Recently a pastor in East China stressed that if Christians desired to integrate faith into their lives, they ought to pay more attention to culture and sports, and to enhance the training of willpower and character.
With many years of pastoral experience, Pastor A serves in the cultural field, devoting himself to explore how the Christian faith is integrated into daily life. His vision lies in that through his service more Christians would not only be confined to church and religious life, but also walk into the culture, society and live out their faith in their normal life.
In a Sunday service, the house church pastor shared the relationship between Christ and culture, according to Romans 5:19-21.
"Cultural missionaries give people the opportunity to explore culture, let their beliefs enter their lives and bring about changes," he highlighted.
He said that this passage, being a classic comparison between Adam and Christ, described Adam as the ancestor of mankind, because his disobedience alone constituted a rebellious lifestyle, and the whole history of human civilization showed that Adam’s descendants had found their own lifestyle. Because of Christ, people became Christians, but as they resisted this rebellious world they refused to integrate their faith into their lives instead.
Quoting H. Richard Niebuhr’s book Christ and Culture, Pastor A talked about exploring five relationships between Christ and culture. One of them was to reject culture and hold the idea of secular dichotomy, and fundamentalists were unwilling to have a relationship with the world that had been defiled by sin. Those type of Christians thought that when they entered the world they would be affected by sin so they were satisfied to just live in the church. For instance, he said that foreign missionaries in the last century held the Hudson Taylor's fundamentalism route and the Timothy Richard's liberalism route: Hudson Taylor insisted on preaching the gospel directly to save souls, paying attention to the relationship between men and God but not talking about the world, while Timothy Richard advocated not only preaching the gospel to others but also going into the world as light and salt. Pastor A thought it was ironic that the fundamentalists who today highly admired the universities and hospitals established by missionaries in the early days were not aware that these heritages were promoted by liberal missionaries headed by Timothy Richard.
Pastor A said that liberalism had not left much spiritual heritage in the Christian community in China and what could really lodge in people’s minds was still fundamentalism. The faith foundation was the basis for us to stand. However, fundamentalism with strong vitality was difficult to last because it was very defensive and inextensible. Extreme fundamentalism strongly defended pure faith, rejected things that caused Christians to make mistakes, and easily formed opposition with the world.
“The law was added so that the trespass might increase.” Pastor A quoted the passage as saying that the law was a means to prevent people from committing crimes - so many provisions had been set for people.
"As sinners, we are bound to break these laws. This shows that there are problems in our lives so we need Christ to renew us. Yet, we need a process to check what is right and wrong so that we can have the possibility of change. Otherwise the Bible verses would become empty for us."
“But where sin increased, grace increased all the more... We will make many mistakes in the process of practicing our faith, but this true statement will make our faith a living faith because we will see that grace is more obvious. We will know that it is true to live with God and to be forgiven by God," he added.
According to the pastor, cultural missionaries gave many people the opportunity to have culture so that their beliefs can be brought into their lives and they were bound to change as a result. Eugene Bidson, the famous “pastor of pastors”, once said that faith was never a result but a process, and there would be chaos and mistakes in the process. Therefore, faith meant that we could continue to move forward in a chaotic and imperfect state.
To deal with Christians’ weakness, culture and practical methods were also necessary in addition to emphasizing spiritual practice. It was not necessarily "godly".
Referring to the word “weakness”, the pastor said that he found that there was a phenomenon in the Chinese church: many Christians felt weak but most churches only thought about weakness on the spiritual level, and did not really solve this problem in real life.
He further explained that the fundamentalist method was to express people’s real situation with some basic truths, which was not wrong, but these real situations that needed some practical operations to solve. For instance, the weakness of Christians was a fact, but our most basic and simplest operation were merely pointing out that this person needed more prayers and needed to establish a better relationship with God. These were only some basic expressions but no practical examples were given in practical operations.
“And culture, for example some practical education and guidance, is precisely the way to help Christians get out of such state in life.” He explained the meaning and function of culture in this way. He went on to emphasize that “so in this sense, I don’t think culture and practice are not spiritual.”
Besides culture, Pastor A also talked about willpower, character, labor, sports and so on. For example, he said that in the past, apart from high-intensity spiritual exercises, Catholic monks were indispensable for a large number of laboring activities.
“I think that sometimes the weakness of Christians is not a spiritual problem, but a problem of willpower and character.” Therefore, he also devoted himself to promoting Christians to participate in sports, cultivating perseverance and endurance in sports, and feeling that he was really alive.
