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My New Mantra

Feb 11, 2004 Print This Post

I am reading a book Leonard Sweet wrote in 1987 called Quantum Spirituality. You can get it as a pdf off of his website. I am only on the first page, but I have already been struck by two quotes:

“We must live the historical moment we are in without letting that moment explain us. Christianity must bring to every culture an indigenous faith that is true to its heritage without Christianity�s becoming a culture faith. ”

AND

“The missionary expansion of the gospel today is as much generational and chronological as it is geographical. In the same way Jesus entered into the culture of his day in complex ways; in the same way Paul in front of Areopagus presented the gospel to the Athenians by quoting two of their own poets (Epimenides and Aratus of Crete): so the church is to be a dialoguing fellow traveler with culture, exhibiting a critical but not unfriendly relationship to history. The body of Christ must be in conversation with the body of knowledge of every day. Out of context, divorced from indigenous space and time, spirituality is but another word for a sauna.”

This, is hitting me as one of the best descriptions of our job as Christians and churches (yes, I said churches…because that is the vehicle God has ordained to reach the world…that is a soapbox for another day).

Here is my new mantra, based on these quotes:

I will be a Christ-follower who lives the historical moment I am in without letting that moment explain me.

I will be a dialoguing fellow traveler with culture, exhibiting a critical but not unfriendly relationship to history.