‘A private truth for a limited circle of believers is no truth at all. Even the most devout faith will sooner or later falter and fail unless those who hold it are willing to bring it into public debate and to test it against experience in every area of life. If the Christian faith about the source and goal of human life is to be denied access to the human realm, where decisions are made on the great issues of the common life, then it cannot in the long run survive even as an option for a minority.’
Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
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‘The church could have escaped persecution by the Roman Empire if it had been content to be treated as a cultus privatus—one of the many forms of personal religion. But it was not. Its affirmation that “Jesus is Lord” implied a public, universal claim that was bound eventually to clash with the cultus publicus of the empire. The Christian mission is thus to act out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all.’
Lesslie Newbigin, , The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission
Newbigin’s criticisms above were directed towards the Western society at his time where faith is driven into everyone’s private space from the public arena. Today the situation might be slightly different. People are happy to share what they think about truth and faith, but the tendency now is to form unofficial or casual groups, often even driven by common felt-needs where similar understanding of ‘truth’ or ‘faith’ are expressed and lived. As a result, we have now various groups adhering to their own version of Christian faith, forming their own subculture, satisfied with their own little ‘private space’, and find no time nor necessity to engage with the wider world. So ‘the private faith/truth’ which Newbigin mentioned is today expressed in a typical postmodern form – diversified ‘believers’ groups’ meeting together instead of individualistic, private believers attending a state church or a denominational church, as in the ‘modern’ church. Splinter groups were common in history, but never in such intensity, in such a big number and with so much self-justified confidence as today. Postmodern consumeristic tendency means that people who shares common ideas about ‘truth’ or ‘faith’ tend to form a group themselves to serve their own needs.’
Thus, the issue we will encounter, in regards to the first quote above, is the fact that people may not find it necessary to ‘test’ the truth of their respective subcultural groups. In the context of the church, it means that believers are not interested to engage meaningfully with the people outside of their realm. It is too troublesome. As a result there is a lack of evangelism and mission. Otherwise when evangelism is done, there will be very little or no effort at all to engage meaningfully with the various subcultures encountered. In short, for mission and evamgelism to happen in a church, a certain amount of cultural clash is to be expected.
According to the second quote above, cultural clash, or in the context of this post – venturing out of our comfort zone and getting in touch with the ‘real world’ or other groups – becomes inevitably the very mark of authentic Christianity. If Jesus is Lord at all, he has to be the Lord of our ‘group’ and the Lord of others, and Christians are to make sure this is the mission and the reason for the existence of their group/church. A missional church will engage with the outside world even with the expense of clashing with the dominant culture of the day.
Faith and Culture Today 