Gospel.com Blog

Like many children growing up in the past forty years, Sesame Street is lodged in my mind as a mythical place where creativity and friendliness flow freely. While I used to love it for its songs, animations and puppets, it wasn’t until later that I realized how wonderful a picture of community it presented.

Sesame Street is a place where everyone belonged, regardless of skin color, their physical size (Big Bird anyone?), or their age: everyone has something to share with everyone else.

The Gospel Coalition posted a thoroughly excellent reflection on what the Church could learn from Sesame Street’s contextualized message.

Here’s an excerpt from the article, but you really should jump over and read the entire thing:

As the New York Times puts it, this was a “messianic show,” with a “mission” to remake the way children envisioned the world.

Yes, Big Bird and Bert and Ernie and Grover and Oscar the Grouch and their human co-stars would teach you about letters and numbers and safety tips. But, more than that, they would show you, by the characters they featured and the plotlines they put forward, a new way of seeing things on issues ranging from racial equality to obesity prevention to the global fight against AIDS.

I know that some immediately will conclude that I’m saying simply that churches should contextualize in their teaching and mission.

Yes, Sesame Street did contextualize. The writers and producers picked up on familiar themes such as advertising commercials (”This broadcast is brought to you by the letter ‘C.’”). They built their segments around a typical child’s attention span. They featured songs that were easy-to-sing and memorable (pop quiz: can you hum the tune of Ernie’s “Rubber Ducky” song? Of course you can).

And, yes, of course, churches should contextualize the gospel, addressing people in a language that can be heard and understood. But contextualization itself is not enough. Some of the most self-consciously contextualized churches are faddish and hyper-consumerist. They’re more like the mass-marketed latter years of Sesame Street, and less like the early, innovative, culture-shaping times. And we’ve got all the “Tickle Me Elmo” kinds of Christian ministries we can stand.

Sesame Street was effective because the program didn’t just contextualize to the present; it contextualized to the future.

Do you have any favorite Sesame Street memories? What do you think about the notion that the Church should adopt this idea of contextualizing for the future?

Editor’s note: You can relive some classic Seasame Street moments on Hulu, including one of my favorites.

With the World Series behind us, basketball getting underway and the NFL approaching midseason, it’s a good time to be a sports fans. It seems like every week there’s a “big game,” and for every “big game” there are millions upon millions of people that watch, cheer and dissect every play and statistic. Americans might not know whether their city has a symphony orchestra, but they know their city’s sports teams.

Sports are clearly an inextricable part of our culture, yet, as Christians how invested should we be in the outcomes of those sporting events? How much should Christians care about sports?

Share your thoughts!

Unless you’re living on Mars, every day you’re faced with ideas and philosophies—both subtle and obvious—that are contrary to the Christian worldview.

So, how do you maintain a Godly perspective throughout the day?

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries answers the question as it relates to college students in the video below:

Watch other RZIM videos at their video teaching page.

What do you think?

What is poverty? What does it mean to live in poverty—who does it affect? Is poverty “just” a lack of money, or is it something bigger (and harder to solve)? Is American poverty different than poverty in other parts of the world? And what are Christians called to do in response?

Several prominent urban ministry leaders have put together a short series of videos that explore the difficult question of poverty. Here’s the first video, which asks the question What is poverty?

UrbanMinistry.org links to several other videos in the series. They’ll challenge your understanding of what poverty is and how Christians ought to respond to it!

It’s here at last—election day, the culmination of years of campaigning and political debate in the U.S. Whether you were first in line at the ballot box this morning or are still trying to figure out which candidate is the proverbial lesser of two evils, here are a few links from around the Gospel.com community to help you put the political craziness into spiritual perspective:

• GetReligion is the go-to blog for discussion of religion’s intersection with the media and society. They’re busy blogging about the election as it unfolds today, and you can be sure they’ll be analyzing the results over the next few weeks. If you want to learn how religion (and Christianity in particular) are being handled by the media, this is the place to start.
• James Watkins has written quite a bit about the political race—but without the partisan rancor that motivates so many bloggers and pundits. Take a look at his Election 2008 page for his insights into understand the relationship between faith and politics. His blog has lots of good election commentary, too.
• We’ve heard a lot about the “culture war” over the last few years—but is there a better way for Christians to influence culture? Delve Into Jesus challenges Christians to rethink the “culture war” mentality and instead model themselves on the early church.

