Is culture-making supplanting the mind of Christ?

In today’s church, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in the role of church leaders to that of being “culture makers.”

From their own statements, they strive to create a culture of compassion, a culture of service, a culture of caring, a culture of …

Many of them are striving to create some well-intentioned “cultures,” but that as a focus could be their problem. Many of them are trying to create a “culture” of following Christ from the outside-in instead of that occurring from a transformation of the person from the inside out.

When you ignore, or de-emphasize discipleship and the work of the Holy Spirit, which is the natural or “organic” means of spiritual growth, the result is you do not have the fruit of the Spirit growing and manifesting itself naturally from followers of Christ. So you’re left with attempting to create an artificial environment — or creating a “culture.”

The Apostle Paul wrote the following:

“When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others. For, ‘Who can know the LORD’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?’ But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ,” 1 Corinthians 2:13-16.

Where there are genuine followers of Christ who “… have the mind of Christ,” you will find Christians who think and act as Christ would. You don’t have to create an external “culture” to simulate authentic biblical Christianity because the Holy Spirit is generating the real thing from the inside out.

Too often, leaders attempt to construct the outward manifestation of following Christ rather than focus on the inside-out approach of life transformation. That’s why many churches haves scores of programs that function as an external effort to do what should come naturally if only more people possessed the “mind of Christ.”

Deeply engrained in secular culture — and taught broadly within the church as well — is the idea that we should do what we want to become (act it out), and eventually reality will catch up with us.

It doesn’t quite work that way in God’s kingdom.

Jesus spoke to this issue rather bluntly:

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy — full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too,” Matthew 23:25-26.

In the church today, we’ve reversed this teaching of Jesus to be “First have a clean looking, appealing cup on the outside [a culture], and some way the inside will become clean, too.” We’re content with acting out some of the external attributes of following Christ without transformation occurring internally.

But imagine what could happen if we reversed that and applied to our lives what scripture actually teaches. Imagine a church where the focus of the “leadership” was that of discipling new believers and equipping them in the Word of God. Imagine a church where every member was moved and motivated by the Holy Spirit in them, who taught them the way of all truth (John 16:13)? Imagine a church where the members lived lives fully expressing the Christ who dwells in them.

Imagine a church where a simulation of following Christ from the outside-in was replaced with an authentic transformation from the inside out.

The church becomes more biblically authentic when we apply ourselves to focused disciplship that enables us to have the mind of Christ rather than creating an external culture to mask our spiritual deficiencies.

Perhaps, then, our “culture” should be that of disciple-making.

Scotty