“God’s first and best gift to humanity is culture.”--Andy CrouchCulture Making: Recovering Our Creative CallingStewardingThe Good Life

What Is Culture?“Culture is what we make of the world.”Culture is, first of all, the name for our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it’s given to us and make something else… It always bears the stamp of our creativity, our God-given desire to make something more than we were given.After thousands of years of accumulating human culture, the world we must make something of is largely the world others before us have made. Culture, even more than nature, defines for us the horizons of possibility and impossibility. We live in the world that culture has made. (Andy Crouch)

“Culture always and only comes from particular human acts of cultivation and creativity.” (Ibid.)

Stewarding the Good LifeGenesis 1:26-28 (TNIV) 28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Stewarding the Good LifeGenesis 1:29-30 (TNIV) 29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.Before the Fall, we were all regularGod didn’t just give us plantsGod gave us all responsibility

The Dual Cultural MandateSteward GOD’S IMAGE God’s GLORYMultiply and Diversify! (next Sunday)Steward the GOOD LIFE God’s BLESSINGSFill the earth and subdue itRule over all creaturesCultivate & Create CULTURE

Genesis 2 15The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.Gen 1 = God’s creativity & our being like GodGen 2 = Cultivating and Creating!God had already planted The GardenNot just tending it but creating too (2:19)!“God’s first and best gift to humanity is culture, the realm in which human beings themselves will be the cultivators and creators, ultimately contributing to the cosmic purposes of the Cultivator and Creator of the natural world.” (Ibid.)

Gen 1 = God’s creativity & our being like God

Gen 2 = Cultivating and Creating!

God had already planted The Garden

Not just tending it but creating too (2:19)!

Our Typical Responses to CultureCondemnCritiqueCopyConsume“I wonder what we Christians are known for in the world outside of our churches. Are we known as critics, consumers, copiers, condemners of culture? I’m afraid so…”

Artists & GardenersBoth begin with a posture of CONTEMPLATIONAfter contemplation, the Artist and the Gardener both adopt a posture of PURPOSEFUL WORKGardener tends what has gone before, making the most of what is beautiful and weeding out what is distracting or uselessArtist starts with blank canvas or block of stone and gradually brings out of it that which was never there before

Culture is what we make of the world.As stewards of God’s Good Life in Christ…We are to start with what is, Contemplate how God wants to improve it, And then devote ourselves to the effort to make this realSome examples:EBCLA’s vision to become a Faith VillageTemple Tutoring, Family Promise, Youth MinistryMy serving on secular drug agency’s boardChris Wong’s films, Palisoc’s charter schoolsHow might Jesus be calling you to cultivate and create culture in your part of The Garden?