The Ten Commandments of Culture (and how they can influence your church)

We just celebrated the Fourth of July a few days ago. Along with the food and festivities, many of us witnessed fireworks displays that left us awestruck. But in celebrating our nation’s birth, it is good to pause and reflect on the effect of American culture on churches.

Like the church, American culture has its doctrines too – teachings which shape the thinking of its inhabitants. It does not take a sociologist or historian to discern what these doctrines are. A simple environmental scan reveals them. We are bombarded daily by what I call “The Ten Commandments of Culture.” What are these dogmas and how might they influence your ministry? Consider the following decalogue that may have not been on the heart of our Founding Fathers, but certainly has come to mark our culture in recent years:

1. You shall politicize every problem.
2. You shall foster division over every decision.
3. You shall find fault with authority figures.
4. You shall pursue prosperity and ignore spiritual paucity.
5. You shall not consider history, neither shall you learn from it.
6. You shall tear at the social fabric with the claws of self-centeredness.
7. You shall hold that moral absolutes are not absolute.
8. You shall eviscerate those who do not hold your views.
9. You shall fill your mind with media and distract yourself with entertainment.
10. You shall seek your well-being over the welfare of others.

We should not be surprised at these dictates of modern culture. We see many of them anticipated in the Bible: “In the last days, “People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:2-4).

The culture exerts a powerful, unseen, influence on Christ’s Bride. As we were called to be “salt”, it should be the other way around. As bodies of believers, we are not above succumbing to these cultural compromises. Why? Because such compromise makes it easier for us to get along with the world!

So how does one know if his or her church, or denomination, has compromised with culture? Here are a few diagnostic questions to pray through:

• To what extent has a spirit of fear caused your church or denomination to remain silent in the face of wrongdoing?
• Has a defensive posture toward the world caused your church to shrink from demonstrating Christ’s love to the lost?
• Has an overdeveloped sense of personal rights reshaped the spirit of your ministry, creating resistance or rebellion against leaders?
• Does your group find itself considering policy or doctrinal changes that previous generations would have rejected?
• Has the spirit of division, embedded in our culture in a myriad of ways, infiltrated your group?
• To what extent has your ministry overlooked “sin in the camp” like our culture tolerates and promotes what the Bible finds offensive?

Jesus longs for us to overcome the challenges of our culture, no matter how difficult that may be. He wrote to the church at Pergamum, “I know where you live, where Satan’s throne is.” Jesus saw Pergamum as Satan’s primary residence! Yet, the Lord still had a few things against the church there. Their collective passivity in the face of evil being one of them (Rev. 2:12-17).

What would Jesus say to our churches in light of current cultural pressures? Certainly, He would commend the qualities in our ministries which enable us to weather the spiritual storm. But in hunkering down, might He have something to say about important things we have lost in the process?

Culture’s influence on the church creeps in unawares. We usually don’t realize its grip on us until we find our ministry’s fruitfulness shrinking or when our church experiences a culture related crisis. We don’t have to get to that point! If ministry leaders proactively seek the Lord about where we may have compromised with culture, do you think Jesus will reveal it? Then, if we address those issues, we move closer to a new anointing on our ministries that impacts our culture rather than the culture impacting us.

Mark Barnard serves with Blessing Point Ministries which helps churches find healing from painful crises. If your ministry is in pain, consider reading Healing the Heart of Your Church by Dr. Kenneth Quick (amazon) or contact us at info@blessingpoint.org.