Have you ever wondered how the most holy, righteous, perfect man to ever live (Jesus) had best friends that were prostitutes, gritty fisherman, hated thieves, & social riff raff? Everyone seemed magnetized to Jesus. How did that happen? What made that diverse friend group work? There are a lot of ways to answer that question, but one simple way is… Culture. The unnamed but inevitably observable culture of Jesus.
There was something about Jesus that drew the exiled & the elite. That welcomed the rebel & the righteous. That mingled around the know it all’s & lost it all’s. Have you ever wondered how? There must’ve been this unavoidable culture about Jesus & His disciples. This culture allowed for notorious prostitutes to barge into a religious dinner and wash His feet. This culture made dinner enjoyable with the chief tax collector. This culture promoted a dying thief on the cross to defend Jesus & ask for remembrance. It makes you wonder about our own culture? It’s not the signs we hung on the wall or the mission statement we repeat. Our culture isn’t strategy. It’s an unavoidable, undeniable, perceivable tide of our life. The current that has swept us up and inevitably sweeps others with us.
At Citylight, we aim to have a culture like Jesus. A culture shaped by the Gospel. Shaped by humility where no job is too high or too low. Shaped by gratitude where entitlement has died & been buried. Shaped by encouragement where comparison has been suffocated. Shaped by joy that seeps through every interaction. Shaped by honesty that’s open about our brokenness. Shaped by grace that we’re inexhaustibly receiving from Jesus. But more important than the way we can articulate our culture is the way we live it out. Would we fit in with the culture of Jesus & his messy friends or would we rub against it?
Austin Edwards , Citylight Lincoln