Does your church's culture hinder its vision?

This summer, beginning after the morning service on July 13th, we are offering a four-week community group based on the book “Creature of the Word” by Matt Chandler. As I’ve been reading through the book, I was struck particularly by the chapter “Jesus-centered culture.” The gist of the chapter is that the culture of a church trumps the vision of the church almost every time. By culture, Chandler means that each church has a certain personality, a character, a set of deeply held values that may be openly declared or merely understood, which guides the church’s ongoing actions. And often, a church may state that something is important to them, part of their mission and vision, but their culture is strongly communicating something completely different.

For example (and these examples may or may not be true about our particular church):

• We preach and teach that we are all sinners who are always in need of the grace of God. Yet we become squeamish or judgmental at honest confessions of sin, especially sins we would consider “really bad.”

• We claim that the parents have primary spiritual responsibility for their children, yet spend more time focusing on children being taught by other adults than on equipping parents to disciple their own children.

• We talk about the importance of mission and outreach, yet in reality encourage apathy and a lack of risk-taking for the kingdom of God.

• We exhort Christians to be holy and not find their pleasure in the things of this world, but consider weird or strange those who seem overly-spiritual.

• We believe in the priesthood of all believers, that every Christian has direct access to God and can minister His grace, yet we treat the paid pastor like he is in a separate class of Christian with a clearer line to God and that his ministry matters more than that of others in the church.

• We believe that all spiritual gifts are needed and valued in the church, but treat those with more public gifts like teaching and worship leading as more spiritual than those with more quiet, behind the scenes gifts.

• We believe in a literal, eternal hell that will be populated by those who have rejected Jesus’ offer of salvation, yet we value our own self-image over encouraging each other to share our faith.

It is one thing to write out a compelling mission and vision. It is another thing entirely to take a hard look at the culture of your church and ask whether or not it is in line with what you believe and the God you claim to be following.

What do you see as the culture of our church? Where do you see our church’s culture hindering our mission and vision?