CULTURAL ARCHITECT

[STEPHEN L DUNN]

Wayne Cordeiro and Robert Lewis. along with Warren Bird have written an excellent book called Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series). In it they speak of the pastor
(or lead pastor) as the chief “cultural architect” of a church. The
concept reminds me of several deep truths about the church, but
particularly the church that seeks to be a “bridge to the Bridge (Jesus
Christ).


1.Every church has a culture.

2. Our culture naturally shapes the way we live.

3. If we don’t shape our culture, our culture shapes us.

Most of the churches in existence today were born into a culture where
the institutional church had a significant place at the table. There was
a certain synchronicity between the values of the general American
culture and the values of the church. The church had a fairly simple
task to make disciples because the culture provided a certain amount of
elemental support to the mission of the church.

Culture has a powerful shaping influence. Despite the presence of the
church at the table, our culture has developed a strong consumer mindset
rather than a servant one. A consumer mentality seeks first and
foremost to meet the felt needs of the consumer.

Religious satisfaction (read, religion that meets my felt needs) was
often the first order of business for most churches and most church
people. That tended to give churches a strong inward focus, rather than
an outward one because the incentive to meet the needs of the already
persuaded often used up most of the resources, leaving little for
persuading others to become reconciled to God. The prevailing culture
(which was less and less influenced by the church) made most Christians
at the end of the 20th century more consumers of religious services than
servants of the mission of Christ.

Bridgebuilding requires first a culture that values bridgebuilding.
That means a church must intentionally be structured around a mission
to reach and reconcile lost people to God. It must be a culture that
sees itself as missionary in nature and to intentionally imbed the
values needed to be on a mission from God.

That begins with the pastor–the person responsible for equipping the
saints to do the work of the ministry. That also means that the pastor
must be committed to the missionary nature of the church. That, of
course, means that the pastor must be intentional about helping shaping
the lives under his care with the values of Christ.

Those values come the Word, from scripture. Part of the reason the
church has been so often been shaped by the culture is that the values
of the church were more religiously cultural than biblical. The
cultural architect must first start with the blueprint of his Architect
(the real Chief Cultural Architect) lest he try to design the unique
expression that is his congregation that is disconnected from the power
and blessing of God.

And the cultural architect must be sure that he is being shaped by his
Architect. That means that the cultural architect (pastor) must himself
first be led by the Spirit so he can do his part in shaping a culture (a
church) that is led by the Spirit.

This post originally appeared on one of my blogs THE OUTWARD FOCUSED CHURCH

[James Nored]

Stephen, you say: "Bridgebuilding requires first a culture that values bridgebuilding. That means a church must intentionally be structured around a mission to reach and reconcile lost people to God. It must be a culture that sees itself as missionary in nature and to intentionally imbed the values needed to be on a mission from God."

This intentional structuring around mission is desperately needed, and yet, it so rarely occurs. A church culture is the unseen hand that guides so much of what happens. It is why some things get emphasized, ignored, or met with lukewarmness. And for a newcomer to a church, it may take years to figure out the culture and why it exists.

This is one of the reasons why church planting is so exciting for so many missional people, for there is an opportunity to shape the culture and have the powerful, unseen hand be a culture of mission, shaped by God.

Thanks for sharing!