MESSAGE FROM JIMMY…
“Greater Things Are Coming”
You are familiar with the concept of “culture shock,” right? I experience a surge of culture shock every time I travel to a different country. It hits me as soon as I step off the plane. I can’t understand the signs anymore. I don’t speak the language. The people all look different. The music playing through the speaker system is confusing. And the customs people make you feel like an “alien.” This culture shock hit me all over again when our mission team visited Nicaragua last month.
Study.com defines culture this way: “culture is a system of learned and shared beliefs, language, norms, values, and symbols that groups use to identify themselves and provide a framework within which to live and work.” Culture is the look, feel, shared values, attitude, and behaviors that are shared by a group of people. Coffee shops have a certain culture or vibe to them. Starbucks is different from Cups. Retail stores all have a unique culture, too. Walking into a Lululemon store feels different from walking into Revel Ace Hardware. They appeal to people with different interests, lifestyles, and ages.
Here is where culture shock comes into play. One Sunday while in college I decided to visit a new church that I saw advertised in our school newspaper. It was a new United Methodist church plant in a part of town that wasn’t familiar to me. I decided to go because I wanted to see a church plant in action. The moment I drove up, I felt out of place. It was basically in a clubhouse at a country club in a very wealthy part of Tulsa, OK. There were sports cars and luxury cars filling the parking lot, and here I was in my blue Geo Metro. I walked in anyway and found a seat. I sat through the worship service, and it was okay, but nothing really stood out to me, except that the room was full of shall we say “non-college-aged people.” They probably had grandkids in college. The service ended, and I left. Not a single person at the “church” spoke to me at any point that day. I never attended there again. It was a huge culture shock to a young college kid from Houlka, MS, expecting to discover something as “new” and “exciting” as a church plant. The culture of that church didn’t meet my expectations, and it felt “out of wack.”
I am telling you this because people experience this sort of thing in church all the time. We say we have good news to share. We say we are a loving place and care about everybody. We say we believe in the teachings of Jesus. We even put things like hearts and open doors on our church logos. We invite people to come to church and say, “You’re going to love it here!” We tell people our church is a friendly church. Etc., etc., etc.
Then people believe us, and they show up. When they walk through the doors, they sense something isn’t quite right. Nobody speaks to them. They don’t understand what is going on during the service. People in the pews around them don’t seem happy to be there. If they keep coming back long enough, they may even start to realize that the same stuff going on at their secular workplace is going on inside of the church – gossip, bitter relationships, clicks, politics, etc. When all of these experiences don’t line up with what people have heard and believed about “church,” they experience culture shock.
Now, I don’t want to just paint a negative view of the church and how people experience culture shock. The opposite can be true as well. We can have a negative perception of some place, and when we actually try it out for ourselves, we can be shocked at how amazing it is. For instance, the next Sunday while in college I visited another church that was an old traditional UM church in Tulsa. It was the most “alive” church I had ever attended. It was filled with people that were excited to be there and were excited that I was there. I immediately got involved and stayed a part of that church for 2 years while in college. I was pleasantly “shocked” by the culture of that church.
I hope to see you Sunday as we begin a new series of messages focused on building good church culture that shocks the socks off of people in positive ways.
Jimmy