02-03-2019, 11:29 PM
(01-31-2019, 01:44 PM)Ed Hurst Wrote: Which takes us back to Iain's original push here. Most church leadership want things narrowly defined based on what is nothing more than conforming to one channel in the mainstream culture in the first place. They keep going back to the necessity of being attractive to the world, to draw them in. It's the original compromise made by the Early Church Fathers who ended up in bed with Constantine, who himself remained firmly pagan until his death. Once they took that path of wanting those outside to take them seriously, the mission was gone. That hasn't changed much since then.
What you describe is a reflection of the dominant culture instead of one that distinctly pulls away. There will always be some overlap, if for no other reason than we speak the same language, but what passes for "Christian culture" in the mainstream isn't Christian. It's just a part of what the world is doing already. Jesus and the Apostles made it clear that following Christ always would put us at odds with the mainstream. No matter how far the world seems to bend to accommodate genuine faith, it can never be enough, because Satan has a vested interest in keeping hearts dead. There's always room for us to move farther.
I get that. That's been my general experience as well, in all of what I described. In reality, what I was involved with, with bands, was very "organic": we were just kids who wanted to play music we liked and spread a message. There wasn't a ministry plan except for what we came up with ourselves, no backing or funding from churches really. We came across a few church that really tried to shoehorn in on what we were doing to make it something it wasn't supposed to be. When you're young you can detect that stuff easily.