By Michael Dunlop

I had just finished leading my first session of Coffee, Culture, and Faith, a newly formed Saturday-morning teaching series at our church. During the discussion time, a lady from central Africa was explaining to me some of the cultural intricacies of her home country—its customs, food, and dress. After a few minutes, her husband gently interrupted: “That’s not what he means by culture. He means books and movies and art.”

He was right, of course, but only partially. It is true that our discussion that morning focused on the creative dimensions of culture, such as pop culture or high culture. But culture, broadly conceived, includes all of what humans “make of the world” (taken from Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 23). Culture is films, fortresses, and folklore, but also manners and mannerisms.

The social or lived dimension of culture confronted my wife, Jessica, and I directly three years ago when our family of four (now five!) moved to France. We came face-to-face with the challenges associated with crossing cultural boundaries, from when and how to do la bise (the customary French cheek kiss) to the endless paperwork to our inability to find black beans, one of our family staples when we lived in the States. One of the mantras we had to repeat to our kids (and ourselves) was, “It’s not wrong, just different.”

But does this mean that culture, and the cultural products that people produce, are therefore neutral?

Human beings were made in God’s image and given a mandate to cultivate—to name, shape, steward, and create. Culture, therefore, is fundamentally a good thing. At the same time, culture is produced by fallen people. Every cultural creation is thus a mixture of beauty and distortion, grace and idolatry. As human products, cultural artifacts like movies, music, and literature also reveal what a people love, fear, hope for, and ultimately worship. As such, they provide a bridge for conversations about Jesus. 

In fact, these were the very insights that gave birth to my teaching series. I had long had a desire to teach about culture, and late last year that desire unexpectedly intersected with another passion of mine: coffee.

Before moving to France, I worked for several years as a coffee roaster in South Carolina. For a long time, we hoped coffee might play some role in ministry, though we were unsure how. Recently, at the request of our pastor, we were given an opportunity to use it in a new way by launching a ministry at our church called Coffee, Culture, and Faith (Café, Culture & Foi).

Consisting of four Saturday-morning sessions spread over several months, the series aims to unpack a biblical theology of culture, provide a framework for appreciating and evaluating the cultural works around us, and encourage believers to become culture-makers themselves, using their creative talents to the glory of God.

With help from members of the church, we transform the meeting space into a small café environment. While people gather, I prepare espresso drinks, and then I give a talk on the chosen subject. This is followed by small-group discussions (and more coffee, of course!). The atmosphere lowers barriers and encourages thoughtful conversation about faith and the world that people already inhabit. 

We had great feedback from the first two sessions and have been encouraged by the thoughtfulness of the interactions during the discussion time. The series has been personally formative as I study for and teach on these themes, but it also points toward future ministry possibilities. Our hope is to develop a similar ministry with a more explicit evangelistic emphasis—a space in which unbelieving friends and neighbors feel welcome to explore life’s ultimate questions, leading them to biblical answers. 

In this setting, they can encounter Christian theology in conversation with contemporary thought, and consider how the gospel speaks meaningfully, yet transformationally, into the longings already present within their culture.

In France, the arts and culture figure large in the minds and lives of people, so learning to think biblically about them is especially important. Too often, believers tend to either reject popular cultural works as a waste of time, or they embrace them uncritically rather than learning to discern what is good, what is distorted, and how these cultural works can provide opportunities for gospel conversations.