This is one of the more ridiculous articles I’ve ever read. The author thinks that his sweeping statements and click bait article title illuminate something new and profound about the church. Saying things like “Community-specific churches are beautiful. Ethnocentric churches must die” and stories about Michael Phelps don’t mean anything. While something in the church is rotten, don’t misdiagnose the problem. Culture having no place in the church? Are you kidding me? Church is a manifestation of culture. A few random points - Paul? The guy who wrote half (You better check your facts here buddy, he probably wrote around a third, not half) the New Testament? C’mon, he was immersed in a “culture thing”, saying that women shouldn’t speak in the church, accepting slavery in the world, and bringing Hellenistic concepts into the apocalyptic teachings of Jesus. - Also, pet peeve: don’t talk about your grandparents knew less about God than your parents who know less than you do and then quote CS Lewis, who wrote more than a half century ago. He’s not that great. The growth of the Christian church happened by infiltrating the culture. The Christians of 400 CE would be unrecognizable to the early church, and influential Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries were declared heretical soon after the Catholic church established dominance in Europe. Why? Because the subversive culture that the Church possessed in its first few centuries was deemed harmful by the later dominant Catholic church. Does that mean that the Catholic church in the Middle Ages had a culture that should have died? No. The early Christians also had their own culture, and Eastern and Western churches have significant theological differences due to culture. How can we separate culture and church? Do we go back to ‘what the Word says’? Please. All around the world, different people say that the same verse means different things. And what you think it means is just a product of the culture in which you immerse yourself. How can you have the ‘right’ interpretation of the Bible? Billions of people living before and after you will see things differently. The church Samuel promotes is a church permeated with American/Contemporary culture. Don’t use culture as an excuse to say the church is doomed. Now I’m not a champion of Indian culture or our church strength. I think it’s a foregone fact that the Indian church is unsustainable in the West, due to the indifference of Church leaders towards the exodus of the youth, the opaque nature of church teachings, and the inflexibility of older generations. But these are not Indian problems. These are universal problems. The church isn’t failing because it’s Indian. It’s failing because it’s operating on an unsustainable, dare I say, pyramid scheme-esqe model, and it won’t be able to adapt to new CULTURAL norms and standards. But is there anything wrong with that? Communities come and go all the time This one serves the needs of immigrants from India who need a place to belong in a foreign land. For many uncles and aunties, I bet that church is just an subconscious excuse to be a part of something that ties them back home. And to say that is wrong or sinful is crazy. Let the Indian Church serve its purpose, and as long as it has this purpose, it will continue to exist, and after that, it will probably die out. Don’t look at the problems with the Indian Church and point at Indian culture as the problem. Yes, the church has a culture problem, but the Church is not ‘post culture’. Culture is, has been, and ever more will be all churches. Think more critically about the situation. Your youth has no ambition, no desire to get involved. Your parents need the church as a community to feel at home and taking that away won’t solve their problems. Many of you can’t exercise moderation and swing to different extremes, and you’d be hard pressed to find a church to suit your needs then anyway.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 01:04:09 +0000
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