I grew up in a faith world that seemed to resent and at times even fear culture. We cried out against music, movies, cards, TV, and styles ranging in hair, dress, and other adornments of makeup and jewelry. My faith neighbors took it even further, pushing against Christmas, Easter, and the biggie - Halloween.
For the past few weeks, we have devoted words and our “One Minute Messages” to the Laws of Leverage, showing that leverage is how we discover the power beyond our strength. Let’s face it, we all face issues that our own strength is insufficient to move us past. We all need from time to time (I feel like all the time for me) a power that is beyond our strength. This is what leverage provides.
We have pointed to 5 leverage points for every leader:
We Leverage What We Have
We Leverage What We Know
We Leverage Who We Know
We Leverage Our Obstacles/Opportunities
And today, we Leverage Our Culture.
Culture is the summation of the world around us, its values, beliefs, and actions. Combine these three ingredients, and you have culture. Politics, religion, education, family, ethnicity, country, and geography all add to the creation of culture.
Last October 31, a group of about 50 of my friends gathered to provide candy and treats to families and kids. In a part of my faith heritage culture, people often spoke of the evil of Halloween, saying that a “Good Christian” should stay home and not answer the door. If you do answer the door, provide a healthy snack and a “Gospel Tract.” This strategy was also known as the “get your house egged strategy,” but I digress.
As an adult, I decided to get as much candy as I can, give as much as I can and make sure that every person who comes to my house that night would feel as if they were special. Why the shift? I am leveraging my culture to offer grace to people. These 50 or so people handed out hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of candy, greeted families, loved on kids, and did so in the name of a culture redeeming Jesus.
Leveraging your culture might mean bringing grace and truth to celebrations whose origin you might not agree with. Leveraging your culture might mean showing grace to people who are sure you would judge them if they showed up at your church. Leveraging your culture might mean using music that sounds like your culture. Leveraging your culture might mean using tools that look like the world around us to communicate grace and truth.
Let me finish with two thoughts. First, there are many things in our culture we should not embrace, but you can leverage them without embracing them. Often cultures are created and adopted as an expression of our need for God but seeking to meet that need with our own means. Leveraging culture means we must be students of our culture and dig to find the need that created it. There is a 100% chance, that need is the doorway to the good news of Jesus entering the heart and mind of a person.
Second, Jesus is the Redeemer. We celebrate Easter, Christmas, Birthdays, all of which find their roots in pagan holidays. Still, somewhere along the way, our Redeemer, through his people, redeemed the holiday, and people have been able, in every country of the world, to celebrate or reflect upon the resurrection, the birth, and the image of God within us.
Joseph was sold into slavery, imprisoned, forgotten, falsely accused, and God used these awful moments and events in his life to rescue a people. “What you meant for evil, God meant for good.” This is a primary guiding principle for leveraging culture, to take what is meant for evil and use it for good. That is all.