1. Practice Discipleship:
Theories of Culture
A New Agenda for Theology, Ministry & Faith Formation
Rev. Nathan C.P. Frambach, Ph.D.

2. Three (3) Assertions
 The Christian gospel and culture(s) cannot be
separated
 We (human beings) live within a pluriverse of
cultures
 Congregations are one of those cultures
 Workshop goal: cultivate an understanding of
culture that will support and serve faithful, truthful,
and effective ministry in a missional age

3. Three (3) BIG Realities
 1. Culture(s)
 2. Context
 3. Narrative (story)
 The “cultural turn” from text to context: “Scholars of
religion have turned more and more to the interactions
and relationships between religion and culture, and to
do that requires embedding religion in its contexts.”
(Religion and Culture, p. xii)
 In other words: understanding specific religious
beliefs/practices (e.g. Christianity) entails “descending
into detail” and engaging specific cultural context

4. What is Culture?
 Here’s a topic: culture. Discuss.
 The question is: What is culture? Engage. Begin.
Discuss.
 This should be difficult, perhaps even frustrating.
 Why? Because the “notion” of culture is inherently
abstract and nebulous
 Check out the Websteresque definition, specifically
#5

5. Culture: Not Generalized
 Generalized (decontextualized) attempts to understand
culture are seldom helpful unless you’re writing a textbook
 It’s an old analogy, but asking someone to describe their
“culture” is like asking a fish to describe water (assuming you
can find a talking fish)—it’s hard to see it when you are in it
 “Culture includes all the things a group does together…
Culture is who we are and the world we have created to live
in. It is the predictable patterns of who does what and habitual
strategies for telling the world about the things held most
dear.” (Nancy Ammerman, Studying Congregations, p.15; pp.
78-79)

6. Culture: Beyond
Dictionary.com
 To paraphrase anthropologist Clifford Geertz, any road
to truly understanding a culture runs through the
particular and means “descending into detail”
 Or, Shrek was right—like ogres and onions, cultures
have layers
 Understanding culture begins with the outer layer—
observable behavior, customs, rituals, symbols,
language, etc.
 That’s why we need to shift our attention to particular
cultural contexts, specifically, congregations

7. What about coNteXt?
 Here’s another topic: context.
 Describe your ministry context—the social context
of the congregation (e.g., neighborhood, larger
community) as well as the congregation itself. Be
specific.
 So how’d that go? Easier than the earlier
conversations about “culture”?
 Probably so—because contexts are more specific.
And describing them is more like telling a story.

8. Congregation as context
 “Each congregation sees it self as a community of God,
dedicated to sacred things. Yet congregations are also
social institutions…they are places where people
interact, working with one another and serving
constituents…the congregation is analyzed as a unit, and
as a unit interacting with other units in society: people,
organizations, and cultures…Even as it is dedicated to
God, your congregation is a human institution located in
history (the date of its founding to the present), in a
specific place in geography (your community), and in the
lives of its members (the network “maps” of their lives).”
 Eiesland & Warner, Studying Congregations, pp. 40—43)

9. Descend Into Detail
 A deliberate, specific focus on context means at least two
(2) things for leadership in ministry:
 1. Moving beyond a “theology as projectile” view of
congregational context and unearthing the theology that
is embedded there
 2. In order to do this we need to learn how to carefully
attend to the context without rushing to impose a
“theology” on it
 This demands some tools from the social sciences (e.g.,
ethnography, interviews, congregational timeline)—a
new skill-set for many of us, but skills that can be
learned

10. Ethnography, for example
 It’s beyond the scope of this workshop to get into
these various approaches
 Studying Congregations is an excellent resource
(particularly chapter 7)
 Ethnography is a focused, disciplined attentiveness
to a particular context with the goal of
understanding it better
 It is a kind of holy listening that pays close attention
to narrative and stories

11. Narrative & Storied Living
 One more topic for discussion: story
 Tell your congregation’s story
 Or tell a story about the congregation where you serve
 Or tell a story about a significant ministry experience
connected to the congregation where you serve
 The point is to help us conclude with a focus on practices
that empower faithful, truthful, and effective ministry

12. Three (3) Practices of Story
 We want to conclude by proposing some practices of story that
can help us unearth signs of God’s presence and activity in
specific, cultural, congregational contexts
 1. Dwelling in God’s Story
 2. The practice of “story hearing”—listening, listening,
listening
 3. Story-telling and telling the Story
 One way to understand culture is to understand a cultural
context, and one effective approach to understanding a
cultural context is a focus on narrative—which begins with the
mutual relationship between hearing story and telling story.