i. Why Glenabbey is not a ‘cool’ church

iii. Reacting to our culture ii. Discerning our cultural context

When you come into Glenabbey for the first time, it might strike you as unlike other churches you've visited. For a start, we meet in a converted warehouse; there are no ornate stained glass windows or beautifully polished pews. Secondly, you'll hear music played in a contemporary style and are as likely as not to see videos as part of the service. You may even see moive clips included or even hear 'secular' songs included from time to time (check out some of the photos of our U2 outreach night in April 2008). Why do we do this? Is this just an attempt to try to make us look 'cool' to those who have hang-ups about the traditional church?

That's certainly not the case. Rather it's an attempt to speak into culture, examining the assumptions made about God, human beings and life in the movies we watch, the songs we listen to and the adverstising that bombards us constantly. In Glenabbey, we hold on tightly to the objective truths of the gospel we're seeking to communicate; these never change. On the other hand, the means by which we communicate these truths do change. We believe that there is a biblical mandate on us to communicate the gospel in as accessible way as possible.

This is not to say that we back away from the demands that Christ makes on our lives, watering down what we say to remove all offence. The gospel of Jesus Christ is offensive to those who want to cling on to the control of their own lives - the cross is foolishness to a world that doesn't even acknowledge that it needs saving. But the same Paul who wrote these words to the Corinthian church is the Paul we meet in the book of Acts preaching at cost even to his life, compelling and persuading lost people to come to Christ. And, as we'll see below, at times he did this using reference points from the culture he found himself in.

In this blog, I'll give a very brief outline of a biblical support for this approach.

As some of your own prophets have said...
There are times in the New Testament where Paul used references to his 'contemporary culture' when he was communicating the gosepl, most notably in Acts 17:28, where he quotes ...' For 'In him we live and move and have our being' (likely to be a quote from Epimenides, apparently!) as even some of your own prophets have said 'For we are indeed his offspring.' (a quote from Aratus - but, of course, you already knew that!). Paul goes on to say, 'Being then his offspring...'

Now, did Aratus intend this meaning? Unlikely, but Paul used this source from the local culture - and the nugget of truth buried in it - as a springboard to present the truth of the gospel. In other words, he contextualised his message. The core of the message was the same as the other messages he presented in Acts (i.e. the death & resurrection of Jesus and its significance to Paul's audience), but it was presented in a way that was contextualised into the cultural context. It used material that would have been familiar to his listeners to help make a connection for them to the truth of the gospel.

If we are seeking to be effective in our contextualisation of the gospel into the culture we find ourselves, then making careful and sensitive references to our culture is entirely appropriate. Many preachers do it; why not musicians and worship leaders?

In the next blog, we'll come back to ancient Athens to consider how Paul interacted with Athenian culture and how it shaped the approach that he used with the philosophers in Mars Hill.

Alistair Hamill