Aug
18
2011

Living Outside of the Majority Culture

An article by Matt Comments

Last week I wrote briefly about Bill Hybels’ response to Howard Schultz backing out of the Global Leadership Summit. I have had many conversations with different people since that day. Some speaking highly of Hybels’ response, others less so, but I would like to share a few of the reasons why I thought he handled the situation so well:

Bill’s message was incredibly gracious. Rather than yanking Schultz’s books off of the sales tables, he encouraged everyone to buy a copy. Not only did he encourage us to buy a book, he told us how great it was, how much it had impacted him, and how grateful he was to read it four (four!) times.
This was not made into a political issue. In many streams of the church there would be calls at the next national gathering for a boycott of Starbucks and possibly even coffee. Rather than talking about radical agendas or the “others” trying to control the church, Hybels’ affirmed that a difficult business decision was made… and nothing more.
An attempt at reconciliation was made. Rather than laughing off the fact that an online petition with just over seven hundred signatures forced Schultz to cancel a speaking gig in in front of one hundred fifty thousand people, the WCA leadership team actively sought out the creators of the petition in an attempt to sit down with them (at a Starbucks?) in an attempt to better understand one another.
There was no attempt to “righteously attack” the opposition. In many similar situations church leaders will lead with the evils of the other side, and how immoral, ungodly, and outright despicable they are. This was not the case here. Willow Creek’s views were stated unapologetically, without inflammatory language. As a bonus, Hybels called unmarried followers of Christ to live a pure life as well.

As I have spoken with others since that day, the only push back that I have heard about the response has been in regards to the rights of Christians in America. The conversation generally goes something like this “my only problem is that it seems like more and more the power of a few people are determining what the church can and can’t do in this country… next thing you know, the Bible will be outlawed… this is persecution.” While I don’t know that the Bible will be outlawed any time soon, to some degree I do understand the sentiment… but I think we need to get over it.

Recently I have been reading Peter Rollins’ book The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales as a change of pace. Rollins’ book is a series of parables that are designed to make you stop and think… many times rethinking what you were pretty convinced that you knew for certain. Earlier this week I read Rollin’s reworking of the Sermon on the Mount… and it has shaken me up. While I think that we all “know” that the people sitting at the feet of Jesus were often the poor and downtrodden, I think it is easy to lose sight of just what that means. I, like many of my readers, really have no concept of what it is to be destitute. I have no idea of what oppression or persecution feel like. Being a white Christian man in the United States, I have lived my life in the relative luxury of being in the majority culture… and have enjoyed it greatly.

Being a part of the majority culture is a pretty sweet deal. We get used to such luxuries as the right of free speech and association. It is ok for us to be offended when someone impedes on our rights, or acts in a manner that is not acceptable to the majority. For the last 235 years, give or take a year or two, Christians have been a part of the majority culture in the United States. I have a feeling that this might be changing. As our society continues to ignore the church, and we become a more secular culture, the church is faced with two choices: we can start fighting against the tide of popular culture to assert our rights (sort of like the post office), or we can approach the culture with humility, seeking to preserve our voice in an ongoing relationship. I am reminded of what John Dickson said on day two of the Leadership Summit: “you do not need to win back a Christian nation in order to win a nation for Christ.”

How are YOU preparing YOUR church for the day it is no longer a part of the majority culture?