Ken Myers on the State of the Christian Church in America

This is a very rich interview with Ken Myers. It appeared at the "Christian Post" last May. (Thanks to Karl Johnson of the Chesterton House for bringing it to my attention).

For those of you who are unfamiliar with him, Myers was a former NPR reporter who founded Mars Hill Audio, an audio magazine to "assist Christians who desire to move from thoughtless consumption of contemporary culture to a vantage point of thoughtful engagement."? Mars Hill Audio is must listening for thoughtful Christians. (I recently appeared on the journal to discuss Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?).

Myers argues that the church's problem is not American culture, but "the culture of the church." You really need to read the entire interview, but let me tantalize you with a few snippets:

CP: Practically speaking, how has the church been too influenced by the broader culture?

Myers: Here's a small list:

• The way in which the dominant role of technology in our lives promotes the deep assumption that we can fix anything;
• The way in which proliferating mechanisms of convenience erodes the virtues of patience and longsuffering;
• The way in which the elimination of standards of public propriety and manners undermines assumptions about the legitimacy of authority and deference to the communal needs; and
• The way in which the high prestige accorded to entertainers creates the conviction that every valuable experience should be entertaining.

And this is just scratching the surface.

CP: What is greatest opportunity for the church today to truly impact the larger culture ? or should we even be concerned about that?

Myers: Not long ago I interviewed a poet who suggested that he just couldn't imagine early Church leaders sitting around trying to come up with clever ideas about how they might influence Roman culture.

Robert Wilken made a very similar comment in an interview given in 1998 in which he reflected on the early Church's posture toward its cultural surroundings. Wilken pointed out that the principal way in which the early Church leaders sustained cultural influence was by discipling its members, by conveying to them that the call of the Gospel was a call to embrace a new way of life. The Church was less interested in transforming the disorders of the Roman Empire than in building "its own sense of community, and it let these communities be the leaven that would gradually transform culture."

Christians can best serve the health of American culture by striving to be deliberate about and faithful to a way of life that Church historian Robert Wilken has called the "culture of the city of God."

If congregations in America were deeply and creatively committed to nurturing the culture of the city of God in their life together, I think it would have an inexorable effect on the lives of our neighbors. But I fear that too many churches are shaping people to be what Kenda Creasy Dean calls being "Christianish" ? or not deeply Christian at all. The more faithful we are in living out the ramifications of a Christian understanding of all things, the more out-of-synch we will be in American culture. But why should we wish for anything else? What can we offer the world if we are just like the world?

Source: http://www.philipvickersfithian.com/2012/08/ken-myers-on-state-of-christian-church.html

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