Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, can the church connect us? And this is prompted by an interesting article I read in the Wall Street Journal recently about the rise and fall of the American monoculture. Was written by Ben Fritz. And Fritz's point is that at one time in America, pop culture was kind of the glue that held us together. we had shared experiences through television, film, music, kind of from the early 1940s all the way up to 2000. I mean, if there was a hit TV show, a hit movie, a hit album that was out, we had all watched it, we'd seen it, we'd listened to it, and. And that meant at work or at places where we gather, we could talk about it. It was a kind of connective tissue. Everybody had seen Star wars, everybody had seen Lord of the Rings, Everybody had heard Thriller, so on and so forth. And so even if you didn't have a ton in common with the person in the cubicle next to you, you could at least talk about that. but what Fritz is saying is that anymore that that is largely going away. There are so many avenues now for streaming, so many different platforms you may pay for or you may not. There's YouTube, there's social media. Spotify and Amazon expose us to so much music that the odds that the person in the cubicle next to you has listened to or is watching the same thing, you are actually smaller than ever. Which means not only are we more isolated than ever, we have fewer things to talk about. Which, of course, will drive us, at least. This is Fritz's point, into further isolation. There's no longer a kind of singular American culture that pits us together. And so, as a result, Fritz is looking out at the landscape and saying, are, we just gonna keep moving towards more and more loneliness, more and more isolation, more and more tribalism? Boy, I hope not. And I think he does too. I think that's the tenor of the article. I wanna offer a new monoculture in place of pop culture, and that is the local church. You see, in the New Testament, the church is this radical idea, a gathering of people whose kind of one common denominator is their shared experience of salvation in Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, churches are full of the rich and the poor. See the Corinthian church of Jewish and gentiles. See the Galatian church. in other words, they're truly melting pots. Places where people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, racial, ethnic, religious backgrounds are coming together. And the thing they have in common is Jesus. The local church is meant to be a place that shows us the community that crosses lines is actually possible. And the way it does that is by giving us the same person to look to, to worship and to celebrate the person of Jesus Christ. In fact, in. In the Bible, in Revelation 7, 9, we're told that heaven will be a place, the throne room of Jesus will be a place with a great multitude, and that that multitude will be people from every nation, every tribe, and every language standing around Jesus because he's what holds them together. If you're listening to this and you're feeling isolated and lonely, if you feel like you don't know what to talk about, can I encourage you to show up to a local church and not just to the weekly gathering, to get involved in a small group, to get involved in a Bible study. Because there, what you're going to know walking in is you have at least one really important thing in common. Faith in Jesus, a desire to grow in him, to be part of his kingdom. And what you might find in that is a genuine community, regardless of whether or not the people on the in the room are the people that you would have thought of hanging out with in the first place. When I read Fritz's article, when I read him kind of lamenting the loss of a culture, I'm reminded of the incredible blessing I have as a follower of Jesus. That I have a people, that I have a culture, that I have a place where I can experience genuine community. And so do you. In the local church. Sometimes we take for granted what we have, but. But realizing not everyone has it should motivate us a little more this week to show up to get involved in the local church and to celebrate the community that we have in Christ, regardless of how much else we have in common. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app. App, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!