Frame: Worldview Questions
Story and Precept
While a culture’s narrative is fundamental to its understanding of the world, cultures do not exist on story alone; they also require clear answers to significant questions. We have described story as the foundation of our culture-building, but a foundation implies a superstructure. These worldview answers fit the bill.
As we preachers talk about and practice our craft, we sometimes treat “story” and “precept” as mutually exclusive categories. As in, “are you a precept preacher or are you a storyteller?” But this is a false dichotomy. Jesus taught in parables, but he also made clear and concise declarations such as, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” If we are to take seriously the task of cultural architecture, we need both story and precept.
The story must be told, and it must lead to precept. Precepts must be clear, and they must flow from the story. As we have seen, the key questions that every world view must answer have to do with identity (Who are we?), location (Where are we?), sin (What is wrong?), and redemption (What is the solution?).
Old Answers Restated for Each New Generation
In the broadest sense, the answers a Christian community must offer to these questions have not changed significantly since the earliest days of the church. Our answers must be restated and renewed with each generation, but we would do well to begin at the beginning, and to take our cue from the church that lived a radically new culture in the first century.
As we have seen, N.T. Wright’s analysis portrays a community which saw itself as a new-but-not-new people, heir to the heritage of God’s work among the people of Israel yet composed of the redeemed of all the nations. They saw their location as the world God had created, marred by sin. The problem they saw was rampant paganism and disbelief, a world that had yet to be subject to the reign of God. The solution to the problem was the kingdom of Christ, initiated and realized in Jesus’ death and resurrection, awaiting final completion at his return.
Our contemporary version if these answers will reflect our engagement with our times, but also the heritage of the early church and twenty centuries of Christian history. We might state them something like this:
Who are we? We are the people of God, living between the times, redeemed, called, indwelled by God’s Spirit, sent on mission in the world.
Where are we? We submit to the reign of God, yet we live in a world that does not acknowledge that reign. Our current context might lead us to emphasize that our location is more “diaspora” than “Christendom,” that, like the earliest Christians, we are once again cultural outsiders, representatives of a radically new Kingdom among the kingdoms of the world.
What is the problem? Individuals, families, and society are broken by sin, separated from God, spiritually crippled and destined for a lost eternity.
What is the solution? Christ has provided redemption, and we can proclaim it freely, offering it to a lost world, in anticipation of his final return.
These answers flow naturally from the Christian metanarrative. They are neither new nor innovative. Yet we must build them into our proclamation as the essential framework of our cultural architecture. To continue our metaphor, if story is the foundation of our culture, these world view answers are the supporting structure. Every practical element we might work into our culture-building should be shaped by these fundamental structural understandings.
The Seduction of “Vision”: A Personal Confession
Many years ago, at the age of thirty, I assumed the pastorate of a thriving suburban church. In those days, a high percentage of the latest books about pastoral leadership and church growth had the word “vision” in the title. Almost all of them, drawing from the best thinking and practice in the business world at the time, called for a well-crafted “vision statement” as a guiding principle for the church’s life.
This statement should clearly and memorably state the church’s unique contribution and serve as the chief criterion for the decisions and the direction the church might take. Ideally, it would be posted prominently throughout the church’s facilities. Every member should be able, if asked, to state it from memory. If the preacher was doing a good job as a visionary leader, the vision statement would find its way into most sermons.
Since I wanted to be such a visionary leader, I got right to work defining my new church’s vision statement. We discussed it at length with the staff and key leaders of the church. It made the agenda of the meetings of the church council, the deacons, and other important committees. We ran surveys and focus groups to get the widest possible input. Finally, we unveiled our vision: “We at HBC are called to excellence in ministry to growing families.”
Our vision statement did, indeed, help us to focus our attention and energies. It became a rallying point for the church and helped us make wise and intentional decisions about how we would use our resources. I sometimes struggled, however, with a nagging sense that the vision was too small, that defining a “niche” for our church and calling it our “vision,” was not worthy of the church of Jesus Christ.
Some of my friends in the ministry opted for broader visions, like “We Exist to Worship God and Disciple the World.” At the time, though I admired the greater scope of their visions, I found them too generic. What’s the point of having a vision statement, I thought, if it could be the vision of any church?
Now, three decades later, I recognize a more basic flaw in the entire exercise: we were attempting to answer the cultural questions of our church without reference to the metanarrative of the Gospel:
We defined our identity by that which we believed we could do best.
We defined our location by the felt needs in our community.
We defined the problem as whatever barriers existed to getting people into our church.
We defined the solution as that which we were capable of doing to meet the needs of people, to overcome the barriers, and to attract people to our church.
I include this rather humbling confession because I have a sense that I am not the only one, and because it points to a crucial decision point in the path to culture-building. A community understanding of identity, location, sin, and solution are essential for the culture of a church. The answers to the world view questions should be as internalized and readily discussed as the most well-crafted vision statement. But they must also be theologically and biblically grounded, flowing from God’s story. We are God’s people, subjects of his kingdom, living on mission in a land in rebellion against him. Sin cripples, destroys, divides, alienates. Redemption comes only in Christ.
These truths will fill the minds of every member of a truly missional community. When they do, it will likely be because a preacher has effectively and intentionally planted them there.
Story and worldview form the “patterns of meaning” for our cultural architecture. The “strategies for action” make this meaning visible to the world. Next, we will consider the importance and power of symbols to carry meaning forward in a tangible way.
