I just finished reading A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World by John Stonestreet and Brett Knuckle. This material should be required reading for anyone working in next generation ministry.
Stonestreet and Knuckle equate culture to the ocean. They say in the book’s introduction: “Like the ocean, culture is all around us. Just as fish swim in the ocean, culture is the water in which we swim. Also, like the ocean, culture has both seen and unseen elements. Though cultural undercurrents are invisible, they powerfully pressure us to conform to their collective assumptions about the world. Cultural issues, however, are more like waves: seen, heard, and felt. Understanding both is critically important if we’re to keep our heads above water.”
All too often, the next generation gives sway to the prevalent culture they live in and the next generation does this in almost subconscious fashion. A fish can’t tell you what water is because water is all the fish has ever known. Stonestreet and Knuckle say, “Culture is for humans what water is for fish: the environment we live in and think is normal. The main difference is, unlike the fish, we make our own environments . . . Culture is, in fact, one of the things that makes us different than animals.”
The next generation has also been compared to goldfish in the sense that they have an attention span that is smaller than a goldfish. So, we have goldfish swimming around in this ocean called culture and we have been called not only to catch these fish for Jesus, but also to help re-direct them to swim against the pounding waves. Remember, culture isn’t bad. We all help to create the culture we live and breathe in. But the pounding waves, the cultural issues of our day, are knocking the life and breath out of the next generation in a way that many of our goldfish are drowning and in need of rescue.
It is our calling to gather the attention of these goldfish long enough to teach them how to be counter-cultural in a way that both honors Christ and glorifies God. Stonestreet and Knuckle identify half of the cultural issues of our day as pornography, the hookup culture, sexual orientation, and gender identity. All four of these topics center around the issues of sex and sexuality. Chapter five, entitled “Identity after Christianity” is profound and includes content such as the paragraph below:
“We used to talk of sex in terms of behavior, but now, we’re told, it’s who we are. The overwhelming message to kids today is that Christian faith isn’t nearly as important as sexual inclinations and attractions. Religious belief is mere personal opinion, but sexuality is definitive, absolute, and unquestionable. In today’s culture, sexuality is identity.”
It is difficult to find books that give Christ-followers practical advice on how to engage topics such as these. For instance, when tackling the LGBT movement, the authors state, “Prior to the last thirty years, where was all the Christian activism and outrage on the subject? many wonder. The answer is that no one really talked about it prior to thirty years ago. Historically, Christians haven’t been obsessed with this topic because the culture hasn’t been. LGBT rights have become the issue of our times, and some are looking for Christians to fully and unconditionally surrender.”
The other half of the cultural issues addressed by the authors include affluence and consumerism, addiction, entertainment, and racial tension. The book was also a good read for me because it taught me definitions for new words such as heterosexism and cisgender. If you are looking for a book to help you or your staff guide the next generation through the tsunami called culture, look no further than this Practical Guide.