Mark Roberts has been blogging a great series called What is a Church? He started with a theological discussion of the NT definition of "church" (ekklesia), but has now begun to address the more practical applications of the definition. Today's post was particularly good. He focuses on the idea that the church is really meant be "an alternative society, a thumbnail sketch of the kingdom of God." I like this definition. As Dr. Roberts notes, however, we rarely achieve that goal.
Keith Schooley recently blogged about the issue of the Christian subculture. What's the difference between a subculture and an alternative society? I think of a subculture in mathematical terms. A subset in mathematics is a grouping that retains some elements of the superset, but excludes some elements. That is what the church has become, a subset of the larger culture. We exclude (or claim to exclude) some elements of modern society like pornography and abortion, yet retain many of the elements of modern society such as materialism and radical individualism.
An alternative society, on the other hand, is more like an intersection. There are still common elements, but there are differences that make us unique not by what we exclude but by what we include. For example, we share cultural elements such as food or the arts but we should be unique in our Kingdom focus. Characteristics such as our devotion to God, our devotion to brotherly love, the fruit of the Spirit, and our life priorities (i.e how we spend our time and money) should be the unique characteristics that define our society.
Being a subculture is easy. In fact, everyone is a part of at least one subculture whether they realize it or not. Being an alternative society, however, takes conscious effort. It's swimming upstream. That's what we're called by God to do. He hasn't called us to add religion to our already over-stuffed lives, He has called us to be transformed. Not a subset of the existing culture, but an alternative to it.