Culture

It is my experience that the culture of a group of people is far greater than the sum of its parts. Now by culture I don’t mean the group’s level of sophistication. I’m not talking about its art, its combined knowledge, or its cultural anthropology. What I am referring to is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize a community. Thus, a group’s culture is more than the combination of individual personalities in the crowd. It involves their interactions with each other—their relationships. One may have a bond with another, but how is that relationship affected by the introduction of a third, a fourth, and/or a fifth person.
Interestingly, I’ve found that the larger the group, the more likely it becomes that a certain hierarchy will naturally begin to appear. And such a perceived pecking order may be determined by the simplest or the most complex of means. Things as diverse as money, beauty, position, power, and personality may affect one’s place in such an unsanctioned caste system. It is an extraordinary sociological pattern. But it is so much a part of who we are that we seldom notice or acknowledge its occurrence. However, when it is pointed out, we recognize it immediately.
For example, the wealthy get listened to. The beautiful hang together. Smart people get together to talk about smart stuff. While the shy, the plain, and the average give mental and sociological assent to the perceived worth of the perky, the beautiful, and the exceptional. And the higher up the ladder one goes, the more influence he or she wields in the shaping of the future attitudes, values, and practices of the larger group. In other words, the people at the top of the heap have the most influence on the culture.
But what if a culture could be established that would do away with the natural order of things? What if it were possible to begin with everyone in the group at the same level of influence and worth? What if money, beauty, position, power, and personality were no longer forms of measurement? And what if the poor, the plain, the lowly, the weak, and the introvert were valued as equals with them? And what if it were possible to maintain that kind of altruism? What would that look like?
I think it might look like the church that Jesus intended for us to be—without hierarchy, rank, or privilege. It might look like a people who are united despite ethnicity, socio-economic status, or gender. (Galatians 3:28) And that might lend itself to producing a citizenship which embraces everyone, regardless of their status, influence, or behavior.
What would a church be if everyone looked like priests, all with equal access to God? And what if everyone in the community were equal partners in leadership and had an identical empowerment for service? And what if the community’s meeting spaces looked more like real life places than specialty buildings constructed exclusively for the use of “Christians?” But that’s getting away from culture…sort of.
This is the premise upon which Agora was started. It was and is intended to be a foundation of love, mutual respect, and understanding.
We have found that everyone has a story. And that we have no right to judge someone if we don’t know their story. And then once we know their story, we have no need or desire to judge them. This is the power of authentic relationships. True relationship not only brings judgmentalism to an end, it also takes away the power of gossip. Because we are all invested in one another.
When a community shares attitudes, values, goals, and practices, a culture is formed. But if that culture is to be perpetuated, it must faithfully carry out its values and practices, embrace new members, and thoroughly train its progeny. That also sounds like church.
Thus, for the above reasons and some others we will enumerate, I have found that an effective ecclesiology begins with a culture, more than a doctrine.

Not Your Grandpa’s Church

Start a church? Really? Had I ever thought about it? Well, not out loud, but certainly I had dreamed. Maybe a better word is fantasized. However, over the years I had developed quite a stack of concerns about the modern church. Those concerns were magnified in the years I spent teaching ministerial candidates in the study center sponsored by the church. Then layer on top of that all the questions spawned by the tornado and then the subversive stuff Earl had given to me to read.
I knew one thing for sure: Tulsa didn’t need another church. There’s already one on almost every street corner, and another one pops up about every other week or so. They are as numerous and prolific as roaches.
That, despite the fact that the church in Oklahoma and across America hasn’t been growing for dozens of years. We’ve just been passing around the same people among us. Why would I want to build a church out of somebody else’s rejects? People who are disgruntled in one place will still be disgruntled when they show up at your place.
While we’re talking about shuffling people, Tulsa is the biggest of culprits. One preacher has a new revelation and builds up a big following. But then he can’t keep it in his pants, so another “man of the hour” comes along until he gets a wandering eye or an old skeleton knocks on his office door.
And church in Tulsa is big business—big names, big buildings, and big money. The smorgasbord of programs, groups, and activities makes the local churches without a doubt the largest providers of consumer services in the state. Church has become a pay-as-you-go, consumer-driven enterprise where money changes hands in exchange for “services rendered.” And those consumers (called members) have expectations.
And those expectations begin with: church is supposed to be the place where the God-stuff gets done. Where our children and youth are supposed to get discipled so we, their parents, don’t have to do it. Us too, for that matter. Disciple me so I don’t have to do that myself either.
Oh and, we need a place to discover and exercise our “gifts.” Especially the ones that the “world” can’t seem to appreciate. We need a place where we can be suckled and be healed and find meaning and purpose. And if we don’t feel we’re getting our money’s worth, we can move on claiming we weren’t being fed.
After I pondered all of this—all things I had experienced or witnessed—I concluded that if I was nuts enough to go through with it, there would have to be a major paradigm shift. Not just in the thinking but in our whole approach to “doing church.” If we decided to do it, it would not be; it could not be my grandpa’s church.

Business as Usual

We had a ton to be excited about. We had survived the tornado. Our square footage was twice what it had been before the destruction. And in spite of what the “experts” had told us, we were debt free. Plus we had grown from a church of about 450-500 to more than 800 and were still growing. It was heady stuff.
People would ask us, “What is the secret to your success?”
All we could say was, “Okay, you start with a tornado…”
We didn’t have a clue.
Most of you probably don’t know this, but when “preachers” get together—and when they don’t—they talk to and about each other. Sometimes they like to act like they’re happy for your success. (They may be.) But they also ask goofy questions like, “How many you runnin’, Doc?” It’s a question about church attendance, which translated means: “Tell me you’re not doing better than I am!” Followed by the moniker “Doc” which translated means, “You and I both know you don’t have a real doctorate, but in case you earned one when I wasn’t looking I’m sure it’s not the kind that helps people.”
Anyway, when you’ve had explosive growth, humility is important. Especially when you don’t have a clue what caused it. The news of our success was about as welcome to the preacher party as a hooker.
But success is a blessing and a curse. Here’s what we found out. It takes a bunch of effort to meet the expectations of 800 people. And it takes a lot of staff. And it takes a bundle of “ministries” and programs. And, it doesn’t take long to become totally exhausted.
Here’s a little something I’ve discovered. I’ve discovered that when I’m exhausted, I have a tendency to begin to contemplate the cause of my exhaustion. Something like this:
“What in the world am I doing?”
What I was doing was what was expected of me, or so I thought. Was I trying to compete with other churches our size? Was I trying to grow the church through my own effort? Nobody had asked me to do it. I just didn’t know any other way. It seemed it was just “business as usual” in the modern church.
But it wasn’t long before I began to question “business as usual.”
All of the church growth materials we had read instructed us to create vision and mission statements, something we had never done. Now I understand why that is necessary. When you hit the wall, it really helps to know why you’re killing yourself. In other words, when you know your purpose, it puts everything into perspective. I can survive almost anything if my purpose is important enough.
It was not.
In fact, I don’t think I knew what my purpose was. We never got around to writing down, let alone publishing our vision. So, whatever mission I had made up in my own head was not worth this. This wasn’t “mission impossible.” It was mission imperceptible. The best I could figure, our reason for being, my reason for working 6 and 7 days a week was to perpetuate the machine.
That was not enough.