Culture, Cultural Intelligence, and the Gospel
By Carmelo Mercado
I have seen a lot of changes take place in ministry. In the early years, the churches I pastored were predominantly monocultural. Today, we see a wide variety of people from different backgrounds that are joining our churches or planting their own. Increased diversity brings its own set of challenges, among them being a clash of cultures. Sometimes these clashes become an “us vs them” battle, where people see their side as being a battle for what they understand as truth and a fight against “culture”.
Part of the problem resides in many people seeing culture as being a “bad” thing. In reality, culture is simply an inevitable medium that can be most useful in our ministry if we embrace it intelligently, as taught in Scripture. To begin our journey in further understanding cultural intelligence we must look at where “culture” began, in Genesis.
Creation—God’s Cultural Mandate
When you read Genesis, you can sense that God loves variety in creating all kinds of fish, birds, animals, and an amazing variety of plant life. Yet the point of His creation was not only what He made but what He intended the first couple to do:
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth… Behold I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the earth, and to every tree with seed in its fruit.; you shall have them for food” (Genesis 1:28-30).
God gave this couple a cultural mandate. They were to care for the animals, till the land, bear children, and begin the process of producing generations of people. In essence, what God was asking them to do was to create culture. You may ask me, “What makes you say that? The Bible doesn’t say that they were supposed to create culture.” Yes, while it is true that the word “culture” is not translated from the Hebrew or Greek languages, we know from Scripture that the essence of culture is inferred, in a similar way to our understanding of subjects like the Trinity.
Culture’s Meaning
The word culture comes from the Latin word cultura, which is the past participle of the verb colere, which means to plow or till. Hence, we use the word agri-culture, the care of the soils. to grow crops. The term is also closely related to the Latin cultus which means adoration or veneration. Interestingly enough the Hebrew word abad is at times translated as “till/cultivate” or “worship”.
When you think about it, God had a basic plan for the newly created earth. It was supposed to be a beautiful culture where there would be a variety of people in the world and where worship was to be central to the environment. When you look at Revelation, you see what God’s original plan would have been like and ultimately will be like, the restoration of an Edenic, sin-free culture that culminates in a beautiful garden city, the New Jerusalem.
The fact is that while sin has interrupted God’s original plan, its intrusion has not canceled the cultural mandate. Jesus calls on His church to fulfill it yet today by spreading the seed of the word of God and nurturing the soil of people’s hearts through prayer and sharing agape love.
Years ago, when I served as a student missionary pastor in Bolivia, I met and gave Bible studies to a teenager named Olaf. I could tell he was sincere in his desire to know God and so after he was baptized and I left Bolivia, I prayed that He would remain faithful to God. Imagine my surprise when I discovered he is now the head elder of his church, with his entire family of six children and six grandchildren all members of the church.
God’s cultural mandate remains: to create a culture of love and grace by sharing the gospel in a culturally intelligent way.
Carmelo Mercado has served in his current role as Lake Union’s general vice president for 18 years. He is also the Multicultural Ministries director for the Lake Union and secretary for the Adventist-laymen's Services & Industries (ASI) Lake Union chapter.
Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles on Cultural Intelligence written by Gabriela Phillips and Carmelo Mercado. Look out for the fourth in two weeks. If you haven’t already, be sure to click the link and start your Cultural Intelligence self-assessment.