“People don’t feel like they have a lot of needs – they don’t feel ‘down and out.’ [So] instead of only focusing on the ‘down and out,’ which can be easy for a lot of churches, how do you start focusing on the ‘up and in’ – those ho have money, who live in the kinds of homes they’ve always dreamed of living win …”
Pastor Tim Keller joined author Gabe Lyons for an exclusive live webcast Thursday afternoon discussing the new opportunities and obstacles that are arising for Christians today in a modern and industrial culture.
No longer under the umbrella of the early church, where faith had once shaped much of the culture and not vice versa, the new generation is witnessing a more multi-dimensional world where different faiths are celebrated, vocational success is rampant, individuality is pushed, and the gospel is becoming increasingly more and more irrelevant.
Both Keller and Lyons, seasoned in their respective fields, proposed their own solutions and perspectives on how to mobilize Christians for the sake of the gospel and approach the church and the world in a fresh way, distinct from the “church of Acts,” or the early church.
“My understanding of how you reach a culture is Christians have to be extremely like the people around them, and yet at the same time extremely unlike them,” Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, proposed. “If Christians are not unlike they won’t challenge the culture, but if they’re not like, they won’t persuade the culture. Now, hitting that middle ground is hard.”
“Before the coming of Christ believers were culturally different,” the Redeemer pastor explained. “Christ comes, and now you can be a Christian in every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. Jesus gets rid of the ceremonial laws and all those things that made Christians culturally strange. In that sense, [now] your neighbor is like you. Whereas the pre-Christian society differentiated themselves through integrity, generosity, and chastity, the new generation demonstrated “an erosion of ethics” and secularization of culture, stated Keller.
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