I am often asked: “Should  Christians be involved in shaping culture?” My answer is that we can’t not be involved in shaping culture. To illustrate this, I offer a very sad example. In the years leading up to the Civil War many southerners resented the interference of the abolitionists, who were calling on Christians to stamp out the sin of slavery. In response, some churches began to assert that it was not the church’s (nor Christians’) job to try to ‘change culture’ but only to preach the gospel and see souls saved. The tragic irony was that these churches were shaping culture. Their very insistence that Christians should not be changing culture meant that those churches were supporting the social status quo. They were defacto endorsing the cultural arrangements of the Old South. (For more on this chapter in American history, see Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.)
 

Over the holidays I read a good (and devastating) review of William P. (Paul) Young's The Shack in the most recent print edition of Books and Culture: A Christian Review (Jan/Feb 2010.)  It was a reminder that I was one of the last people on the planet not to have read the book. So I did. So why write a blog post about it? It had sold 7.2 million copies in a little over 2 years, by June of 2009. With those kinds of numbers, the book will certainly exert some influence over the popular religious imagination. So it warrants a response. This is not a review, but just some impressions:

Recently Redeemer was featured prominently in a USA Today article about multi-site churches. Outside of the fact that Redeemer doesn't 'do video,' the differences between our approach and others were not referred to. And in much discussion on line after the article, it was clear that all multi-site churches were being Lumped Together. Just for the sake of clarity, it might be helpful to know these facts about why and how Redeemer does the multi-site.