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The biggest risk for a church comes when it begins to exist for itself and only celebrates or recognizes cultural activities that serve its immediate tangible mission. I hope churches would dare to celebrate the cultivating and creating of their members that isn't under the church's banner, but is nevertheless deeply Christian participation in the culture around them that is shaped by life in worship, study, and prayer together.

Churches sometimes fail partly because church leaders are measured by their ability to motivate people to volunteer and contribute at their church. We've done a better job of celebrating people who teach really well in Sunday school than people who teach really well in the public school.

In their book Church on Sunday, Work on Monday Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan tell the story of the woman who litigated the clean up of the terribly polluted Boston Harbor for the Environmental Protection Association—one of the major environmental breakthroughs of the twenty-first century. She was a member of an evangelical church, and the only time she was ever recognized from the front of this church was the year that she taught second grade Sunday school. Obviously we should celebrate our Sunday school teachers, but when one of our members acting out of vocation leads in such a tremendous restoration of God's creation, why wouldn't we celebrate that, too? And if our churches celebrated that more there would be a less of a sense of saying "yes" to the one, "no" to the other.

Celebrating what people are doing out beyond church walls feels like a risk for pastors, but I think that fear is unfounded.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Crouch discusses responses to cultural artifacts in "Creating Culture," an excerpt from his book.

Culture Making is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

David Neff wrote more about Crouch's views on Christianity and culture in September's "Inside CT".

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September 2008, Vol. 52, No. 9