The Gospel Coalition

I’ve been asked to be part of a blog tour for Kary Oberbrunner’s forthcoming book The Fine Line: Reinvisioning the Gap Between Christ and Culture. 

Eleven days ago I brought your attention to this book. I was introduced to Kary by a mutual friend of ours who told me, when I asked him to write a blurb for Unfashionable (my forthcoming book), that “his friend Kary had just finished a book that moved in a similar direction.” So I looked up Kary’s book on Amazon and what did I find? Kary’s forthcoming book and mine were being sold together! Well, I had to contact this guy. And as a result, we’ve become buddies. We’ve compared notes, shared ideas, and commented on eachother’s work. The parallels between our books are pretty remarkable. For instance, Kary writes:

Our difference from the world, not our similarity to it sets us apart. But even though Christ followers are called to be different, we’re also called to transform the world. Here lies the tension. We can’t be so far removed from the world that we lose contact, and we can’t be so much like the world that we’re no different from it…

In my post eleven days ago I wrote (in response to the above quote):

Geez, that sounds familiar. The subtitle of Unfashionable is “making a difference in the world by being different.” It seems like God has lit the same fire in Kary that he has in me (and many others): helping a new generation understand what it means to be “in the world, but not of it” in these challenging, but opportune days.

What I love about Kary’s book is his committment to balance, exhibited in his title, The Fine Line. He sees both the benefits and the detriments of our typical responses to culture. In this way, his book reminds me a little bit of Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making. J.I. Packer once said, “There are always two ways to fall off a tightrope.” Kary recognizes this and does a good job of helping the reader maintain persepective and avoid extremes.

Kary recognizes that faithfulness to Christ means we cannot afford to leave our culture unexamined. We’re called to think long and hard, deep and wide about our times and all the issues surrounding the mission of the church—its proper relationship to this world as well as its proper place in it.

One helpful word picture that has helped me think through this for years and years now comes from the great nineteenth-century evangelist D. L. Moody. He was once asked to describe what he thought the relationship between the church and the world ought to be. He answered, “The place for the ship is in the sea; but God help the ship if the sea gets into it.” We need to avoid being culturally removed—failing to be “in the world,” like a ship out of water. We also need to avoid being culturally relaxed—becoming “of the world,” like a ship being submerged.

Using Moody’s picture, the place for the church is in the world, but God help the church if the world gets into it. Christ has called his followers to be in the world yet distinct from it, to live against the world for the world. This is a fine line to walk, and Kary’s book will help you do it. 

You can pre-order Kary’s book here. And watch a video trailer of it here.