Off the Beaten Path

"Being a missionary is never easy, but when culture change has taken place in one's own home, it is even more difficult."

So says Ed Stetzer, Director of Research for LifeWay, the Southern Baptist publishing enterprise in Nashville. He should know. For a long time, he worked with the North American Mission Board in church planting, and now, doing research for LifeWay, he is involved in gathering and analyzing information that is helpful to churches with regard to their outreach capability.

"Our job is to reach the lost world and bring greater glory to God," says Stetzer. "Yet, rather than engaging the new cultural change, the most prevalent Christian response is to pretend that there has been no shift. The church continues to function as it always has, protecting its youth in summer camp, keeping its members listening to Christian music and, as a whole, staying away from change. This is the easiest approach, but it is not the way of Christ."

Whether we want to believe it or ignore it, culture change has come to Garden Oaks, and to all of the surrounding neighborhoods where the vast majority of our church members live. Observation gives us a hint, demographic information proves it. Development in the Heights involves either building new homes on lots where existing ones have been torn down, or renovating existing properties. Both of those are expensive propositions, so the population that is attracted to life in a historic district is both affluent, and largely non-traditional when it comes to family life. Several high-rise projects in the area are also increasing the density. North of the 610 Loop, the housing is also changing hands, and since it requires less renovation, it is not quite as costly, but it is still attracting a rather affluent population. What is happening now in Garden Oaks is similar to what has happened in Bellaire and West U over the past thirty years, as the character and appearance of the existing neighborhood leads to some older homes being replaced with larger, newer ones built in the same style. The one common characteristic of the vast majority of people moving in, however, is that they are unchurched, and uninterested.

Traditional approaches to outreach are relatively ineffective. Most of our new neighbors do not search for a new church home when they move in, largely because they are not coming from an old one. So the traffic we get through the door these days is much diminished from what it was several decades ago. Just letting people know we are here no longer serves to attract people to church services or activities. Even in Christian circles, what younger people consider to be "great preaching" is much different from the oratory style of most pastors in the churches, and to an unchurched person, "great preaching" and "great music" have no ability to move them from their Sunday recreational activity to the church pew.

But we're still missionaries.

This can be exiting. Missionaries who go to foreign countries have to prepare for their mission by learning the language, studying the culture, and figuring out ways to present the gospel in such a way that those who speak that language and live in that culture can identify with it, and respond to it. It takes time. So to be missionaries in our own neighborhood, we also need to learn to "speak the language" and study the culture and figure out how to present the gospel so that people can understand it, and respond to it.

We also need to understand that our primary task does not involve changing the culture or judging the culture but rather involves evangelizing it. Life change that needs to take place will be done by God working through his Holy Spirit, and the problem Christians have when we try to get involved in those kinds of things is that we can't separate our own cultural preferences from our faith perspective. Fifty years ago, missionaries tried to re-create the Christian culture of Southern Baptist churches in their work. They translated the Baptist hymnal into whatever language needed, brought in pianos and organs, set up little chapels with rows of benches or pews, pulpits, and tried to imitate what the churches back home did on Sunday morning. It was a monumental failure. But over time, we learned how to translate the gospel message into the culture, and how to effectively worship, do discipleship, minister and do missions in that culture and the results have been phenomenal.

Wouldn't you like to see "phenomenal" results at Garden Oaks?