Discipleship as Sub-Culture

As a teenager, I lived in a suburb called ‘Kingston’ – just south of Hobart, Tasmania. It was the purest Dutch community anywhere outside of the Netherlands. Over 300 Dutch people lived on one street. Our church had over 600 members. The Dutch had their school, soccer, basketball, and netball teams; we owned the two shopping centres, and the biggest employer in town was owned by ours, with half of the 100 or so staff being Dutch.

Growing up in this community was strange. We knew we were different. We had salt in liquorice, played soccer instead of footy, ate oliebollen and not doughnuts, and did not shop on Sundays. One day I asked for an undercut at the hairdresser, only to be told that was too radical a haircut for a ‘Dutchie’. A couple of times, I was even assaulted and abused for being Dutch.

We knew what Aussies believed and how they behaved, and we knew how we were different, and in our minds – better! We were a sub-culture.

I was recently talking with a ‘Hakka’ Chinese Christian man who lives in Malaysia. His experience of growing up paralleled mine.

We both agreed that sub-culture is a helpful metaphor for how we raise the next generation of youth and children inside the church. To be a Christian in the West is to be different – to be a sub-culture. We raise our children in the world. In a world that believes in self, choice, and freedom as the greatest goods. Our children experience and, to some extent, believe in those things too.

But we also believe, value, and practice other things. We believe that being like Jesus, who came to serve, and trusting in God are the greatest goods. We must teach our children what the world believes, where we agree and disagree with them, and why Jesus is a better choice.

By Rev. David Rietveld