A recent study in the area of culture revealed numerous facts important to the direction of leading. Culture is a relative term. We do know that culture is a word connected to cultivating, thus a gardening term.

Culture is defined as the beliefs, customs, arts, etc. of a particular society, group of people, time and place. Culture is characterized by a way of thinking, belief, or behavior.

We can say that culture is an environment cultivated by the people who participate in that environment.

Our world is a multi-cultural place. We also find numerous cultures within cultures. There are work cultures, educational cultures, religious cultures, age and gender specific cultures, and the list is unending.

Leaders work to understand the culture, but changing the culture is far from easy, if not impossible. The idea has been presented that leaders must create new cultures to draw people into a new way of thinking, believing or behaving.

There is validity to the idea and Jesus seems to follow this approach with the 1st century culture. We are left to consider how we will lead in the 21st century culture.