If we are willing to shift our approach to church, we will
better connect with increasingly heterogeneous cultures. This
shifting requires curation. Church leaders must learn to be
curators! Churches in modernity were set up to facilitate a
particular kind of experience with God. Church was its own
(protected) culture. In the wake of postmodernity, facilitated by
new forms of (digital) communication, we are entering a new epoch
in the history of the church. Curators manage the tasks of
connection, preservation, and transformation, in their care for
cultural artifacts and communities.
When someone serves as a curator, they make connections between
different elements in the culture, preserving the best of cultural
traditions, and promoting fresh ways of thinking and being in the
world. What might this work of curation mean for us? In Curating
Church, readers learn how curation can reorient and sharpen the
ways and work of the church. Curation can inform how we connect
with cultures beyond the church, preserve what is best in the rich
history of Christian thought and expression, and nurture spaces
where contemporary persons may be transformed by the gospel. This
book helps readers to understand with new richness the church and
the world, and it equips them to become active in making those
connections—as curators—with and for others.
Church leaders, learn to be curators of the culture for your community.