2010 will mark several significant milestones in the globalization of Christianity. It is the hundredth anniversary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, in many ways the high-water mark of Euro-American Protestant missions. It is also the year that the Lausanne Movement, whose initial congress in 1974 solidified the worldwide evangelical movement, holds its third Congress, this time in Cape Town, South Africa.

Lausanne’s Cape Town 2010 Congress will be dramatically different from either Edinburgh 1910 or Lausanne 1974. At Edinburgh there were no representatives at all of non-Western Christianity (Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches were not present). Lausanne 1974 had an influential representation from what was then called the “Third World,” but they were decidedly in the minority. In Cape Town in 2010, the majority of the 4,500 delegates will be from the “majority world.” And the majority of those delegates will be paying their own way rather than relying on Western financial support. It’s a remarkable moment and worth celebrating.

Only a few hundred US citizens will be able to attend Cape Town 2010. For the rest of us, the Lausanne Movement is convening twelve conversations in twelve cities about major issues facing the global church. It’s an in-person version of the Global Conversation series I helped to launch at Christianity Today. I had the privilege of joining the conversation in Chicago in March, and on Wednesday 16 June I’ll be on the panel for the Orlando conversation. I’m not worthy to untie the sandals of my fellow panelists, who range from Catalyst director Brad Lomenick to Jesse Miranda from the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

You’ll have to be in Orlando to join that conversation, but tomorrow night (Thursday 10 June) the Global Conversation arrives at Saddleback Church in southern California, and it will be webcast live at 7 p.m. PDT. You can watch it here.

— Andy Crouch

We had a fabulous conversation about fiction, story, what helps artists create (hint: too much money is actually a bad idea), and how Christians can create excellent art of all kinds. Fortunately the conference call, sponsored by Wedgwood Circle, was recorded. If you care about art, writing, and faith, it’s absolutely worth an hour of your time. You can listen here (free registration is required). Enjoy. (I’m sure of one thing: by the end, you will want to read Carey’s new book when it comes out in July.)

—Andy

Nathan has since established his own production company, Fourth Line Films, which not only has continued to collaborate with Christianity Today and me on projects like Round Trip and The Global Conversation, but also created a documentary short on local food for HDNet and produced a fun short film on hog wrestling in uttermost Wisconsin—which you can view in all its glory below. Suffice to say his interests are impressively varied, just like this site!

In 2010 Nathan and I are exploring new ways to create media and experiences that build on Culture Making and my new work on creative power. We’ll be posting some short videos this spring from recent speaking engagements, and Nathan will join Nate, Christy, and me in spotting and sharing cultural creativity worth celebrating. Welcome, Nathan!

—Andy Crouch

Putting out an audio edition of a book like Culture Making is a real economic risk, so if you, like me, are happy to see the book available in this form, I encourage you to support christianaudio with a purchase of a copy (or two—pass one along to your favorite commuter, jogger, or [always in need of sermon inspiration] pastor).

Also, I’m very pleased that the Jesuit publishing house Sal Terrae has released the Spanish translation, Crear cultura: Recupar nuestra vocación creativa. Espero que este libro será útil para muchos en el mundo de habla español.

— Andy Crouch

Christy will be joining Nate and me for the next month—longer if we can persuade her to stay around—contributing her keen eye for cultural developments near and far, such as her first post, based on her personal experience with the Uyghur people of western China. As this picture of Christy dancing at a Uyghur wedding shows, her horizons of possibility are wide. Welcome, Christy!

—Andy Crouch

Also, if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, or (heaven forfend) tweet yourself, watch my Twitter updates later this week for some ways you may be able to participate in helping us explore the potential of social media to completely disrupt and undermine—er, I mean, um, create new participatory forms of engagement with—contemporary preaching.

—Andy Crouch

Another great interview was also posted this week by Graham Scharf, the co-founder of the innovative and helpful parenting site Tumblon. I’ve been pleased and surprised at how many people have picked up on the themes of family and parenting in Culture Making, and Graham had some great questions to take those ideas further. If you are a fan of Culture Making who is also a parent of young children, you will love and learn from Tumblon.

Finally, a cultural question to ponder: As good as some of my radio interviews have been, why is it that the very best ones have been podcasts—with a fraction of the listening audience?

Culture is changed when we create more culture. And for two and a half years, I’ve been working with some amazing friends and colleagues to change culture in a crucial area: the way the North American church does short-term mission trips overseas. The result is our brand new DVD Round Trip, a documentary film-based curriculum for short-term mission teams.

I’m incredibly proud of this project. I don’t think anyone has done this before: document not just an North American team going to Kenya, but a Kenyan short-term team coming to America. We got some of the best thinkers and teachers on the planet to give us deep insights into the best way to build lasting partnerships in short trips: Lisa Espineli Chinn, Tim Dearborn, David Livermore, Oscar Muriu, and Ruth Padilla DeBorst. We worked with two churches, Mavuno Downtown in Narobi and Chapel Hill Bible Church in North Carolina, who have learned deep lessons about partnership in mission, not least because of the leadership of a UNC professor named Jim Thomas who has founded an innovative nonprofit called Africa Rising.

