Do you have books that you mean to get around to reading, but never seem to make it to the top of the list?  That was Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age for me.  At over 800 pages, there just always seemed to be a shorter book that I had to read first!  Then Kathryn decided to do a philosophy subject at Uni that was based on the book, and it disappeared from our house altogether.  It came back on my radar last year, when Kathryn, now finished at Uni, moved to Varroville.  The book came with her, and so did a whole lot of interesting conversations about it. 

A Secular Age is all about what it means when we talk about the world today being “a secular age” – what it looks like, how we got here, and how it affects the way that we think and act and do faith.  In our conversations, Kathryn and I found ourselves taking this the next step and discussing what this meant for how we share our faith.  Then we realised that these conversations might be helpful for more people than just us two, and so the podcast Contemplating Culture was born.

We all have people in our lives who don’t have faith, or have walked away from it, or whose faith is looking pretty shaky.  We all live in a world that is largely indifferent or even actively hostile to Christian faith.  Every day, whether we recognise it or not, we are experiencing this reality of “a secular age”: in our family life and friendships, in those we worship with at church and those we meet at work, in the media and especially in our social media.  And whether we are Missionaries of God’s Love, or ordinary Christians who know and love Jesus, we know that what we have is Good News and we want to share it.  The question is how to share it effectively??

This is what we’re on about in Contemplating Culture.  As we podcast, Kathryn and I are slowly working our way through A Secular Age, gleaning its wisdom in order to understand the world around us better, and then discussing how what we’re learning can help us in our attempts to share our faith.

Like it or not, the culture in which we live affects the way that we think, feel and act.  Being able to recognise some of these dynamics which influence us and the world around us, and work with instead of against them is a great help in sharing our faith effectively.  We are able to be more discerning about if and how and when and with whom to share our faith.  We are more likely to be sensitive to the undercurrents in a conversation or situation in which we find ourselves, and able to connect better with where people are at. 

This is stuff that affects all of us.  And while Kathryn and I are “M” missionaries, we definitely don’t have all of the answers.  What we do have is a platform to share our conversations.  Our hope is that they start conversations that both inspire and encourage others in sharing their faith in everyday life.

Contemplating Culture is available on most podcasting platforms.  For more information, check out our website.

Kat Stone