I worked with a young pastor this past week on assimilation. He had read every church book out there on assimilation and it had left him wondering what is assimilation? Everyone had their own view. Sometimes it is best to step outside the church world to understand these things. So I turned to wikipedia for some grounding. Scary I know. Wikipedia defines assimilation as “when an individual or individuals adopts some or all aspects of a dominant culture (such as its religion, language, norms, values etc.)”
Each church has its own culture. Its own unique blueprint. We typically think of assimilation in the church as a part of the discipleship process. This is faulty. I could go to almost any church and be discipled, assuming they teach the Bible and have spiritually mature leaders. But if I don’t adapt to the church culture, I won’t stay for long. Think about the challenges of going to a foreign culture. You don’t speak the language, you don’t know the traditions, you don’t understand the practices. This is the experience of most of the visitors to your church.
Assimilation is a process of helping that person fit into the church culture. It’s helping them feel like they can walk, talk and live within that culture without being an outsider.
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[...] In pt 1, I defined assimilation as a process of helping a person fit into the church culture. But what if the church culture is not healthy? What if your church is full of undiscipled, gossiping, feed me, needy, consumer oriented, spiritually shallow, leadership challenging Christians? In that instance the worst thing you can do is be good at assimilation. A church with an unhealthy culture that is good at assimilation will only make their problems worse. [...]
[...] Pt. 1 A Definition [...]
[...] Pt. 1 A Definition [...]
[...] Post 1 [...]
No the WORST thing you can do is try to make the church a perfect place before you start assimilating people into it. Isn’t community about embracing and involving others and not developing some elite form of Christianity?
Any church that says they love people and do not work on becoming better at assimilation are actually “playing religion.” This is even true when the “culture” isn’t as healthy as some would want it.
[...] Pt. 1 A Definition [...]
Thanks Anonymous for the other side of the coin. No need to be fearful of posting your name here. We welcome open debate. I agree my point was over stated. The real issue is has the church developed a healthy culture. Is the culture in the church indeed biblical. Are they accomplishing the kingdom purpose of making disciples? If a church can have the self recognition to say that the culture is not biblically healthy, then the most loving thing they can do is help direct newcomers to other churches that are healthy. In the meantime, they should do everything possible to address the dysfunction within their congregation so that they can love people more effectively and assimilate them into their congregation. By no means is church full of perfect people. But if the culture of the church produces spiritual babies that never reach spiritual adulthood, then they are part of the problem and I’d rather they not assimilate anyone else.
[...] a recent post, I defined assimilation as the process of a person adopting the beliefs, values and practices of a [...]