Over the course of each of our lives, we have seen changes and shifts in the culture that we are living in and around the world. Whether that be changes in what clothing if fashionable or different terminology changes are being made both big and small. As the Church of Christ, how can we positively impact the culture around us? Studies have shown that you are a combination of the five people you spend the most time with. Therefore, we all need to be aware of the people around us and making sure that they are pushing us closer to God rather than towards earthly desires. While it is important to be around people who will help you grow, God calls us to spread the gospel to those around us. This means unbelievers!! When we interact with unbelievers, we need to be calling out to God for guidance and make the most impact we can through our interactions. Continue reading to learn more about ways churches can impact culture.
When looking at a city of people, we often see all of the wrongdoings and problems that are occurring. It is very easy for us quickly point out the sins of others. This mindset and approach, however, can turn more people away from God rather than towards Him. People do not want to go to a church or be around people who are constantly putting people down and making them feel bad. I believe that we should show God’s love through grace and compassion. This means that we love others. Let’s be real, we all sin. There is nothing we can do about that fact. When we talk with unbelievers, we need to show them that be are not better then them but we are all fallen.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is spreading the gospel to an entire city. Most people have high time preference which means that they prefer to have something sooner rather than later. With that being said, we want to see the impact of the church in the community as fast as possible. However, it takes time for the impact to show. This can be a problem because sometimes people or churches will stop their work or type of work in a community because they are not seeing the impact. The program might have been working but it just was taking time to catch on and now never will because the church stopped the program.
As we have seen time and time again, a celebrity mention a brand or product and suddenly, that product sells out. The same type of thing can happen in our small town communities. There are going to be people who have a large amount of people that they influence. If churches are able to have an impact on the influencers views, than it will multiply the number of people that will be impacted. This also applies to the church body as a whole. Everyone works with different people or has different social circles. If churches can equip their members to spread God’s love to everyone they come in contact with, it because a lot smaller of a project for the church because their members are spreading the information and it starts a chain reaction.
Ultimately, churches have the ability to make a huge impact on the community that the are in. However, we need to be aware of our words and attitudes when we reach out to others so that we do not accidently turn people away from the church. We need to make sure that we allow adequate time for trying out different programs and not being too quick to jump to cancel it if are not seeing results. The last thing to be aware of is making sure that members are equipped to share God’s love with others because members can help speed up the process of ways churches can impact culture.
My Choice is a pregnancy center that is essentially the Pro-Life alternative to Planned Parenthood.…
Brio Magazine is a Christian magazine for teen girls from middle to high school age.…
Charity: Water is a nonprofit organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to those…
Tegu is a magnetic wooden block that has been around for centuries. However, it took…
One of the most important business methods I learned this semester in my redemptive entrepreneurship…
View Comments
Let me first start off by saying that I really enjoyed reading this blog post. I found it very interesting that you decided to write about this due in part to that this is such a widely discussed topic. The only problem with this specific topic is that people never truly dive deeply into the fact that we as Christians need to be in culture but not of it. We need to find a balance of preaching to the culture and sharing our faith but not giving in and leaving our faith. Something interesting I found about your blog post is how you said in the beginning that we need to surround ourselves with people that won’t lead us into our earthly desires. I feel like that statement is a pill that is hard to swallow for people because most of the time, Christians have friends who aren’t believers and lead us away from the truth. I think it can be very hard to find a balance between only having Christian friends or having friends who aren’t believers or both? Finally, what I also really enjoyed about reading your post was how you included practical ways that churches can impact culture. Great post!