Last Tuesday the church community group I facilitate talked about the difficulty of following Jesus.  More specifically we looked at the tendency to measure our “success” as Christians with the standard metrics available to secular culture.  To illustrate, some Christians see their isolation from pop culture as a sign of their commitment to Jesus while others understand their cultural fluency as the best way to witness to Christ in the midst of society.  While these two groups of people will look vastly different (a Mennonite farmer on one hand and the average reader of Relevant Magazine on the other), oftentimes “success” is measured the same by both: comparison with secular culture.  While these two ways of following Jesus look completely different, could it be that they are, in fact, two sides of the same coin?

Yesterday, on his Culture Making blog, Andy Crouch pointed out the following quote from John Stott’s introduction to the Lausanne Covenant.  Stott recognizes the polarizing tendencies of current Christianity and points to an alternative, one that isn’t bound to standard metrics to describe our Christian witness.

We often go to one of two extremes. Either we are so keen to live in the world that we imbibe non-Christian ideas and standards, and become conformed; or we are so keen not to lose our distinctive identity that we withdraw. The best way to avoid these two mistakes is to engage in mission. We are sent into the world as Christ’s representatives, so we can neither conform to it (or we cease to represent him) or withdraw from it (or we have no one to represent him to).

Unless the church understands her identity to be primarily missional in nature, we are bound to continue silly conversations about whether cultural withdrawal or engagement is the best witness to our Lord.