what are they doing?
They're engaging culture, right?
I look around the room tonight.
Y' all are a pretty sorry, casual bunch, aren't you? Look at how casual you guys are, man.
Shame on even those of you who are, like, kind of frowning at me right now. Look at you. You're casual, too. Where's your suit at?
Why is nobody dressed up?
Culture, right?
Our culture is different. We're just adapting to culture.
Now, again, I've said it already. We've got to be faithful to scripture.
But we also acknowledge that there are ways in which we're gonna do things a little bit differently. That's all we're talking about. We're talking about engaging culture and meeting people where they are. Now, here's the question.
How do we do this? Well, let's start with individuals as individual Christians and who want to follow Paul's example and become all things to all people. How do we do this? Well.
And meet people where they are? Let me just give you a couple of suggestions. Here's the first one.
View your life as a missionary life, okay? Let's just imagine Marshall and Emma. I Love, Marshall and Emma. Let's imagine that. I mean, they came up here and sat on the front row and so they've come here tonight and they've decided, hey, we want to go be full time cross cultural missionaries. I'm joking, guys. But let's just imagine. And so Madison's like, yes, let's send them. Where do you guys want to go? I don't care. Marshall, where do you want to go, Emma?
Scotland. All right, they want to go to Scotland. They have a heart for Scotland. And so the church here is like, all right, now. So we send Marshall and Emma to Scotland.
What do you expect of them when they as they live in Scotland?
Just what do people in Scotland do? I don't know.
Huh?
Eat haggis? If she says so, so they eat haggis. I don't know. It's not like Paris where it's like, what, golf? You're just gonna go play golf now? Here's the problem.
Would you be okay with Marshall and Emma? She may not want to go with them going and just playing golf every day.
If you are paying their salary to live in Scotland, you expect them to do what? To engage with people?
Because we're paying them to do this. These are cross cultural missionaries.
Why are any of us any different?
Why would any of us view our lives any differently than the way we view our full time cross cultural missionaries? Yes, maybe they're doing ministry full time, but shouldn't all of us engage our culture and view people around us in the same way that we expect our missionaries to imagine? I mean, this church is awesome and it's grown so much. Imagine what would happen at the Madison Church of Christ if every single person just here tonight viewed their life as a missionary life.
Man, they couldn't build fast enough for the people that would start showing up here if all of us did this. So it's got to be your life as a missionary number two, be a student of culture.
Now, I know for some of you, you see that word student and you're like, no, thanks, I'm out on the student thing because I'm not doing that anymore. Here's what I mean by this. Sometimes being a student, all it means is you don't have to read anything. You just ask questions.
If you are older and struggle to understand the younger generation.
And grandparents are great at this, right? Sometimes grandparents are better than parents at this. You know how you figure it out? You just ask questions.
So it's. You're trying to figure out the younger generation. Just ask them what's your favorite YouTube channel.
Now they may say something that makes no sense to you. They may be like, dude, perfect. And you're like, dude, what? What is this thing that you're talking about? Or ask them what their favorite video game is.
Do you have to play the game or even care about the. No. But you know what? You ought to care about that young person you're talking about.
And that video game or that YouTube channel matters to them whether you like it or not.
My kids, they're kind of out of the phase now, but they went through the whole Minecraft stage. And Connor, I tried, like I even downloaded Minecraft. I don't get it.
Like, why would you want to play a video game that looks like it's from the 1980s when you got all this really cool stuff now, but nonetheless they love it.
At least I can do is try.
I did, I tried. And glad they're out of that stage now. Right? But all it is is just like, let's be a student of culture, let's ask some questions. And then third, you got to sacrifice because it may mean that you have to have some conversations that you would rather not have because you don't care.
And so what is it that's a sacrifice? Let's acknowledge what it is. It's a sacrifice to talk about things and learn about things and engage with people that are different than you.
And here's the great news. You can do this every time the church gathers in this building.
You can practice here because there are people in this audience that are different from you, that need you to engage with them.
But I know what we'll do. We'll find the people we know and the people that we like. That's what I'm going to do afterwards. I'm going to go talk to people that I see different people. I see you back there, babe. We're going to see people we know and we're going to talk to those people. That's what we do. But can I challenge you tonight to think about engaging people who are a little different than you? And that'll be a little bit of sacrifice.
And consider that practice for what you do outside the walls of this building.
So this is what it looks like to do this as an individual. Just a couple suggestions. What about when churches do this?
How can churches do this better? Now, I hesitate here because we're talking about a growing well known in great congregation, right?
But I'm guessing over time there's been some of you because over time this church, this church looked different now than it did 25 years ago.
Some of you have been around 25 years, haven't you?
And I'm guessing that some of you along the way have been like, I don't know, what are we doing here? Like, why do we keep having to adapt to culture around us? Why can't things be like they were back in fill in the blank?
And so let me tell you why I think this still. These conversations about adapting to culture still have to happen.
In case you didn't catch it earlier, what's number one?
We've got to be faithful to scripture, right?
This is number one. But once we establish that, okay, we're going to follow scripture to look like, why should we engage culture? Let me give you a couple of reasons. A couple reasons we got to talk about this. The church can't stop doing this.
What if a business.
Can you imagine a business in 2025 saying, you know, things sure have changed a lot in the last 10 years? And they have.
I feel sorry for business owners, right? I mean, boys, just so much change. Can you imagine a business saying in 2025, that's it. We are not changing anymore ever again. We're not adapting the culture. We're going to stay exactly the way. We're not changing anything. What's going to happen to that business?
Unless it's just really something incredible, it will die right now, I've said it already. The Church of Jesus Christ will never die. But local congregations may dwindle and may have to close their doors.
