WEDNESDAY’S WORD – COUNTER-CULTURAL – 062817 – Sadell Bradley – New Life Covenant Cincinnati

to the untrained eye looks downright crazy. They return upstream to the place of their birth to lay eggs. In the life of Salmon, COUNTER-CULTURE is the pathway to future fruitfulness, and ensures that the next generation will live. A COUNTER-CULTURE is a sub-culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of ‘mainstream’ society. In Christianity, it’s engaging and being relevant to societal contexts while at the same time remaining faithful to the Gospel.

We are admonished in Scripture NOT to be conformed to the world’s standards, but to be transformed by renewing our minds in order to prove God’s good, acceptable and perfect will. The willingness to continually put our lives on the altar of sacrifice is our spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1-2) Worship is more than singing songs. We must be armed and ready to believe and speak differently as Christ followers, and to act on those beliefs…even to our hurt, to save future generations in the Kingdom.

Last weekend, two days after the mistrial in the shooting of Samuel Dubose by UC Police Officer Ray Tensing, Sherman had an assignment to preach on Race at an almost all-Caucasian church. We’ve done decades of counter-cultural racial, class and gender reconciliation work

in this region and beyond. (Gal 3:28)  We’ve also started a racially reconciled church as African-American leaders, which is very difficult when 86.7% of US churches are mono-ethnic. Everyone wants to stay in their comfort zones. Few are willing to pay the price to be counter-cultural. It’s difficult to go upstream when everyone else is going down, but it qualifies you for crucial moments like these. Do we feel mixed emotions (anger, frustration, fear, sadness) since African-American’s lives are in danger, and we don’t know how we’ll be treated from moment to moment? Definitely. Does the love of Christ constrain our responses? Absolutely. Is it possible we might be misunderstood or even hurt? Unquestionably. Will we continue to do the work to bring about the Unity of One New Humanity described in Ephesians 2 and John 17? By all means.