Mission in Your Front Yard: Touching Diverse Peoples
Together with the Evangelical Missiological Society, this conference focused on multi-ethnic ministry in the greater Portland metropolitan area and how people could partner with God and others in touching diverse peoples close to home.
The first presentation was from urban demographic guru, Dr. Richard White of Portland State University. Dr. White mapped Portland’s front yard from the past to the present. Dr. Paul Metzger followed with a presentation that attempted to give God’s perspective on church growth and multi-ethnic ministry. Next, resident practitioners shared their personal stories of doing multi-ethnic ministry, including the problems and pitfalls they have experienced.
(Pop) Culture: Playground of the Spirit or Diabolical Device?
Media experts differ widely on the value of popular culture. Is it today’s “face of Jesus”? Or, does it vitiate spirituality and tear down worthwhile societal values? The article traces concepts of culture and culture formation. The author argues that popular culture both reflects and affects the values people construct for themselves. Popular culture is a meaning-making and religious act. By engaging general revelation, it may express human hungers, anxieties, injustices and sorrows significantly and truly. Yet it may provide an alternate reality and narrative, supplanting the sacred metanarrative for the plot of life once provided by the religious community. This reality often centers on entertainment personalities through whom people can vicariously live their lives. Popular culture’s narrative framework for personal identity formation may produce its own “God,” and miss its God-ordained purpose of providing an insightfully human narrative that may through the Spirit lead ultimately to the Logos, Jesus Christ. The article is followed by two critical responses.