Curious Christian

The Evangelical Alliance for Cultural Uniformity and Parochialism (TEACUPs) presents to you:

The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Parochialism

Are you bothered by strange ‘New Age’ types, cultural creatives and new immigrants coming to your church services? Want to ensure they never come back to haunt your post-service morning teas? Try out these successful strategies road tested by thousands of churches the world over:

1/ Non-Inclusive Worship

• How we worship can be an important way to symbolise exclusion. A parochial worship style communicates to your more cosmopolitan visitors that their cultural openness is not respected. Therefore it is vitally important to exclude worship style elements that in any way smack of innovation.

• Don’t mix and match with rock, rap or dance music whatever you do, even at social events. Stick to easy listening music that’s non-spicy, just nicey.

• Avoid contemplative spirituality at all costs. Critical self-reflection is dangerous.

• De-emphasise traditions that are universal to Christians the world over, such as communion, and keep them as infrequent as possible.

• Keep your artists under wraps. If you must let them out, make sure it’s at a ‘special’ service where impact on cultural orthodoxy is minimal. Remember, maximise continuity. The last thing we want is discontinuous change that would upset longer standing members. They should always have preferential treatment.

2/ Avoid Leadership Diversity

• For the sake of harmony, make sure all your leaders are white anglo-saxons, preferably male, with similar theological outlooks, with similar career backgrounds, etc, etc.

• Ensure that more cosmopolitan types do not feel represented or otherwise they may hang around like a bad smell.

3/ No overarching goal

• Don’t make the cultivation of diversity a focus. That way cultural orthodoxy can survive uncontested.

4/ No intentionality

• Speak first, think later. When you must talk about evangelism to local migrants refer to it as cross-cultural ministry even if your church has many members who are from the same culture.

• Follow in-house fads. Encourage brand loyalty. Never critique Christian songs, Christian books or Christian bumper stickers or other Christian products for being bad art – even when they are. Actually, don’t even criticise them if they’re a product of bad theology. That’s not edifying. Celebrate Christians that pull their children out of state schools and into Christian schools or home schooling. Never criticise missional initiatives, no matter how inefficient or theologically suspect they may be. Never criticise Christian politicians or sportsmen or other public figures.  

5/ Personal skills

• Send any people with missionary gifts overseas. Quick! Don’t encourage them to stay in the West where they may be tempted to introduce cross-cultural mission strategies on the turf of traditional evangelists. They tend to question whether revivalism is THE God ordained way of outreach for Anglo-Saxons so don’t give them a leg in.

• Protect lay Christians from theological texts written by non-Westerners or Western Missionaries in other cultures.

6/ Location

• Discourage commuting amongst lay Christians. Commuting lifestyles are completely at odds with neighbourhood-based church growth strategies so strategic parochialism is essential to preserving our way of life. Make sure leaders are non-communters. Make sure commuters feel uncomfortable for working in the wider world and having broader friendship networks. Encourage them to cut off those strategically inconvenient friendships and focus on local church life. Put all evening activities on really early so that they must rush home and not socialise with people after work. Where possible, promote more strategically local careers like teaching. Never talk about IT or management professions in church or equip people to spiritually thrive in these industries as that would only encourage them.

• If you find yourself in a culturally diverse location make sure you stick to reading literature written by leaders in less culturally diverse contexts.

7/ Adaptability

• Don’t try and understand cosmopolitan types. You’ll only encourage them. Blending of forms (including cultural forms) is unbiblical and smacks of Evilutionism. See Deuteronomy. All we need for revival is repentance and prayer. Don’t let cosmopolitan people undermine revival traditions.

• Let the old hands culturally re-educate people that stand out. Make them feel their everyday language, music, haircuts, dress styles, etc, are not holy enough. If they come to a service dressed in culturally hetrodox ways (such as: no footware, overly bright colours at a tenabre service, coloured hair, etc) make sure you point it out to them. Repeatedly. This helps to preserve cultural orthodoxy. And make sure you indoctrinate them with VegeTales videos, Christian ghetto culture and Christianese laguage lessons as soon as possible.

• Don’t adapt to shifts in cuisine and tastes. Never serve vegetarian. Even if have the visitors to your events are vegetarian. Never serve a latte.

Endorsements:

Philip Pratt, St Mathias: We used to have one or two people asking troublesome questions at our bible study. But after implementing your principles of Strategic Parochialism those oddballs don’t bother us any more.

Reverend Jensidious, The First Church of God: Strategic Parochialism has been a godsend in helping our church successfully negotiate the challenges of post-modernism. Though implementing your principles we’ve managed to convert all our visitors to OUR way of seeing the world. Either that or they’ve moved on!

Dipsy Flanders, Colorado: Bless you! Bless you! When our youth started inviting their friends to church they used to ask us all sorts of questions about other religions, the nature of truth, angels, etc. We didn’t know what to do. Since reading your article we’ve seen the error of our ways. These kids are so fallen we need to show them the right questions!

Don Burlesque, Turn or Burn Ministries: We used to wonder why people off the street weren’t responding to gospel appeals to their sense of guilt. But after attending your course we realised, “These people don’t feel guilt. Their sense of anxiety and doubt is far greater. We aren’t connecting with them.” What a revelation! Now we make sure we make them feel guilty before we tell them the good news.

Urgent Appeal for Support

We bring to your attention an urgent and extremely important matter of concern to us all. TEACUPs needs to recycle 50,000 used teabags by the end of the year to keep this ministry afloat. We depend on your support. Help fund this valuable ministry by sending all used teabags to:

PO Box 225
Kingsford NSW 2032
AUSTRALIA

Please Pray for:

• Rain
• My sore toe
• Our next pot luck dinner

May the Lord guide us and bless us all.

Amen