Culture of Cultures

5 min read

15 “ ‘The community is to have the same rules for you and for the foreigner residing among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You and the foreigner shall be the same before the LORD:’ ”

Numbers 15:15

The words “community,” “you,” “foreigner,” and “generations” represent the domain of “lasting ordinance” and “same before the LORD.” The dominion of God is for all peoples across all time, and His dominion will never change. But the communities and generations that submit to the LORD’s dominion do change.

Are we a people, a generation, a community that submits to the dominion of God? The answer to that question will greatly influence whether the next generation will answer yes to that very same question.

I see many, many ministers trying to figure out how to attract young people back to the church and back to the faith. But it seems to me that the “solutions” that ministers pursue pretty much model the “solutions” that led many, many young people to abandon the faith and the church in the first place.

What are the “solutions” that have failed the next generation? I would really love to see a study that seriously addresses that question in the Korean-American context specifically.

Personally, I believe that the one “solution” that has failed the next generation more than any other has been ministries driven primarily by age-based relationships. It creates a culture where the younger generations have a hard time tolerating older ones, and vice versa.

The need for ministries driven by age-based relationships might seem so foundational to some ministers, that those ministers might be hard-pressed to think of any alternative solution. That is why so many churches think that the only “solution” to young people leaving the church is to find a (preferably young) minister that the young people like.

But ministries driven by age-based relationships, by their very nature, tend to neglect the “community,” “you,” “foreigner,” and “generations” aspects of the “lasting ordinance” that God has given for us to offer sacrifices that are pleasing to Him.

Not only that, ministries driven by age-based relationships, by their very nature, highlight the differences between people, instead of emphasizing that we are all the “same before the LORD.”

As it is with human beings, smart human beings especially, we have shot ourselves in the foot with our own solutions. In a very real way, that is what “666” represents—that is, human “solutions” that miss the BASIC ingredients we find in the word of God. May Canvas never be like that.

Father, Your ways are clearly given to us in Your word, and yet we so easily miss the important things because of overthinking, over-strategizing, over-doing. Help us to keep our faith BASIC and help us to keep our relationships BASIC because we are grounded in Your word. In Jesus’s name. Amen.