So go out and vote—and as you do, pray that your grace and thoughtfulness will reflect Christ to the angry, hyper-politicized culture around us.

Election.

Could there be a more contentious word for the American follower of Christ? There are political elections. Elections in which voices from every side of the aisle will sputter about how Jesus would vote. And there is the matter of spiritual election in which one is predetermined to be heaven-bound or not.

Two issues that, in my opinion, should elicit a very similar response: prayer, Bible reading, a healthy understanding of the grace we are given and urged to give by Christ, and humility.

Prayer because—let’s be honest—without God’s guidance, we are left to our own wisdom, which is a terrible position to be in.

Bible reading because each of these ideas are complicated. Everybody needs to determine for themselves how to vote and what to believe, and appealing to the sourcebook of knowledge is a great place to begin.

Grace because chances are if you have or have had acquaintances, friends or family in your life you know what it is like to disagree with someone. Who hasn’t understand why a loved one would believe something? Who hasn’t been on the receiving end of that bewilderment?

Humility because as history has shown us there’s a lot of ways to make a fool of ourselves. Better to know one’s position in God’s kingdom than to be pompously prideful.

Plenty of people will enumerate reasons about who you should vote for, but we’d urge you to enter into the voting booth with a discerning heart and the knowledge that your true allegiance is not to a government but to God.

We’re talking about culture this week, and thinking about one of the most basic and important questions that Christians ask today: how do we engage and challenge our culture with the Gospel of Christ? Society around us is saturated with false and destructive ideas, memes, and values; how do Christians bring the Gospel message to bear in such an environment? (more…)

Is it possible to have a discussion about serious moral and political topics without it devolving into a partisan shouting match? Writer and blogger James Watkins has been seeking the Holy Grail of serious-but-civil dialogue for years through his columns, speaking engagements, and blogging.

Watkins’ daily blog talks about just about everything you can imagine, from the humorous to the deadly serious. But rather than shouting angry opinions from a soapbox, he prefers to step back and weigh both sides of any given debate, always from a Christian point of view. And he usually finds a way to inject some good-natured humor into even the most divisive topics. For some examples, see his posts on the same-sex marriage controversy, the US presidential race, and the Jeremiah Wright controversy. He also contributes to our own ThinkChristian blog, which explores the intersection of faith and culture.

So if you’re a bit tired of the Culture War and the bitter debates it sparks even between Christians, take a look at what Watkins is saying—it might prompt you to look at the Big Issues of the day from a more balanced, and even Christlike, perspective!

Jonalyn Grace Fincher, the author of Ruby Slippers, reacts to the recently released statistic that 1 in 4 teenage girls have an STD:

There is a discouraging, though not altogether unsurprising, statistic making headlines. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 1 in 4 teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease (STD). The New York Times covers the findings, “Sex Infections Found in Quarter of Teenage Girls”. My thoughts kicked into high gear when I heard that. What are my friends and sister’s friends going to be inheriting in the coming years? Infertility will continue to rise as infections from disease destroy the fine-tuned fertility micro-climate in a woman’s body.

…

But I suppose the thing that bothers me the most is that STDs are infiltrating the core of a woman’s body, targeting her capacities for vulnerability in the future. You know how hard it is to raise your voice when you have a sore, inflamed throat? Or to laugh a deep, vulnerable belly guffaw when you have a cough? Well, that’s a taste of how hard it will be for these young women to be vulnerable in intimacy when the sensitive parts of her body, her reproductive capacities, her sexual pleasure and recreation has been damaged, ravaged by disease, inflamed from infection. The physical pain is just a small slice of the problem. I haven’t even touched on the psychological aspects of sex without the safety and freedom of marriage…

Vulnerability means we have places that can be touched, wounded or pleased. As I’ve written in Ruby Slippers, “Vulnerability requires that we have places that are tender, places we can be affected, touched and even destroyed. A sparrow is more vulnerable than a rock. But because a sparrow is alive, it whistles, and soars, even though it can also be caught by a cat and clawed to death.” (p 112).

You can read more of her thoughts at her blog.

Has Christianity lost the “culture war”? Our society’s moral values have been on a steady decline for decades, and despite our best efforts, Christians seem unable to stem the tide. If Christians are losing the war of ideas, maybe it’s time for a new battle plan. A reflection from the Delve Into Jesus ministry suggests a better way to win back the hearts and minds of our culture–by following the example of the early Christians, who conquered the mighty Roman empire with their faith and ideas.