Cultural Intelligence – A Missional Necessity

‘The church in the west is “blinded to the fact they have trapped Christ in their own culture’.

Paul Vincent Donovan

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I was recently talking to a very despondent friend of mine. She is a very mature Christian who has faithfully and enthusiastically served in a variety of ministries in her church for a long time, particularly those intended for Outreach. The reason for her despondency became clear as she described the service she had attended on the previous Sunday.

She described the sermon, which while biblically accurate, was very long, and at a language level far higher than the average Australian’s spoken English, as was most of the rest of the service. Her concern was the service was culturally alien to non-churched people, the very people the church has been failing to reach for over a quarter of a century. This is a classic example of the lack of Cultural Intelligence, that is a failure to read the culture, which we see across the ecclesial landscape. Result? Decline.

Our conversation moved on to a discussion of the general lack of Cultural Intelligence commonly evident in church activities. This is an issue I described in my book ‘Quantum  Mission – Something Completely Different for a Kaleidoscope World’ as one of the many ‘Elephants in the Missions Operations Room’ of the Australian (western) Church. These Elephants are those missional roadblocks (activities, strategies, attitudes) that loom large, vitiate the church’s attempts at fruitful mission to the Australian population, but no one wants to talk about.

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The current missional mindset of most local churches, and particularly of those in leadership, continues to be controlled by the assumption, even if subconsciously, that the goal is to reach a still-Christianized society living on what might be termed a ‘cultural Earth,’ whereas the reality is that most of Western society has changed address to a distant ‘cultural Pluto’. The failure to realise and respond to this is a major factor in the missional malaise and is the result of a general Cultural Intelligence deficit i.e., the failure to exegete, understand, and engage with the now Church-alien culture(s) of twenty-first-century Australia (and other western countries), which results in the continued pursuance of ineffective missional strategies.

Cultural Intelligence is a measure of the ability to understand the times and the revolving Kaleidoscope of increasingly Christian-hostile micro-cultures (tribes) comprising Australian society. The reality is that the Christendom society in which and for which the standard ‘Sunday Centric, In-Drag (into services), Christendom Form’ (SIC) church model developed is long gone, and increasing numbers of Australians, including those born in the country, are from cultures that were NEVER IN IT!

It is important to note the tectonic cultural shift that has taken place from the Christendom society in which the current standard church model was developed to Western society today, as the following comparison illustrates.

Christendom was a society:

1. That was generally ethnically and linguistically homogenous.
2. Where the majority went to church. This would have included many non-Christians, so there was no need for outreach activities.
3. Where all had a biblical world view (even if sub-consciously).
4. Where the ‘church’ building was the centre and integrating hub of community life.
5. Where nearly everybody worked locally, and not at all on Sundays.
6. Where church structures and ministries were constructed not for mission but for the maintenance of existing Christian congregations.
7. Where change was so slow as to be imperceptible.

It should come as no great surprise then that we struggle, for our culture is nothing like that. For-

Twenty-first-century Australia is a society:

1. That is neither ethnically nor linguistically homogenous and where 26 per cent (and rising) of the population were born overseas.
2. Where the pool of Europe-originating people that has formed the church’s natural constituency is shrinking as a proportion of the population.
3. Where less than 5% o0f the population attend church with any regularity.
4. Where the society-guiding biblical world view has disappeared.
5. That is experiencing the rampant collapse of religious affiliation.
6. Where the church is on the retreating periphery of a society increasingly hostile to it.
7. Where ‘work and play’ micro-culture activity has consumed the erstwhile activity-free zone of Sunday.
8. Where change is very rapid, ongoing, unpredictable, and accelerating.

It beggars belief that what developed in a Christendom Europe for the pastoral maintenance of Christian congregations can be considered to be appropriate for mission to twenty-first-century Australia and the West generally. The continuation of this church model is a major contributor to the missional malaise.

What is needed is a quantum leap in the understanding of the cultural landscape through which the missional journey ‘to Pluto’ must take us. Once having gained that cultural understanding this must be followed by substantive, and painful, adaptation of church models and missional strategies. This is essential in order to achieve missional effectiveness, in the mosaic of pluralistic, neo-pagan ‘live, work and play’ microcultures comprising society. As Charles Darwin said, yes in another context but still relevant to the adaptation the Body of Christ needs to make-

‘It’s not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent,

but the most responsive to change’.

However, the current lack of the Cultural Intelligence essential for effective mission, coupled with change-averse leaderships, tragically for the millions stumbling in darkness around us, makes such responsivity vanishingly unlikely. For this reason, our prayer must be that new movements will arise driven by those who are not shackled by the carcasses of failed missional paradigms that have littered the last fifty years but have the vision to create culturally appropriate missional vehicles for the ‘journey to Pluto’.