The First Step in Engaging Culture

With technology advancing at such an incredible rate lately, one can only imagine how much it’s having an affect on Christianity and culture. One of the many ramifications is the ability to “Go Big!” with anything and everything. No longer are we creating Bible studies for our personal home group, we’re making it so it can be distributed all over the world. No longer is our pastor just preaching to his two hundred person flock, he’s preaching to the world. You get the idea. With hundreds of churches and parachurch organizations doing “Big Things!” the possible assumption among “ordinary” Christians is that they have to do something “Big!” to be a “good Christian,” or just a “regular Christian.” This, obviously, is foolish – but we need to be retold again and again. Writer, actor, and speaker Evan Koons joins us this week on the show to talk about what it looks like to engage culture as an “ordinary” Christian. The conversation also has an incredibly awkward moment when the host (Isaac, who’s writing this) isn’t understanding Evan. You’ll have to listen to find out.

Episode Links

All things “Evan Koons” can be found here.

The film series we were talking about (that you should totally check out) is For the Life of the World.

The movie that Evan is in (which features Gary Busey) is called Camp Manna.

The video that made Evan “famous” is called Church Appropriate Dance Moves.

 

Read It

*Below is an edited transcription of the audio.

Well it’s great to have Evan Koons today on the podcast. Evan is a writer, actor, speaker, probably many other things as well, but anyways, great to have you on the show today Evan.

Oh! Thanks for having me.

Before we get into a really chill conversation on Christians in culture, why don’t you first share with us briefly who you are and what you do in a little bit more detail.

Sure! I am a dude. Yeah, I write and act and do voice-over stuff in film and video and television. That’s really about it in terms of professional life. A lot of times I just say, “I’m a professional shower-upper,” like, I don’t show people up, I mean like I show up to things and they’re like, “Hey, will you do this…?” and I go like, “Yeah, I’ll do that!” and then I show up there and they’re like, “Oh, now that you’re here can you do this?” and I’m like, “Yeah sure,” and then that’s sort of the history of my career.

That’s good! And you have a family as well?

I do, I do. I’m married – have been married for almost 15 years I think. I have two kids, six and nine, and yeah, they’re at school right now, I hope.

One more thing before we get into our conversation. Many people have seen your face, or maybe they didn’t know it was you, but that viral video called Church Appropriate Dance Moves – very famous. First of all, it’s hilarious. So listeners listening, you got to check that out.

My question is, was it planned or did you improvise it on the spot?

We planned it out a little bit. I mean, that guy is kind of a character we’ve had around and been doing videos with since 2008. So if you look up Coffee with Jesus you’ll see more.

And then one day we’re doing one of these skits and I was improving in the skit and doing like dance stuff I think,