I've just finished a book that I've been meaning to read for a while. Almost two years ago I heard about it, a while later researched it on Amazon and added it to my wishlist, for my birthday a couple months ago I got it from my best friend (There's your mention LeClaire ;) ) and last week I started reading it. The anticipation had my expectations in the stratosphere. I was not disappointed.
Culture Making by Andy Crouch is a very thick book. Only 280 pages, but intensely researched and carefully practical. The idea of changing or influencing our culture is common place in our world, and exists in a unique way in Christian circles. We have tried to influence the culture, we've tried to change it, we've copied it, dismissed it, tried to create our own outside of "the world". Crouch makes the theoretical world of culture simultaneously concrete and fluid. He takes the world we live in, of a million cultures woven together, something we can begin to perceive and influence.
Please, if you have any understanding of how important Christianity's interaction with culture is, read this book. I can't even start to explain all the points Crouch makes, and if I did, I really don't think it would do them any sort of justice. So instead of summarizing the whole host of concepts he discusses, I'm just going to tell you to read the book. And now I'm gonna talk about a bit at the end, which sparked my particular interest, and I hope makes you think about your impact differently.
Crouch goes to great lengths to accurately reflect how the individual is influenced by and also influences culture - the immediate culture of their family unit rippling out to the global culture at large. He is realistic, noting that while all humans have the capacity and inclination to shape culture, often those impacts don't ripple much farther than their own homes. But at the tail end of the book, he offers hope - not just hope, but practical, realistic, and feasible application toward helping the individual make a cultural difference in the long term.
3:12:120
All a person needs, to make a difference, is an absolutely small group of about 3 people. A group that knows each other, realizes the strengths and weaknesses of each, and shares a passion and complimentary gifts. We all are a part of these intimately small groups. Not many, but at least one, and likely a few. Each individual is surrounded by more people, who encourage and help cultivate the new cultural good created by the small group. This circle amounts to about 12 people, give or take a few. These 12 are those willing to help, who can be extra hands and ears in moving from concept to reality. Outside those 12 are the 120, the people who are putting the good in motion, who immediately enact it and benefit from it. Crouch gives numerous examples, from books to political policies to movies to restaurants to technological innovations, all of which follow the pattern of 3:12:120. From an absolutely small group, to their circle of cultivators, to their enablers. This pattern allows for any and all of us to begin realizing our God-given potential as culture-makers.
Which starts me thinking about who my 3 would be. The title of the chapter in which Crouch discusses the 3:12:120 concept is Community - something I spend a good deal of my time thinking about. The longer I think about it, I realize, I have several "3s". They don't all number exactly three. They range from three to six, but all still quite small groups, who have the potential to create and cultivate culture in unique ways.
So how do I harness that? How have I already, possibly? I think back to those groups, and in fact, we have made changes. Many of those groups exist on my university's campus, and have impacted the culture of our campus home simply by making choices about how we spend our time together. We didn't do anything purposefully, we didn't change much, and likely our impact will fade once we and those we know there have moved on - but we did have an impact. I've seen this principle in church planting - the church I currently work with began with two or three men who had an idea of what church should look like and how it could impact this city. They, with their families, began ministering here; they reached out to people in the city and outside of it. 3:12:120. And the church grew.
At the end of the last chapter, Crouch makes an incredible statement:
"So, do you want to make culture? Find a community, a small group who can lovingly fuel your dreams and puncture your illusions. Find friends and form a family who are willing to see grace at work in one another's lives, who can discern together which gifts and which crosses each has been called to bear. Find people who have a holy respect for power alongside the powerless. Find some partners in the wild and wonderful world beyond church doors. And then, together, make something of the world."
One of the many brilliant beauties of this book is that Crouch turns our - at least my - ideas of culture on their heads. I have mostly thought about culture as something shared, yes, but still largely enjoyed and impacted by individuals who happen to make up a whole. We value the individual, and we see individuals change the world. But look a little closer, and those individual could not do what they did without the 3:12:120 in their own lives. The 3's in your life could impact the world in powerful ways, if cultivated well.
Why not explore the possibilities?
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