He recommended people to read the book Eric Liddell: Pure Gold. He believed many Christians had heard of the story of the great Christian athlete Eric Liddell whose Chinese name was Airui Li. For insisting on attending Sunday worship, Liddell gave up taking part in the 100m and 200m competitions that he was good at on Sunday morning of the eighth Olympic Games in Paris. However, this “flying scotsman” won the 400m competition and won the gold medal, which attracted worldwide attention and admiration. After becoming the Olympic champion, Liddell inherited his father’s wish as a missionary. He resolutely gave up his bright future and came to China for missionary work. Unfortunately, in 1942, he and many western expatriates were taken by the Japanese army to the Western Migrants Concentration Camp in Shandong. Due to the extremely poor living environment, he died of illness at the age of 43.
In the camp, Liddell did not feel sorry for himself. Instead, he taught the children in the camp to take lessons with optimism and took them to sports activities.
“I think his persistence in the concentration camp was braver than his winning the 400-meter race.”
He concluded, “To some extent, we are all giving up the life we want, and only by persisting can we experience life. God is special and all we have to do is respond to Him. A new culture should be tried by brave people and live according to the style of life. Just as Jesus ate and drunk with his disciples, people with the image of God should have lived in the style of life, and they will find that it is not so terrible to live like this.”
- Translated by Charlie Li
日前，一位青年牧者强调说，基督徒希望将信仰融入生活，而这个过程可能需要我们更加注重文化和运动，注重加强意志力和品格的训练。
A牧师拥有多年的牧会经验，而后选择在文化领域进行服事，委身于探索基督信仰如何融入到日常生活中，并且希望透过他的服事帮助更多基督徒能够不仅仅局限在教会和宗教生活中，而是走进文化、走进社会，在日常生活中活出信仰。
这位华东的青年牧者在日前的一次主日礼拜中，分享了他对基督与文化之间的关系的思考。
A牧师引用罗马书5：19-21节
因一人的悖逆，众人成为罪人，照样，因一人的顺从，众人也成为义了。律法本是外添的，叫过犯显多。只是罪在哪里显多，恩典就更显多了。就如罪作王叫人死，照样恩典也借着义作王，叫人因我们的主耶稣基督得永生。
文化宣教士就是给人有文化的机会，让他们的信仰进入到生活中，带来改变
他说，这段亚当和基督经典对比的段落描述了作为人类始祖的亚当，因为他一人的悖逆，构成了一个悖逆的生活方式，而整个人类文明史阐述了亚当的后代寻找到了属于自己的生活；因着基督，众人成为了基督徒，却因着抗拒这个悖逆的世界而拒绝将信仰融入生活中。
随后，A牧师引用理查德·尼布尔（H.Richard Niebuhr）著作《基督与文化》（Christ and Culture），谈到其中探索基督与文化之间存在五种关系，其中一种关系是拒绝文化，持有世俗二分的观念，基要主义不愿意与已经被罪玷污的世界产生关系。基督徒认为进入世界中就会沾染污秽，所以很乐意只是在教会中生活。他举例说，当年的外国宣教士就有戴德生路线和李提摩太路线：戴德生坚持直接向人传福音拯救灵魂，关注人与神之间的关系，而不谈世界；李提摩太提倡不只是跟人传福音，而是要进入到世界之中作光作盐。他认为具有滑稽意味的是，当今持基要信仰的一些信徒十分推崇当年传教士建立的大学和医院等机构，却不知道这些遗产都是以李提摩太为首的自由派传教士来推动建立的。
A牧师说到，自由主义在现在国内的基督徒群体中并没有留下太多属灵遗产，而真正能在人们心中生根建造的仍是基要主义，基要信仰是我们得以站立的根基。具有强生命力的基要主义却很难持久，因为基要主义具有很强的防御性，却缺乏延展性。极端的基要主义强烈捍卫纯正的信仰，拒绝引发基督徒犯错误的东西，容易跟世界形成对立。
“律法本是外添的，叫过犯显多“，A牧师引用这节经文说到，律法是防止人们犯罪的手段，所以给人设立了很多规矩，作为罪人的我们必然会触犯这些律法，由此说明，我们的生命存在问题，所以我们需要基督来更新我们的生命，但是我们需要一个过程来察验何为正确和何为错误，才会有改变的可能性，不然圣经经文对我们来说会变成很空的概念而已。
