Please join us for this special bonus episode where we highlight the amazing spoken word poem f All Things to All People listener, Chelsea Sutherland. This short interview along with performance of her poem, Jesus Culture, is well worth the listen.

Jesus Culture, by Chelsea Sutherland 

Culture; a dangerously loaded word shot forth into this frame. 

One utterance is a buckshot scattering pictures across each brain, but

My pictures and your pictures are not likely the same, so let’s get one thing straight first: what meaning should this word “culture” really claim?

Your culture is *your* customs, *your* social norms, *your* typical attitudes - whether you think respect is “telling it like it is” or giving “polite” platitudes;  

How you express your thoughts openly, or rather.. drop hints as you chat, whether your music is full of twang or a heavy boom-bap; 

Is it rude to be late? Or too rigid to limit love to a precise - window - of - time?  

See the garden from which you bloom influences how your petals of culture will be defined. 

Which garden sought to define Jesus?  Which roots ordered the way that his petals should grow?  Jesus grew up cultured as a good Jewish boy you know.  

Can we really convince ourselves that he didn’t feel..  some sort of strain? 

Like he wasn’t tempted with the thought to not go against the grain?

The time golden grain backdropped his disciples’ hunger pain?

Wouldn’t it be easier to not have to explain that one to the Pharisees?

Easier it would have been to let culture be Lord, but can you imagine all the lives that would have been left UNrestored – can you imagine if Jesus let his culture impose on the will of 

Yahweh?

The little children would have never come His way; 

Mary, sent back into the kitchen, 

Cooking — 

The lame and crippled waiting an extra day, 

Looking!

Sinners eating and drinking by themselves 

EMPTY;

The woman at the well talking to herself – 

Lonely On her 6thor 7thhusband, 

Thirsty! 

No *living* water in sight, no mercy.

Yes, if the garden from which Jesus grew 

made up his mind

No tears and bloody-sweat in the garden you’d find. 

No.. stretched-out-arms, no.. nails stubbornly beat into wood, 

No “come follow me”, no brother & sisterhood.

So, do I think that Jesus-culture is  anti-culture? No

For Jesus culture is far greater a goal to press toward,

It’s the ability to share our cultures without making any of them Lord;

It’s celebrating richly the culture of each son and each daughter,

Not here to abolish our cultures but rather infuse them with the Father;

Taste and see that the Lord is GOOD! 

And so is the diversity of His nations;

Taking time to acquire these new tastes is so worth it’s aggravations.

Jesus-culture means, appreciating the rose while still respecting the thorns, 

hands-out and eyes-open to other social norms. 

It’s loving your brother or sister more than you love your own preferences —

Philippians 2:5-8 is where the ultimate reference is!

It’s laying down your preferred nature, 

Not considering your ways as something to be grasped

But rather looking to the needs of others so that more hands can embrace His clasp 

It means boldness to even ask

This humbling question:

“How many saints are suffering from my culture’s aggression?”

Reject suppression, embrace His SUCCESSION!

Put the rightful King on the throne;

It’s time to make the church a Jesus-culture zone.