Pint and Pipe Thursdays

Yes…I know today is Wednesday.

Matt Coulter has a great thing going on his blog right now. It is this idea of a bunch of bloggers collaborating around a new topic every Thursday. Here is his explanation of how it works and where the idea came from:

The Inklings was a group of writers from England in the 1930s and 40s that included great authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and roughly a dozen or so other men. This group would meet once a week at a local pub, usually on Thursdays, to discuss philosophy, theology, and literature while enjoying a pint and a pipe together.

If you have a blog, you’ll then have a week to write a blog post – a direct answer with your thoughts, a poem, a story, whatever – and then the next Thursday you can put a link to your post here for everyone to read.

I am all for collaboration when it comes to social media because too often it becomes thousands of individual people selfishly working on getting a larger piece of the pie.

His question for this Thursday is: How should the Church (corporately and as individuals) respond to the culture shift from modernity to postmodernity?

—

My response should probably come in the form of a book instead of a blog post, but this will have to suffice for now.

Often our first reaction to changes in culture is to disengage. We are all creatures of habit and comfort and we prefer the way things are. So when things turn into something different than what we’ve known we are unsure of how to engage and in the process we disengage.

This is never the right way for Christians to engage with culture. Being “in” the culture means a lot more than simply being alive.

As our culture changes it often means that God is doing a new thing in order to reach that culture. And too often the old guard turns a cold shoulder to this new thing God is doing. It would be far too humbling to admit their way isn’t working anymore.

We don’t need to embrace the changes in culture but we do need to embrace the new thing God is doing to reach the culture. It is that distinct difference far too many people miss.

It is no wonder the church is no longer leading change in our culture.

(Hope you’ll join in the discussion of Pint and Pipe this week.)