There was a time not so many years ago when I was weary and jaded toward church, but even then, I could have given you a lengthy checklist of what a healthy church should look like.
What I had come to realize, though, was that a checklist doesn’t create belonging. A church could have great preaching, powerful music, top-notch children’s ministry, and an airtight discipleship program and it still not be a true family or a healthy body. For the weary and wary, pristine ministry programming isn’t the answer. Culture is.
Culture, much like belonging, is one of those words that is easier to sense than to define. But here is my best attempt at a definition: culture is the collection of actions, reactions, vocabulary, attitude, and perspective that expresses the norm for a particular group of people.
A checklist doesn’t create belonging.
Basically, culture is how a group of people instinctively, naturally act toward one another and how they interact with outsiders. For a church the implications of this are enormous. If everything in a church’s structure and teaching and programming is rock solid, but the culture is cold or judgmental, it isn’t a welcoming place.
The proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the foundation on which any real church is built. A church cannot be healthy without biblically grounded, gospel-shaped preaching and teaching. But a church can have this kind of preaching and still be unhealthy. As sinners, we have the unfortunate and hurtful ability to be profoundly hypocritical, meaning that we can both proclaim and hear a gospel of grace and still not be shaped by it or share it. When that happens, our church culture actually undermines and contradicts what is preached.
On the other (and better) hand, our church culture can embody the truths of the gospel in a way that brings them to life, creating a different kind of environment and reality than anything that can be found anywhere else.
The kind of culture that offers deep, biblical belonging can only be created by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of individuals and the corporate life of the body. At Immanuel Church, where I serve, we call this “gospel culture” because we are very creative.
A church cannot be healthy without biblically grounded, gospel-shaped preaching and teaching. But a church can have this kind of preaching and still be unhealthy.
This is what the church is for, it’s our purpose. It is enormous and miraculous, but it is also mundane and granular. It is beyond our comprehension, but it is tangible in our day-to-day rhythms, interactions, and priorities. It is difficult to articulate and explain in full, but it is easily recognizable when we find it, and it is a joy to belong to it and contribute to it when we do.
Just as we know a tree by its fruit, so we know this beautiful, profound gospel culture by what it produces.
This article is a short extract from Belong by Barnabas Piper. How is a 'gospel culture' developed? What other elements of church life are essential for your church being a place of belonging? Read the book to learn more, and use the free small group kit to dig deeper into this topic with your church.
Barnabas Piper is on staff at Immanuel Nashville. He is also an author and speaker and the father of two daughters. He cohosts the Happy Rant podcast and blogs at BarnabasPiper.com.
