“Finding our place in the world as culture makers requires us to pay attention to culture’s many dimensions. We will make something of the world in a particular ethnic tradition, in particular spheres, at particular scales. There is no such thing as ‘the Culture,’ and any attempt to talk about ‘the Culture,’ especially in terms of ‘transforming the Culture,’ is misled and misleading. Real culture making, not to mention cultural transformation, begins with a decision about which cultural world – or better, worlds – we will attempt to make something of.
“Some people choose a set of cultural ripples that was not originally their own. When they do so in pursuit of economic or political opportunities, we’ve traditionally called them ‘immigrants’; when they do so in pursuit of evangelistic or religious opportunities, we’ve called them ‘missionaries.’ But as wheels within wheels overlap more and more in a mobile world, most of us have some choice about which cultures we will call our own. We are almost all immigrants now, and more of us than we may realize are missionaries too.”
– Andy Crouch, from Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling, pgs. 48-49.