The Bishop of Rochester has delivered his 5th Chavasse lecture at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, saying that people have turned God's gift of culture into a "vehicle for selfishness, greed and idolatry, a replacement of God and his purposes by human constructs, ideas and ideologies".

|PIC1|The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali spoke about understanding how culture could provide a platform for the Gospel, and how the Gospel was a force to judge and redeem culture and individuals.

He explained that the tendency of people to become Christians along with others from their own background and culture was the reason why there were student missions, neighbourhood evangelism, as well as other very specialised outreaches focusing on people in sport, medicine and law.

The bishop also told how the ecclesiology of the New Testament showed that household churches were a vital way of being church. According to CEN he said, "Such churches naturally centred around one family and the head of such a family might be its patron or protector. The family would have provided the church with a family likeness."

However, also there were wider gatherings of people who were "unlike" one another, he told. At these gatherings there would be rich and poor, and clear instructions were given about treating people from different social backgrounds alike.

Bishop Nazir-Ali said, "If therefore there are those who seek fellowship with Christians from their own ethnic, religious, professional or social background, it is incumbent on them to see the wider fellowship of those unlike them, and on a regular basis."

He added, "If the Universal Church, for example in Ephesians and Colossians, is theologically prior to the local churches, local churches, in and from their relationship with one another, make up the Universal Church."

The final lecture in the series, on the relationship between Christianity and other religions, will be given on November 14 at Wycliffe Hall.