I know you hear “exegete culture” and think, That sounds really complicated. But it’s not because odds are likely that you’ve used a similar framework in Bible study: observation, interpretation, and application.
Observation asks, “What do we see in our culture? What’s good? What’s bad? What’s ugly?” Let’s document and write it down then ask another question, “What should we see?” Once we identify the gap between there, we can begin to move to the next phase of interpretation.
Interpretation asks, “What does this mean? What does it mean to us in our culture and in our community?” Then ask, “What should it mean to us?”
Last is application. Application asks, “What difference does this make?” By now, you should probably know what difference it makes, so you may not even need to ask the question, “What difference should this make? How are we going to change?”
You’ve probably heard me talk about exegeting your culture before and you needed a framework to do that, I would say this one of observation, interpretation, and application is perfect. It’s likely familiar to you and the people you lead.
Now that you have this framework, what are you going to do about it?
