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Leadership & Life
Faith In The Marketplace Of Ideas
Mal Fletcher
A Lesson For The Church From “The Passion Of The Christ" - Part 3
'People are often more familiar with Christians who live in a cultural bubble… It's not easy for people to adjust to Christians who push the boundaries of creative achievement or expression.'
Mel Gibson's hit movie 'The Passion of the Christ' has certainly raised eyebrows and provoked strong emotions.
Whatever your view of the film, there are some important lessons for the Christian church, not just much from the way the movie was produced, but from the reactions it has provoked.
The first is this: there is a chronic need for the sharing of a Christian worldview in our society.
When people are confronted with the true picture of the crucifixion of Christ, many respond with the question 'why?' Most people in our highly secularised post-modern Western society do not share our perceptions of reality, our worldview.
The movie also reveals the need for a Christian presence in the marketplace of ideas.
The film has caused controversy partly because people are not used to being confronted with Christian truth in the realm of mainstream art and thought.
People are often more familiar with Christians who live in a cultural bubble and church leaders who speak only to the converted. They're more comfortable with a Christianity they think they can dismiss out of hand.
It's not easy for people to adjust to hearing from Christians who push the boundaries of creative achievement or expression.
A new wave of Christian leadership is emerging in all the strata of society today: a cohort that no longer accepts the idea that the church is just a small group operating on the periphery of mainstream culture.
Christians, they believe, are called to be the 'salt of the earth', 'a city on a hill that can't be hidden.'
In a village or small town, the community is self-sufficient. What it can't supply for itself, using the skills, materials and services available within it, it does without or imports once a week on market day.
Today, long an adjunct to the town, the market has swallowed the town whole! People no longer look just within their geographical locale to find services, products and resources. They will use modern media such as the Internet to search an area much wider than their own hometown. People do this to find friendships and interest groups, too.
Instead of the market being part of the town, reliant on the town, the town is part of the market and reliant on the market.
In many areas, the church is prevented from having real influence because it is too local for its own good! It concentrates so much on the 'town' that it misses the marketplace.
Sometimes, we think only in terms of geography when should be targeting spheres of influence.
In Acts 16, Paul took the Jesus message for the first time into Western Europe. What started as a small seed has indeed grown into a huge tree of witness and influence that has re-shaped much of the world.
Paul was a strategic thinker. We know that, yet we often miss one half of his strategy. Paul seems to have had a two-pronged approach in his outreach.
First, Paul targeted cities; urban centres that would give the quickest spread to the gospel and build a church model for surrounding regions.
Thankfully, God is sending into modern cities and mega-cities a growing army of church planters. Once again, we are learning to focus energies on population centres.
However, there was another strand to Paul's strategy. Paul also focussed on spheres of influence, touching on the areas of everyday life that help to shape people's thinking.
Among the Paul's very first converts in Europe were people who would represent major spheres of influence even in today's world (cf Acts 16 and 17).
Lydia was an international trader in valuable goods, a woman of commerce. The jailer at Philippi was more than a prison guard; he was a civil servant, a steward of the legal system, a kind of bureaucrat.
Dionysius was a politician, a member of the city council, and the members of the Aerapogas who met on Mars Hill were philosophers, academics, educators and sponsors of the arts. (We also read that other community leaders were converted in those early days, including wives of leading men and other 'prominent women'.)
Think about it. What are the areas in which Western European thought and practice have most influenced the world since the first century?
Commerce is one. Western values have shaped the world of international trade and are now at the forefront of the process of globalisation.
Another is law and bureaucracy. Western systems of law enforcement and jurisprudence have been the benchmark for justice across much of the world.
Meanwhile, European bureaucratic systems have shaped government practices in many corners of the world, for better or for worse.
Then there's politics. Western liberal democracy has been accepted as a political ideal in much of the developed world. Western - and European - influence can also be seen around the world in the areas of the arts and education.
I believe that, through Paul, God was ensuring that the seeds of the Jesus message were sown into all of the key areas in which the West would later influence world thought and behaviour.
As of the year 2000, there were 45 million Internet servers in the world and 150-200 million people using the Internet every day. The most visited sites on the web today are those that feature so-called 'adult content', especially pornography & gambling.
We need a greater Christian presence on the Internet - it is powerful sphere of influence!
Some experts believe that we are exposed to as many as 1600 commercial messages, in one form or another, every day via the electronic media. In some cases, it could be a lot more.
We need a greater Christian presence in the mainstream electronic and movie media.
Denis Waitley has written that knowledge is the frontier of tomorrow. Peter Drucker, the management expert, says that knowledge has power, controlling access to opportunity and advancement. These days, you don't need money to make money - you need knowledge.
We need a greater Christian presence in the world of education and the development of ideas.
Some of us will never work fulltime on a foreign mission field, but we're duty-bound to send others in our place. In the same way, some of us will not an impact on these spheres of influence, but we should be supporting and resourcing those who are.
© Mal Fletcher 2004
Photos by Philippe Antonello. © 2003 Icon Distribution Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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