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Making progress through Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, which is proving to be a fantastic read.

Reading some authors is like scanning a blank wall with occasional windows. Reading Crouch is like walking through a fully furnished downtown loft with picture windows that open on the Missouri River and urban arts district (showing my KC bias there). Point is, Andy Crouch can flat out write.

Culture Making is not that book you “read for content.” Some authors make the occasional good point. A few authors do it with personality. And a mere handful write with consistent insight, voice, and artistry. Crouch is in that minuscule group, and the fact that he’s writing about cultures, creativity, and the arts makes it extraordinarily appropriate.

OK, I’ll stop raving. Here’s a piece from chapter 2:

The fact that I can give you a fairly complete description of the Gryphon Cafe depends on its participation in a broader culture, one that includes coffee shops, ponytails, realtors and bourgeois bohemians. But the culture of the Gryphon Cafe—the things it makes of the world, the horizons of possibility it creates within its walls, the new culture that its denizens make in response—is not exactly like any other coffee shop. The Gryphon Cafe is not just making something of the vast world of coffee or the current boom in “third places” all over America fueld by Starbucks; it is also making something of the lovely building it inhabits at the corner of Wayne and Lancaster Avenues, of local artists who hand their work on its walls, of the availability of artfully scruffy twenty-somethings who somehow can afford to live in an affluent community on barista’s wages.

Great book, and very helpful in exegeting an urban context like Kansas City.

I first encountered Andy Crouch via a blurb he wrote in David Kinnaman’s UnChristian (review). Even in a page and a half, Crouch established himself as a thinker with a unique perspective and strong voice, and grabbed my attention as a top contributing author. Now I’m holding his first full-length book in my hands: Culture Making.

Here’s what esteemed author/pastor/theologian Tim Keller has to say about this volume:

“Culture Making is on of the few books taking the discussion about Christianity and cultre to a new level. It is a rare mix of the theoretical and the practical, its definitions are nuanced but not abstract, and it strikes all kinds of fine balances. I highly recommend it.”

Gotta admit I’m pumped. Andy Crouch also blogs.

In Water from a Deep Well, Gerald Sittser makes the following suggestion:

Never before has the church had such opportunities for influence. The biggest problem it faces is its own complacency and worldliness. Here church leaders must take charge, not by doing more but by doing less. They must surrender all desire for political, economic, social and cultural influence in larger society to devote their energies to enabling the church to become a community of belonging. Church leaders are called to serve the church; the church in turn is called to serve the world. (emphasis mine)

I agree with the main drift of Sittser’s thought here. Leaders in today’s churches will usually be better served by slowing down to speed up, cutting programs and expenditures in order to do a few things well. In the sentence I italicized, I don’t think many people would question Sittzer’s first two entries–political and economic influence. In fact, decrying Christian Republicanism (equating Christianity with Conservative values) and Corporate Christianity (running the church for profit, like a business, with the lead pastor as CEO) is commonplace these days, and rightly so.

However, there’s currently a groundswell of interest in the church exerting cultural and social influence. Consider the social/cultural agendas of guys like Donald Miller and Shane Claiborne, the popularity of Relevant Magazine (and various similar publications), and books like Andy Crouch’s Culture Making. Renewing culture and transforming society are rallying cries in many circles right now–and I’m usually one of the guys yelling.

I think the church does have a mandate to live in such a way that there’s an outward ripple effect. But Sittser’s comment, which I hope he elaborates on, does make me pause. Twenty years from now, will people be shaking their heads at the way the Western church became obsessed with becoming new monastics and finger painters for Jesus? Kind of like the way we shake our heads now at the way an earlier generation became obsessed with politics and successful business models?

We need to remember that whatever effects an honest Christian life has on the surrounding people and culture, our primary job is spiritual transformation. Love and service are the hallmarks of Christian community. To the extent that that job description is embraced, new artistry and social justice will emerge. Jesus changes lives and heals sinners before he transforms society and stirs creative juices.

An anemic artistic subculture and the lack of involvement in social causes are signs of a deficient church. But the New Testament doesn’t equate vibrant Christianity with a Web 2.0 Renaissance or New Urbanism. We have to be careful not to make secondary effects like Art and Activism the primary goal.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?