US vs. UK – Culture Clash

The other day Mark Driscoll said some controversial things (though, to be fair, that’s a little like saying ‘yesterday Mark Driscoll got up and ate breakfast’).  As usual, they made me mad.  However, I didn’t really want to give him any more attention by writing about him.

Today I was catching up on some blog reading and Tall Skinny Kiwi did a great job of talking about the situation.  The US and UK churches are very different (in many of the same ways that the cultures of the two countries are different).

While many American church leaders see thousands of church attenders as the sign of success, some British say 40 is the highest number of church attenders that will still allow an acceptable working dynamic of interaction and intimacy with each other. Any more than 40, and people slip through the cracks or become mere spectators.

This is just one of the cultural differences that he fingers, but this specifically caught my attention because it’s one of the things that I’m struggling with in my US church right now.  I’ve gone from a Fresh Expressions environment to a fairly typical suburban church with the usual emphasis on pumping up the numbers.  And I feel like I’ve fallen through the cracks.  Not in my small group, of course.  In my small group there are a handful of people who notice what’s going on in my life and know some of my struggles.  But on a Sunday morning I feel no more connected than I do sitting in a movie theater.

For an American pastor to take a pot shot at the Church in another country because he feels it doesn’t live up to his country’s values (having nothing to do with Biblical values) rings false.  And dangerous.