2008 Orange Conference
Session 5
Louie Giglio
New Question: Can the church influence culture or lead culture?
- The church is not poised corporately to take the lead in culture.
- A whole new idea – What if we decided together to be the church of Jesus Christ? What if that was our Goal?
- The church that Jesus said He would build…the one that Jesus said that even Hell would not prevail.
- What if we chose to be instead of just do?
- John 1:1-3, 14-?
- It’s an incarnate church – The Message “Jesus put flesh on and moved into the neighborhood” – We are the presence of God in the neighborhood.
- The church is transcendent – We, “the church,” can transcend culture.
- Jesus was before us, He is with us, and He will be after us.
- Relevance is to be in step with, so to strive to be relevant means that we will always be behind someone. Trying to be relevant is tiring because you can never catch up.
- One extreme is to completely avoid being culturally relevant…the other is to be oversaturated with cultural relevance. Relevance may have become the golden calf of the contemporary church. The golden calf of the future/emerging church may be social justice.
- Because of Christ, we transcend culture…I cannot even type the notes for what Louie just said…Wow!
- It doesn’t matter what is going to happen…because Jesus “Will Be…” – We can relate to people even if we do not have a lot in common, because Jesus “Is”
- We have to figure out how to link our lives to Jesus and be more passionate about Jesus than relevance.
- Gospel is simply – The way forward and why – Jesus is our gospel.
- Jesus is our culture! It’s the greatest thing going.
- The Church that is I AM.
- We have to preserve the things that have come before us that have built our foundation, yet we have to continue to change things to move forward.
- There is room for preservation and modernation with the transcending church.
- What’s the story in the midst of our churches? “Wow look at what new stuff we are doing?” or “There feels like there is something timeless that is taking place here.”
- The Transcendent Church:
- #1 Worship that is linked with Justice – Preaching, teaching, communicating,
- #2 Supernatural acts with supernatural stories
- #3 A church that is more about movements than (plus) walls. – Movement is about wind – Wind powers you forward.
- #4 Should be more about the future more than the past. – God is always leaning forward.
- We will never be culturally relevant, but we can be culturally transcendent- and that is the most amazing people around. – Even when the styles change, we will still be in the neighborhood with Power.
- Fall in love with Jesus not cultural relevance!!!