{"id":12247,"date":"2017-03-08T22:43:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T06:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=12247"},"modified":"2017-03-08T22:43:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T06:43:25","slug":"how-to-relate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/how-to-relate\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Relate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Relationships\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although the presenting topic in this book is, “How to Change the World”, as the title indicates, the title is an ineffective way to approach change in the world, as the author suggests. An appropriate sequel could be entitled, “How to Relate to Our World”. This appears to be the primary theme to our demise in the Christian culture, when we approach individuals and systems with the intent of changing them, verses relating to them. We can see through US history this has had less than the desired effect in creating significant changes, as evidenced through the Crusades and witch hunts to name a few. Yet, how much have we learned to relate effectively to those in our families, neighborhoods, communities, or churches?<\/p>\n

Recently, I was reminded of this when I went to a coffee house with a friend. A gentleman at the counter greeted me with his Scottish accent, which I mistook for an Irish accent and led to a brief explanation of my recent trip to Ireland. This led to a discussion of what he is doing in the USA and details of his work. Between his thick Scottish accent, the noise of the coffee shop, it was challenging to hear him, but his work as a Chemical Engineer just had me nodding and smiling while trying hard not to look like I was using every brain cell to understand him. Miraculously, I understood a vague synopsis of his work just enough to interject something half-way intelligent to keep the conversation going. That or he was just being polite. After we conversed a bit, or rather, I struggled to listen and converse, he surprised me by saying with such sincerity, “Thank you for listening.” It shocked me and I realized he was hungry for community. I knew he would be accepted and connected to in our small church plant, so I invited him. When he heard “church” and whatever loaded message accompanied that word, He smiled politely, nodded, and went back to his book. He didn’t want church. He wanted someone to listen to who he was, and to enter his world. I wanted to explain this was an “intelligent, loving, accepting community where others attended that could better understand him” but he was not interested. Unfortunately, this did not include his idea of church.<\/p>\n

It is grievous to consider the Christian culture as having a significantly low impact and change on the current culture, as Hunter suggests “…but even the most optimistic assessment would leave one to conclude that Christianity in America is not only marginalized as a culture, that it is also a very weak culture. …And thus the idea that American Christianity could influence the larger culture in ways that are healthy and humane is, for the time being, doubtful”(92). Ideally, we would like to consider our religious group to be more significant and influential. This is rather discouraging and disappointing, and yet, a powerful reminder of how we need to work smarter and not harder in bringing people into relationship with us and Christ before we bring them to church. It would be beneficial to discover how to enhance and renew church culture to relate with cultural relevance so as to reflect the charismatic personality of Jesus.<\/p>\n

To change our world, Hunter suggests we create more culture. “If we want to transform culture, what we actually have to do is to get into the midst of the human cultural project and create some new cultural goods that reshape the way people imagine and experience their world..”(28). This was an intriguing concept and reminded me of how much cultural changes with the development of products like: microwaves, home computers, and smart phones. Therefore, developing new products and culturally relevant materials, like our dissertation artifacts, could have the potential to change our Christian culture and beyond. Interweaving policy, culture, and social life and bringing them together for a common vision and purpose is also an inviting technique to produce cultural changes (91). An example of combining other social resources is the Celebrate Recovery programs started through Saddleback Church, that combines psychology principals, the 12 Step program, and spiritual principals to produce a culturally relevant and successful product implemented in churches around the world.<\/p>\n

If we are called to love one another, it appears the hierarchical, elitist way of thinking is in stark contrast to the language of love and collaboration with one another. It appears, putting our efforts into listening, connecting and collaborating lovingly with others would bring the greatest impact on changing our relationships and our culture. Where we earn the right to approach that sacred spiritual space with an individual by loving who they are, instead of telling them who they should become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although the presenting topic in this book is, “How to Change the World”, as the title indicates, the title is an ineffective way to approach change in the world, as the author suggests. An appropriate sequel could be entitled, “How to Relate to Our World”. This appears to be the primary theme to our demise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-12247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hunter","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}