“只是罪在哪里显多，恩典就更显多了”，A牧师继续引用圣经《罗马书》里面的经文解释说，我们在不断实践信仰的过程中会犯很多的错误，但是这种真实的状态会让我们的信仰有血有肉，因为会看到恩典更显多了。我们会知道向神活着的状态是真实的，被神赦免也是真实的。
这位牧师认为，文化宣教士就是给很多人有文化的机会，让他们的信仰进入到生活中，必定会迎来改变。著名的“牧师中的牧师“尤金·毕德生曾经说过，信心从来不是一个结果，而是一个过程，过程中一定会有混乱和错误，所以信心就是让我们可以在混乱不完美的状态中继续往前走。
如何帮助基督徒的软弱？教会除了强调属灵操练，文化和实践方法也是必要的，并非不属灵
提及“软弱一词”，这位牧师说到，他发现当下我们的教会有个现象——好多基督徒觉得自己很软弱，而教会大部分一直只时在属灵的层面上思考软弱的问题，并没有真正在生活中实际的去真正有效的去解决这个问题。
他进一步解释说，基要主义的方法是用一些基要真理表达人的真实状况，这是没有错的，可这些真实状况是需要一些实际操作去解决的，比如说，基督徒的软弱是一个事实，但我们一般最基要、最简单的的操作就是我们说这个人需要更多祷告、需要跟神建立更好的关系，这些都是一些基要化的表述，但在实际操作中没有给出实际可应用的例子。
“而文化恰恰就是在生活中好像比如一些实际的教育和引导帮助基督徒走出这种状态的方式。”他如此解释他所强调的文化的含义和作用，“所以从这个意义上，我不觉得文化和实践是不属灵。”
除了文化之外，A牧师还谈到意志力、品格和劳动、运动等。他举例说，以前天主教的修道士除了高强度的属灵操练之外，必不可少就是大量的劳作活动。L牧师说：“我认为，有时基督徒的软弱并不是属灵的问题，而是意志力和品格的问题。”所以，他也致力于推动基督徒参与体育运动，在运动中培养毅力和忍耐力，感受到自己在真正活着。
他推荐大家去读《直奔金牌》一书，相信不少基督徒都听说过伟大的基督徒运动员埃里克•利迪尔的故事。埃里克•利迪尔的中文名是李爱锐，他为了坚守主日而放弃在巴黎第8届奥运会的星期天上午参加自己擅长的100米和200米比赛，这位“苏格兰飞人”却赢得了400米比赛，夺得金牌，引起世人瞩目和钦佩。成为奥运冠军后，李爱锐继承作为传教士的父亲的志愿，毅然放弃美好的前程而来到中国宣教，而后不幸的是，1942年，他和众多西方侨民被日军押送到山东潍坊集中营，由于极为恶劣的生活环境，他因病逝世，年仅43岁。
在潍县集中营，李爱锐并没有自怨自艾，而是带着乐观的精神教集中营里的孩子们补习功课，并且带着他们进行体育活动。
“我认为，他在集中营的坚持比他赢400米比赛更加勇敢。”
他最后说道：“某种程度我们都在放弃自己想要的生活，只有在坚持中才能体会生活。上帝是有位格的，而我们要做的就是去回应他。一种新的文化应该被勇敢的人去尝试，按照生命该有的样式活着。如同耶稣与门徒同吃同喝，有着神的形象的人本来就应该按照生命该有的样式活着，会发现活成这个样子也没那么可怕。
华东一青年牧者：将信仰融入生活 意味着基督徒需更加注重文化和运动、操练意志力和品格
Recently a pastor in East China stressed that if Christians desired to integrate faith into their lives, they ought to pay more attention to culture and sports, and to enhance the training of willpower and character.
With many years of pastoral experience, Pastor A serves in the cultural field, devoting himself to explore how the Christian faith is integrated into daily life. His vision lies in that through his service more Christians would not only be confined to church and religious life, but also walk into the culture, society and live out their faith in their normal life.
In a Sunday service, the house church pastor shared the relationship between Christ and culture, according to Romans 5:19-21.
"Cultural missionaries give people the opportunity to explore culture, let their beliefs enter their lives and bring about changes," he highlighted.
He said that this passage, being a classic comparison between Adam and Christ, described Adam as the ancestor of mankind, because his disobedience alone constituted a rebellious lifestyle, and the whole history of human civilization showed that Adam’s descendants had found their own lifestyle. Because of Christ, people became Christians, but as they resisted this rebellious world they refused to integrate their faith into their lives instead.
