“What Kind of Change Should We Strive For in Our Communities?” - Andy Crouch

As we spend the week talking about ways to Create Good in our communities, it's worth keeping this advice from Andy Crouch in mind. Sometimes humility is the best way to approach our neighbors; the good we create doesn't have to rock the cultural foundations of our society. Sometimes, it just means listening well, sharing burdens, and responding to pain with love, rather than rushing to provide systematic solutions.

As Andy has argued in his book Culture Making, the best way to change culture is to create more of it. Instead of setting ourselves against our neighbors and co-workers, how can we contribute to a culture of grace and flourishing that draws people closer, rather than pushing them away?

Transcript: My least favorite word that I hear a lot is "impact," . . . "Impact the culture." Well, what are we saying when we say we want to impact the culture? We are saying we want to arrive with a huge splash, right? Like a comet impacting a planet. In the movies, when a comet is about to impact the planet, the whole world mobilizes to prevent that from happening . . . because cultures actually resists impact very effectively. Cultures are designed to ward off impact. Instead, I think we need to look for more modest words: words like influence, words like create, and words like contribute . . . and leave the sort of big scale transformation up to the God of history.