Culture & Christianity: Relevance or Reformation?

Following is an excerpt from a paper I wrote for a class I am taking on the Christian Worldview. Enjoy!

At the heart of Evangelical Christianity is the desire to bring the message of the gospel to our culture and the world, as Jesus instructed in Acts 1:8 “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (New International Version). Many Christian leaders and theologians have attempted to lay out a strategy for accomplishing this directive based on the example of the early church in the book of Acts. One such strategy has been to structure church ministry in a way that is relevant to the culture, such as using contemporary music styles, dressing more casually for church services and using translations of the Bible that are written in a common vernacular. This strategy echoes that of the apostle Paul who said, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (I Corinthians 9:22, NIV).

However, in our desire to be relatable to the culture we must not forget what it is that makes us distinct from the culture. It was the distinctiveness of the early church that led to persecution but also eventually to the reformation of their culture and the transformation of the Roman Empire. If we are truly to follow the example of the early church we must in some ways remain counter-cultural. The issue is that with our focus on being relevant “we have in many areas blindly and unknowingly embraced values and ideas that are common in our culture but are antithetical to the gospel” (Platt, 19). We cannot afford to compromise the truth of the gospel or the core of our Christian beliefs, but neither can we withdraw from society. Rather, as a counter-cultural movement with the love and holiness of God as the foundation, we must influence our culture towards alignment with the truth of Scripture and the Kingdom of God.

Our response to the Gospel, as those who have been “bought at a price” and our responsibility as citizens of the Kingdom of God is to wholeheartedly give ourselves to revealing the character, authority and will of God to a fallen culture. This is how the Kingdom of God will come to earth. Our purpose is to influence and ultimately reform our culture by “spending ourselves for a cause that we firmly believe will win in the end” (Plantinga, 120.) We must not let our Christian worldview be compromised by our culture’s ideologies, but we must passionately be about our Father’s business of revealing himself to the world no matter the personal cost. In doing so “we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus” (Platt, 3). We must never forget that it is the power of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God as revealed in the lives of believers that shows the unbelieving world we are distinct and we have the answers they seek.


Plantinga, Cornelius, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002.

Platt, David, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream. Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 2010.