Bible's are to be removed from hospitals in Queensland because they do not fit with multi-culturalism.

Everyone has a reaction to this situation, but what I want to discuss is what does "multi-culturalism" mean, because while it is a word that is widely used, no one ever seems to understand exactly what it looks like. In order to understand "multi-culturalism", we need to understand culturalism, and in fact culture.

What is culture? The answer to this question does not only help us with the Bibles in hospitals issue, but aids us in taking the unchanging, life giving Word of God to our own cultures.

If you search for definitions of culture they are not hard to find. As good as any definition of culture is:

"Culture is those ideas, beliefs, feelings, values, and institutions by which a group of people order their lives and interpret their experiences, and which give them an identity distinct from other groups."

Culture identifies a group as a group. The culture is learned, not innate. It is shared not individual. It integrates and makes sense of reality for the group.

There is little to disagree with when it comes to the definition. The hard part is then describing my culture. What is Australian culture?

Whenever I ask that question, similar answers come back: tall poppy cutting, holiday loving, beach going, outback fantasising, reality TV sedated, sport besotted individuals. But is that true of the culture you are trying to reach?

I think that such a description is far too simplistic, and to merely hold that description of our culture will not help in communicating Christ. It seems to me that there are at least three, and in many cases many more cultures in which people exist simultaneously.

1. Mass Culture
First there is mass culture. This is what is usually thought of when we think of culture. It is the description of what we think and do as a whole nation. Because it is of the whole nation, mass culture is usually shaped by whatever is in the media t the moment. It includes being consumed by the latest Hollywood issue. For example when Dinosaur movies are released, we all learn and read about dinosaurs. When it is cricket season we all know the intimate details of the lives of our baggy green sportsmen. It is the type of culture that is transitory, froth and bubble, but also provides the lubricant of conversation that enables people with very little in common to relate to one another. This is what we are seeing at the moment in our conversations about Jesus with the release of the Da Vinci Code.

Mass culture does have another side to it. While each event is short lived in mass culture, the cumulative "feel" of events shapes our communities priorities. The fascination with reality TV and gossip columns means that as a society we trade in deep relationships with neighbours for the tidbits about people we will never meet.

So in our communicating Christ to our culture we need rapid response to the mass culture events of the day, and watching for what is distilled from each event that shapes the way we think, so we may observe, warn and use the changes.

Family Culture
The second type of culture is personal or family culture. It is much narrower than mass culture, limited to families, but its influence is much more permanent and pervasive. The type of family a person grows up in, and the modelling from family and siblings has lasting, unexamined influence on people. Most people vote the way their family does, without ever thinking about it.

As we minister personally to people we would be foolish to view them as merely products of mass culture.

Exclusive Culture
The third type of culture is isolated or exclusive culture. This is the culture that is most seen in Australia. It is between family and mass culture in size and identifies a group as a group by what differentiates it from all other groups. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses are such a group. They are identified because they are not like other groups. Orthodox Jews and the Amish are recognised not as who they are, but because they are different to the mainstream. These cultures exist everywhere, and take conscious effort for people to part of, and they build a barrier around themselves, separating them from mass culture.

Exclusive culture is hard to penetrate, but once inside the culture, there are great gospel opportunities due to the close identification between members. We must consider how to penetrate these cultures and be prepared to bear the costs involved in order to share the gospel.

What I have tried to do is help us to think about culture and how to observe it. In upcoming articles, we will examine what this may mean as we mission in our "multi-cultural" city.