There are lots of conversations we might have about culture. In the church context that I mainly speak into, we are often dealing with questions about different ethnic cultures, our town’s culture and our church culture.

Culture – particularly when we are speaking about institutional culture such as within the church – can feel like a squishy term. We all sort of know it when we see it but it is quite difficult to define. We can even talk about diferent church cultures, and know exactly what we mean, whilst struggling to define it.

At its simplest, culture is just who we are and what we do. When we talk about ‘our culture’, we tend to mean what we are as a group/organisation and the way we therefore do things around here because of our shared assumptions and beliefs.

This can help us as we think about welcoming people from different cultures in the church. We can think in terms of who we are and what we do as a church when people join us. We can think in terms of who we would like to be and what we would like to do. We can think about the ethnic cultures from which others are joining us and think in terms of who they are and what they do. We can think about the majority culture of the church (who most people are and what most of them do) and minority cultures in the church (what some people are and what some of them do).

These ways of thinking about culture can help us as we seek to be welcoming in the church and as we think biblically about the demands on the Lord’s people. Whose assumptions are most commonly affirmed and why? How far are cultural differences permitted, displayed and affirmed? Which cultures (outside the majority culture) would recognise these things?

These kind of things can help us think through what our culture is, how majority and minority cultures will experience church, and how we can be biblically welcoming to people from a range of different cultural backgrounds.