We are continuing our meetings with key influencers in the Christian Music industry. A year ago, we met for the first time, thinking through how we might influence our workplace with a more intentional purpose. That means in our business lives as well as our personal lives. We met for the first time not knowing exactly how to go about it, but we decided it was worth the time to be together and explore the subject. We know we need the connection with each other on a personal level, but we also know we need to collaborate with purpose about our business and we recently got some of that work up on a website here for you to see.
In our second meeting this past September 28, we included two pastors in the group, Bobby Cruz from Miami and Jay Strother from Spring Hill, TN. Both of these men brought us insights on community, leadership and living our lives with purpose. One of the sources we reviewed was the podcast, This Cultural Moment. The authors, Mark Sayers of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia and John Mark Comer of Bridgetown Church in Portland, OR covered what it means to live in a “post-Christian culture”, which nobody had ever really explained to me. Briefly speaking, the post-Christian world “wants the kingdom without the King”, meaning, they love the changes Christ brought to the world (like loving your neighbor, caring for the sick, treating people with justice and dignity, etc.) but they deny that the Source comes from our Heavenly Father.
In this podcast, we discovered some interesting things about ourselves. If you haven’t put your finger on it, there were two very big developments over the past 20 years that have changed the cultural playing field: first, digital capitalism in the form of the internet was invented. Everything that used to cost a lot of money is now done for pennies when it used to cost dollars. Think about entertainment. Movies that used to cost millions now are done for thousands of dollars. Music that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is now done in teenagers bedrooms and self-distributed online. The second huge development has been the rise of expressive individualism. No longer is our news synthesized into one national format. No longer do we have a unified view of our country or the way it should be governed. No longer are we silent. We have direct “consumer to consumer” platforms that allow all forms of speech and thought to be expressed by each and every person who participates, real time, 24/7.
The rise of these two developments have resulted in our colonization. We were overtaken by these massive developments in society. The “post-Christian effect” therefore means:
You can and will get pulled into the gravitational pull of the Post-Christian Cultural Moment
When you lose the war, relevance is not enough. It’s still good to strive for, but it’s not enough when you have been colonized.
The hardest part for me was to realize that we lost the culture war. I was like the Japanese soldier they found years after WW II ended who didn’t know it was over.
In the face of being “colonized” and dealing with these powerful social forces, it makes us in the Christian music industry ask the question: how do we keep our relevance? How do we live in this society and share Jesus without being dismissed?
Answer: We have to rethink what it means to be relevant.
The disciplines are now nearly gone that were central to our formation of faith. Here, we find an amazing opportunity for Christian music!
We have to form people “back to discipleship”! We almost have to re-introduced them to the basics: loving God, reading the Bible, Prayer, Fellowship (the early church).
These are extremely important subjects for leaders in the Christian music industry to understand and act upon. Now, here’s a question: Think about your world…If there was one thing you could change about your organization, what would that be? Are you dealing with a question that is big and you don’t know how to answer it? Are you trying to be a light or apply more salt to your culture where you live?
We help people with their Roar. The Briner Institute may be able to do a workshop like this with your organization. It’s one of the ways we pay our bills and keep up with cultural change. If you would like to know more, just drop me a line at my email address Barry@BrinerInstitute.org.
Stay tuned for more!
Barry Landis
Executive Director/ The Briner Institute