23rd January 2026 Question box

I love this question:

“How can we be working to improve the culture of the church?”

Culture is the kind of thing that hard to pin down and measure, but when you participate in the church community, you definitely experience it. Culture is a system of ideas and feelings and values that shape how we do things.

The culture of the church is really important, you might remember there was that time in Galatians where Peter bowed to an unhealthy group culture within the church; and he stopped eating with the Gentiles. And Paul said: “When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel…,” (Galatians 2:14). Ray Ortlund, an American Presbyterian writes: “faithfulness to the gospel requires more than doctrinal purity in our churches. It also requires relational beauty in our churches. But it is possible sincerely to preach true doctrine while, at the same time, utterly deny that doctrine by an ugly anti-gospel culture.”

That quote comes from an helpful article that he wrote about how to promote gospel culture in our churches. In his article, he shows a picture of a church, where on the wall is painted the words: “Jesus saves,” but standing in front is a gathering of the Klu Klux Klan! “Jesus saves” is good doctrine, but obviously in that situation it was paired with a toxic culture.

Not that I think we are like this! There’s so much about our church culture here in Hurstville that I am thankful for: We have a culture of listening carefully to God’s word, of gathering in small groups, of eating together, or serving self-sacrificially. It’s culture to be nurtured and developed. But how?

Well, first we should recognise that it’s Jesus who is ultimately shaping his church, by his Holy Spirit. And he’s doing it, both from the bottom up, and also from the top down. From the top down, our church leadership is called to reflect on where we are at, and to promote what will help us get where we need to be. And from the bottom, up each of us individually has a responsibility to become the sort of people God has called us to be. It’s as you’re living that Christ-focussed life, in step with the Holy Spirit, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, that you will contribute positively to the culture of the church.

Really the question of how do we promote a healthy culture is what talked about all weekend at the church camp. Yesterday [on the camp] we looked at these amazing words from Colossians chapter 3: “12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience…” When you are being clothed this way as an individual you will bring a flavour to all your interactions with other people which will rub off on them. And that will feed into how we function as a group, so that “the message of Christ [will] dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another…“

Your individual response to God’s word, will feed into the group, and culture of the group will feed back into your way of doing things as an individual.

Plenty of other things I could say:

• We want to do this in a way that remembers not only the strong among us, but also the weak; and part of how we do this is to acknowledge our own weakness.
• We want to be an example of joyful service to our brothers and sisters.
• A verse we read this morning was Philippians 4:5: “Let your gentleness be known to all.” If Hurstville Presbyterian are going to be known for anything let it be gentleness, because Jesus said that his own heart was gentle and lowly.

I could keep going with more examples but essentially, our culture will develop in a healthy way, when each of us is being responsive to God’s word and continuing to letting it shape and reshape how we interact together.

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This question was originally answered in our evening service on 24 August 2025. I’ll aim to post another question and answer next week. You can read about how our question box works here.