Quoting H. Richard Niebuhr’s book Christ and Culture, Pastor A talked about exploring five relationships between Christ and culture. One of them was to reject culture and hold the idea of secular dichotomy, and fundamentalists were unwilling to have a relationship with the world that had been defiled by sin. Those type of Christians thought that when they entered the world they would be affected by sin so they were satisfied to just live in the church. For instance, he said that foreign missionaries in the last century held the Hudson Taylor's fundamentalism route and the Timothy Richard's liberalism route: Hudson Taylor insisted on preaching the gospel directly to save souls, paying attention to the relationship between men and God but not talking about the world, while Timothy Richard advocated not only preaching the gospel to others but also going into the world as light and salt. Pastor A thought it was ironic that the fundamentalists who today highly admired the universities and hospitals established by missionaries in the early days were not aware that these heritages were promoted by liberal missionaries headed by Timothy Richard.
Pastor A said that liberalism had not left much spiritual heritage in the Christian community in China and what could really lodge in people’s minds was still fundamentalism. The faith foundation was the basis for us to stand. However, fundamentalism with strong vitality was difficult to last because it was very defensive and inextensible. Extreme fundamentalism strongly defended pure faith, rejected things that caused Christians to make mistakes, and easily formed opposition with the world.
“The law was added so that the trespass might increase.” Pastor A quoted the passage as saying that the law was a means to prevent people from committing crimes - so many provisions had been set for people.
"As sinners, we are bound to break these laws. This shows that there are problems in our lives so we need Christ to renew us. Yet, we need a process to check what is right and wrong so that we can have the possibility of change. Otherwise the Bible verses would become empty for us."
“But where sin increased, grace increased all the more... We will make many mistakes in the process of practicing our faith, but this true statement will make our faith a living faith because we will see that grace is more obvious. We will know that it is true to live with God and to be forgiven by God," he added.
According to the pastor, cultural missionaries gave many people the opportunity to have culture so that their beliefs can be brought into their lives and they were bound to change as a result. Eugene Bidson, the famous “pastor of pastors”, once said that faith was never a result but a process, and there would be chaos and mistakes in the process. Therefore, faith meant that we could continue to move forward in a chaotic and imperfect state.
To deal with Christians’ weakness, culture and practical methods were also necessary in addition to emphasizing spiritual practice. It was not necessarily "godly".
Referring to the word “weakness”, the pastor said that he found that there was a phenomenon in the Chinese church: many Christians felt weak but most churches only thought about weakness on the spiritual level, and did not really solve this problem in real life.
He further explained that the fundamentalist method was to express people’s real situation with some basic truths, which was not wrong, but these real situations that needed some practical operations to solve. For instance, the weakness of Christians was a fact, but our most basic and simplest operation were merely pointing out that this person needed more prayers and needed to establish a better relationship with God. These were only some basic expressions but no practical examples were given in practical operations.
“And culture, for example some practical education and guidance, is precisely the way to help Christians get out of such state in life.” He explained the meaning and function of culture in this way. He went on to emphasize that “so in this sense, I don’t think culture and practice are not spiritual.”
Besides culture, Pastor A also talked about willpower, character, labor, sports and so on. For example, he said that in the past, apart from high-intensity spiritual exercises, Catholic monks were indispensable for a large number of laboring activities.
“I think that sometimes the weakness of Christians is not a spiritual problem, but a problem of willpower and character.” Therefore, he also devoted himself to promoting Christians to participate in sports, cultivating perseverance and endurance in sports, and feeling that he was really alive.
He recommended people to read the book Eric Liddell: Pure Gold. He believed many Christians had heard of the story of the great Christian athlete Eric Liddell whose Chinese name was Airui Li. For insisting on attending Sunday worship, Liddell gave up taking part in the 100m and 200m competitions that he was good at on Sunday morning of the eighth Olympic Games in Paris. However, this “flying scotsman” won the 400m competition and won the gold medal, which attracted worldwide attention and admiration. After becoming the Olympic champion, Liddell inherited his father’s wish as a missionary. He resolutely gave up his bright future and came to China for missionary work. Unfortunately, in 1942, he and many western expatriates were taken by the Japanese army to the Western Migrants Concentration Camp in Shandong. Due to the extremely poor living environment, he died of illness at the age of 43.
In the camp, Liddell did not feel sorry for himself. Instead, he taught the children in the camp to take lessons with optimism and took them to sports activities.
“I think his persistence in the concentration camp was braver than his winning the 400-meter race.”
He concluded, “To some extent, we are all giving up the life we want, and only by persisting can we experience life. God is special and all we have to do is respond to Him. A new culture should be tried by brave people and live according to the style of life. Just as Jesus ate and drunk with his disciples, people with the image of God should have lived in the style of life, and they will find that it is not so terrible to live like this.”
- Translated by Charlie Li
Pastor in East China: 'Integrating Faith into Life Means Christians Ought to Better Focus on Culture, Sports, Train Willpower, Character'
