Renowned guests Tim Keller, Missy Wallace, and Makoto Fujimura discuss the importance of Christians integrating faith with work, engaging in public spaces, and bridging the gap between the church and the world through art. Topics include faithful presence in culture, addressing financial constraints in the workplace, embracing brokenness and beauty, and creating healing church communities.
Engaging Christianity in various sectors is vital for faithful presence in Western culture.
Critique historical Christian cultural strategies and propose a model of faithful presence.
Empower lay believers to integrate gospel insights into their work and bridge the gap with secular culture.
Deep dives
Striving for Faithful Presence in Western Culture
Striving for faithful presence in Western culture entails engaging Christianity in everyday sectors like education, government, economics, and arts. Tim Keller advocates for a faithful presence that mirrors salt and light in the secular West. This approach challenges the inclination to combat or conform to culture, urging Christians to authentically embody their faith in all aspects of life.
Challenges to Engaging Culture
James Hunter critiques historical Christian cultural strategies of defense, domination, and withdrawal as flawed. Instead, he proposes a model of faithful presence, advocating for Christians to engage culture as salt and light without compromising their beliefs. Hunter's approach emphasizes staying true to Christian principles while actively participating in all societal spheres.
Vision for Christian Influence
Leslie Newbingen highlights the evolving relationship between Christianity and culture, from a previously Christian-influenced society to one dominated by non-Christian ideologies. For effective Christian engagement, Newbingen suggests empowering lay believers in every vocation to integrate gospel insights into their daily work, illuminating the public sphere with Christian values.
Culture Care and Missionary Encounter
Makoto Fujimura introduces the concept of culture care as a means to bridge the gap between the church and secular culture, emphasizing the nurturing of beauty and creativity in society. Culture care embodies a nonviolent resistance to cultural wars and encourages Christians to engage with compassion and authenticity across various spheres, using art as a transformative agent.
Embracing Brokenness and Creativity
The practice of Kintsugi, mending broken pottery with gold, symbolizes the beauty and value found in imperfections and wounds. Makoto Fujimura discusses embracing brokenness as a pathway to creating new and more beautiful narratives, aligning with the redemptive work of the gospel. By valuing wounds and scars, individuals can experience healing and transformation through co-creating with God.
Tim Keller explains why Christians living out their faith in vocations and other public spaces is crucial for a missionary encounter. Missy Wallace casts a vision for viewing our jobs as one of the primary venues for putting our faith into practice. Artist Makoto Fujimura invites us to see artists as bridgebuilders between the church and the world.
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