Behind the scenes, I got to work again with Nate Clarke of Fourth Line Films and director of photography Jeffrey Pohorski (who both worked with me on Where Faith and Culture Meet), plus an amazing crew including a great Kenyan cameraman we met named Ken Oloo. And the soundtrack was produced by one of my musical heroes, Charlie Peacock. The Leadership Media Group at Christianity Today International created outstanding leaders’ and participants’ guides for short-term teams to use in the months before, and after, their trip.

If your Christian community is seeking to build deeper international partnerships, if you want short-term trips to be more than just “Christian tourism,” if you are curious about the promise and peril of the short-term trips that millions of Americans take each year—check out Round Trip, and spread the word!

—Andy Crouch

Culture Making was also second on Leadership’s “Golden Canon” for 2008 for “The Leader’s Outer World” (“a wise and bold call to fully live out our creational mandate”) and one of Relevant’s ten best books of 2008 (“a thoughtful, extremely helpful reality-check”). Earlier Publisher’s Weekly named it one of the best religion books of 2008.

Wow. Thanks to all the editors, judges, and most importantly readers who have given Culture Making such an enthusiastic welcome. May it inspire many more cultural goods, including even better books!

Culture Making is an exceptional book. It is a manifesto of sorts, challenging Christians to live differently in the 21st century than we have in the 20th. It is a clarion call to stop whining, to stop uncritically imitating and consuming, and above all to stop pretending that we are not part of the problems we perceive in “the Culture.” What would it take, he asks, for Christians to be known primarily as creators—“people who dare to think and do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful?” Great question! My hope and prayer is that this book might accomplish for a generation of young Christians what Walsh and Middleton’s Transforming Vision accomplished a quarter of a century ago—inspiring and motivating them to lead more faithful and culturally meaningful lives.

But even more unique and therefore valuable is today’s review of Culture Making by Guinness in Comment magazine from Cardus, who is (to judge by the accompanying photographs) a black Labrador of uncommon intelligence.

For all his enthusiasm, though, Guinness does make the strong case that the book falls short in one crucial respect:

Food is not just an adequate analogy for culture making; in fact, food is the highest form of culture making. If I were to ask you how you contributed to making culture, what response could possibly make me happier than if you said, “I prepare food”?

Fair enough. Many thanks to Karl and to Guinness (and whoever among his human pets helped to transcribe his review). Keep cultivating and creating!

Though aren’t there still two months left? Well, in any case, it’s a great honor.

Monday, 20 October—7:00 p.m.
Azusa Pacific University’s Homecoming 2008
Los Angeles Pacific Banquet Room
A talk about the essential ingredients of cultural creativity. For more information contact the office of Andrea McAleenan, +1 626 815-5327.

Tuesday, 21 October—6:30 p.m.
InterVarsity San Diego Division
UCSD Institute for the Americas
Part of IVCF’s “Everyday World Changers” event—an informative and inspiring evening about the role campus ministries play in cultural renewal. RSVP required online.

Wednesday, 22 October—7:30 p.m.
Pacific Crossroads Church Office
10351 Santa Monica Blvd. in Westwood
Dessert, fun, and conversation about “Christianity, Culture, and the Current Credit Crisis” with friends including Merrill Lynch’s Mary King. RSVP by email to Mary.

It’s an interesting notion. I started cataloguing the big creative projects I’ve worked on in my own life, and such as they are (I’ve not yet dreamed up a Google or something similar), they really do follow that pattern of 3:12:120.

Every one of us has a three in our lives. Look around you. They’re there.

Find them. And create something. Something small. Something huge. Something good.

Put it out there.

Make culture, rather than simply complaining or consuming it.

Become the poet who changes the world.

All of us hope this study guide will be useful as you gather groups to “make something of the world.” Group leaders, please let us know what else could help you make the most of Culture Making!

I couldn’t be happier with Christianity Today’s cover section in the September issue—a level of coverage that came as a great surprise to me. (I work for CT’s parent company but have no direct editorial responsibility for the magazine.) They not only generously excerpted my book, but wrote five terrific short stories about exemplary “culture makers” I suggested: people who are cultivators and creators in very different places and spheres of culture.

If you’re a regular you’ve probably already read the chapter that CT excerpted, but you might enjoy this brief interview with Derek Keefe and David Neff’s opening editorial. David captures one of my goals for the book very well:

Since 1951, the Christian discussion of culture has been uncomfortably squeezed into five boxes created by H. Richard Niebuhr’s magisterial Christ and Culture. Generations of pastors and scholars have analyzed their church traditions using Niebuhr’s categories: Is my denomination an example of “Christ against culture”? What should it be? “Christ and culture in paradox”? As someone who found the Niebuhrian categories a frustrating dead end, I was delighted to find that Andy managed to write about culture from a Christian perspective for about 200 pages before turning briefly to Niebuhr. Culture Making subverts and reorients the whole discussion.

I surely hope David is right . . . let a new, better, and more creative conversation begin.