bon jovi

hi. i'm still breathing real good. thanks for prayin'/askin'/carin'/lovin'/touchin'/squeezin'...

in august of 1993, my friend twitch was a youth ministry intern in gaithersburg, md. some friends and i went down to do a concert for the high-schoolers. a lot of it was christian-type stuff, but we also did a stripped-down version of bon jovi's classic "living on a prayer". (in 2007, we remember that song with an eye-roll and a grin, but in '93 it was still nice and relevant...kinda.) we did it with the intention of building a "cultural bridge": something to allow these kids to connect their culture to the expression of their faith. i remember that being one of the highlights of the concert.


there are many, many examples in our music and other media that express, as mark acuff has put it, "the heart-cry of our culture". for a long time, the church has made indelible distinctions between secular and sacred. it's not nearly that dichotomic. i think of the examples of jesus and paul, who each used cultural tools to teach the eternal truths of the kingdom of god. jesus's parables about farming, servants, virgins, mustard seeds, and expensive pearls may not have much direct impact on our 21st-century ears, but for folks in judea, circa 31 a.d., they provided an avenue of understanding that the pharisees' teaching probably did not. paul, speaking to the high council in athens, quoted back to them their own poet aratos, bridging the "unknown" to the known.

the important thing here is that jesus and paul both studied and knew their culture well and could therefore speak its language. it's no less important today for the church to adopt this posture; in fact it may be more important in the post-christian west.


there is a book that i borrowed from someone (and need to give back) called a matrix of meanings, written by a couple of fuller seminary professors. though i borrowed/usurped it three years ago, i have only read about thirty pages of it (just another brick paving the road to hell), but i know people who have taken courses from these guys and have read their book, and were very impressed by both. also, if anyone knows of records/songs/artists that express well these temporal-eternal tensions, please point me in their direction.

thanks.