They refuse to do this.
Church can't stop doing this. And so the question that church leaders have to ask and members ought to support this question is, how can we be a biblical church in 2025? You know what the problem with that question is?
You gotta ask it again next year and the next year and the next year. And you can't just ask it every 10 years or so. You gotta keep asking it. So could I encourage you, those of you who are not elders or church leaders, to show some compassion and grace to your leaders as they try to continue to do this?
You can't stop this. And it's exhausting. And it's exhausting because you know you're gonna frustrate people along the way.
But you know what happens to any organization that refuses to adapt and engage culture?
So encourage your leaders as they continue to do this, and lift them up and give them some grace as they try to do this. And then last, the American church must view itself as a mission church, just like we ought to view our lives as missionary lives.
Mission churches have a different vibe, don't they?
We have different expectations of them. Right.
What happens to churches that don't view themselves as missionary churches? They eventually die. They don't adapt to culture and they eventually end up. Think about again, as much growth as you've experienced here. How many thousands and thousands of people in a 10 mile radius around this building don't know Jesus Christ?
We gotta be a mission church, don't we now, and here's the deal. We're in Alabama, right? There's more people here and in Tennessee that know Jesus than anywhere else statistically, or know about Jesus at least. But there are still thousands of people who don't. Think about, think about the immigrant population in your community, in your neighborhood even.
And we're not just talking about people who maybe grew up in church. No, we're talking about people who know very, very little about Jesus Christ and live right here in this neighborhood, in this county, in this city.
Imagine the church could do if this church considered itself and thought of itself as a mission church.
Imagine the impact it can make.
So when we say, all right, we ought to engage culture, all we're saying here is we ought to meet people where they are.
You know, the very best example of this is Jesus Christ.
John describes it like this in John chapter 1, verse 14.
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. What is that you want to talk about? Engaging culture and meeting people where they are? It's when God becomes flesh, dwells among us and we have seen his glory. John says, glory as of the only son who from the Father full of grace and truth. Now, we can never engage people quite like Jesus engaged people. But you talk about a perfect example. You want a biblical proof that we ought to think about how to engage people where they are. It's Jesus Christ coming in the flesh and engaging us where we are and speaking our language and eating our food and experiencing our emotions and feeling our pain.
An incredible perfect example of what it looks like to engage culture and to meet people where they are.
Now I think about maybe another example of this.
I can't help but think of McDonald's.
Alright, for those of you who've been around For a while, McDonald's changed over the past. What are we up on now? 70 plus years?
Some of you seen it change drastically.
I think there's something like there's over 40,000 McDonald's restaurants across the world still profitable.
How have they done that? Here's what's amazing about McDonald's and their continued success.
The food isn't that good.
Now. If the kids classes were in here, they'd be like throwing things at me right now, right? Because kids still love me. But we're talking about like, if we're driving down the road and we got like 10 fast food restaurants and we need something quick, McDonald's is near the bottom of my list. Right? Like, it's just not that good. But somehow they continue to be successful. And I'll tell you how they keep adapting to culture.
They keep engaging culture in ways that keep every generation at some level coming back across the globe.
This is the McDonald's in Cusco, Peru. Now it kind of looks like a knockoff McDonald's. Like somebody's like, let's put some stuff on the wall and make it sound. This is a legit McDonald's built inside a building beside, in a plaza, beside a cathedral that's 500 years old. And this building right next to that cathedral is probably 400 years old.
And they've embedded McDonald's in a building that's from a Latin American perspective, pretty old, very old. From an American perspective especially, that's a really old building. Older than any of our ancestors, longer than our ancestors have been here. This is long, long time ago, right?
And they've embedded McDonald's kind of perfectly in there. And you go in there, there's all these Peruvian decorations and Incan decorations. And it's a tourist trap to get tourists to go in there and spend their money. What have they done?
They've adapted the cult. They're engaging culture just by the way they've put this McDonald's in a 500-year-old Plaza, Peru.
Now, here's the deal.
McDonald's has done this successfully with below average food.
We have the bread of life.
It's perfect and it's unchanging and it's life giving and hope bringing.
The least we can do is think critically and prayerfully about how we can present this life changing good news of Jesus Christ, the bread of Life, in ways that meet people where they are, in ways that are fresh and relevant. Biblical. Yes.
But sensitive to culture. Absolutely. And imagine what God would do through us if we got serious about meeting people where they are. Let's pray together.
Father, you've been so, so good to all of us. You've been good to, to this church.
You've been good to us as individual Christians in some way.
You've brought the gospel into our lives in dozens of different ways, surely represented in this room.
Whether that's through growing up in a Christian home or growing up in church or through a grandparent or through a friend or just seeing a church building on the side of the road or vacation Bible school, whatever. Lord, you have been so good to us in the way that you have met us where we are, as you've allowed us to have access to the Gospel, you've given us English translations of the Bible. And so in this moment, God, we thank you and we praise you.
Most of all, we're thankful that you chose to engage us where we are by becoming human flesh.
Thank you for the salvation that we have through Jesus Christ, God. In turn, we ask for your help as we try to share the good news of Jesus, which is always relevant in ways that make sense in our culture. Forgive us, God, when we haven't thought about this carefully or critically or prayerfully.
And God, give us courage to become all things to all people, to meet people where they are in a way that others met us where we were, so that we could come to know you. And God, we pray, as Paul says in First Corinthians 9, that this is all for the sake of the Gospel.
So God, help us to engage culture, help this church to continue to engage culture, help each one of us to live our lives as if we were missionaries and God. We pray that when we do so, you will be glorified and the Gospel will be proclaimed. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
