Understand Your Host Culture

Buck Birch is a friend and church planter in Russia. He offers a very encouraging blog post on "Enjoying our Host Culture." Every church planter should be thinking about their "host culture" even if they are living and planting in the U.S. Our mission is to take the gospel into a "host" culture in a relevant and meaningful way.

We must love the culture in which God has placed us (see Buck's post). However, we must remember the words of Jesus in John 15:17 - we are to be in the culture but not of the culture. We must love the culture and appreciate the beauty of the culture (a reflection of the image of God) without becoming "inculturated" and assimilated into the culture.

We must always remember that we are pilgrims (aliens) in this world. We're only passing through. Our true home is yet to come. But in the meantime, God has given us all things richly to enjoy. Enjoy the culture, but be an agent of grace and transformation in YOUR host culture. Our aim as church planters and church planting leaders is to create biblically faithful, culturally relevant, counter-cultural communities of faith. Check out what Buck has to say!