The other Sunday our friend and colleague showed us a picture of the 20 Euro bill and made an illustration about money. This made us stop and think. The 20 Euro bill have a depiction of the church. The picture above shows different kinds of stained glass windows. What makes this to intereting to us is that even though the church has taken a backseat in European/German culture, it is still a representative symbol in society today.
In Germany, the current church is not something most people cherish or even know much about, but everybody knows the value of 20 euros (about $22 USD). Every day the symbols of the church are all around us here, part of everyday life, but those symbols are drained into background noise at best. If the church can be represented in something so central to a culture as its money, I wonder where else it is represented? From an American point of view, church and state exist in separate realms. But here in Europe they are still married, for better or worse! And that connection shows up in odd little ways like this all the time.
How can we change or challenge the idea of the Gospel being unimportant to an entire culture and represent it in a way that is intriguing and relevant? Of course, we cannot do this for an entire culture. But we have been commissioned to do this very thing in our small circles of influence. Can we plant the seeds and water the soil and trust God to produce His harvest in time?
