CAMBIOSIS

Post-Christian USA

One of the assumptions many Christian leaders express (and lament) is the "fact" that the United States has moved from a Christian nation to a post-Christian nation. That may well be true, but the logic behind the statement filters into the missional movement in a way that draws the wrong conclusions.

To say that we are now in a post-Christian nation leads many church leaders to emphasize evangelism, as if we didn't need to do evangelism in the Christian nation of the last generation. We may have had a culture that was steeped in a Judeo-Christian worldview years ago, but that did not automatically make an American a Christian. Someone still had to present the gospel and allow the Holy Spirit to usher a non-Christian into the Kingdom.

I think we need to be careful about painting our present culture as an environment that is more or less conducive to the gospel. Friends, the gospel has always been effective in every age. Admittedly, in the prior generation of American culture there was more biblical influence, but that just means that those distant from God had a better biblical framework. It didn't mean that they were not totally lost without Christ. In fact, some make the argument that America was more religious, but no more Christian. 

Just a thought

Christian Community

I am convinced that the mystery of the Trinity is fully revealed in Scripture, but its relational implications are not clearly understood in Western culture—especially in the exaggerated individualism of American culture. New Testament teaching expresses Christianity as relationship, and that relationship with Christ automatically draws us into the community of the godhead—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and the community of the redeemed. We are not to live out our Christian life in isolation.

The Great Commandment and Great Commission compel believers in Christ to grow a Christian community through relational evangelism. The implication is that if one person in a completely closed society became a Christian, even through a mystical revelation of God involving no outside human witness, that person would be compelled to share the gospel in his or her sphere of influence--creating community.

Seven Mountains Movement - Part One

During the last several years Lance Wallnau, an apostolic leader with Vanguard Ministries, has been the driving force calling Christians to reclaim the positions of power in the seven dominant cultural spheres of influence. These seven arenas of cultural expression influence Western culture, and the rest of the world for that matter through:
1- RELIGION
2- FAMILY
3- GOVERNMENT
4- EDUCATION
5- BUSINESS/ECONOMICS
6- MEDIA
7- ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

The seven mountains (7M) movement stems from the recapture of ideas shared by Bill Bright and Loren Cunningham at a breakfast meeting in 1975, where they discovered that God had revealed essentially the same concept to each of these leaders of two of the greatest youth ministries of the last generation, Campus Crusade for Christ and Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Whether it was expressed as the seven mind-molders or the seven mountains, these key leaders understood that Western culture was losing its Christian underpinnings, and Christians needed to re-engage the culture with a biblical worldview. When Dr. Wallnau learned of this story he started to unfold the concept of the seven mountains in fresh language that has captivated church and marketplace leaders around the world.

Cunningham and Bright took their respective organizations down a path of intentional evangelism with cultural transformation as a goal. YWAM's University of the Nations is a unique expression of Cunningham's vision of transformation, and many young men and women have been transformed into Christian leaders at YWAM bases all around the world. The church needs to catch up.

BACKGROUND
While the 7M Movement is gaining momentum in some key areas of Christian leadership, it must be said that this is not a unique view. Perhaps it is helpful to go back to October 20, 1880 to the Dutch Prime Minister and devote reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper's inauguration speech for the Free University in Amsterdam. In what has become known as Sphere Sovereignty, Kuyper espoused the idea that every sphere of influence in the culture comes under the sovereignty of the Lord.

"Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: :Mine!'"

In many ways the seven mountains concept is a restatement of the reconstructionist movement and the core concepts expressed by the Coalition on Revival's powerful position papers of the early 1980's worldview documents. Nonetheless, leaders of church networks around the world have been challenged by Lance Wallnau to unite "as one" to bring Christian leadership to bear on the seven areas of cultural influence.

If the Bible is true, then the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of Christ. Given that biblical perspective, how can George Barna's research reveal that less than 10% of Christians have a biblical worldview. Something is wrong. Are too many Christians sitting back waiting for some grand apocalyptic event while the enemies of Christ control every aspect of culture? The lifestyle of average church congregation is no different than the lifestyle of those unchurched living out the values of the unbiblical culture of our day.

I grew up in the mid-20th century, and looking back I see how divided my cultural understanding became. Back in the day polite people segregated their religion from the rest of their everyday lives. The bifurcation led to doing church on Sunday and living a regular life Monday through Saturday. We separated church from state, and every other cultural arena.

In the midst of our American individualistic, macho lifestyle, a relationship with Christ became a private, personal thing. "Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior." For most Christians Jesus was in the closet all week, until Sunday; and Sunday was the social hour. We chose our church based on our social status (or, unfortunately, based on our race). Bifurcation promoted appeasement.

Like Chamberlain in the late 1930's dealing with Hitler, the church appeased the invading evil influences that shaped culture. And now look at the world. We are adrift in a sea of sin driven by clever combinations of cultural influences within the seven mountain spheres. When a minority group promoting an unbiblical worldview cleverly combines the forces of government, business, media and the arts, ungodly lifestyles overwhelm the church and society and become the "norm." Television and movie stars appear before Congress. Deviant lifestyles become predominant characters in media productions that saturate our viewing and listening channels. And the church, by and large sits back wringing its hands.

The frustrated few, more often than not become the militant minority. The radical Christians who fight back too often are so mean and hateful that many Christians are embarrassed to be associated with the strategy of hate that pervades so many cultural crusaders.

The Seven Mountains Movement may just be a way to help people bring the influence of the Kingdom of God back into the spheres of cultural influence in a way that promotes Christ. The 7M Movement is meant to help train Christians to live a biblical lifestyle in such a way as they are an influence for Christ in the spheres to which they are called, but also to help them recognize and minimize the evil influences that culture can have on the unsuspecting.

It may be that most Americans could be an influence to some degree in as many as four cultural mountains. There is no doubt that technology enables all seven arenas of culture to influence everyone, which is all the more reason for the church to start a concerted effort to train its members to understand and influence the culture.

The best place for the church to start is to provide good quality biblical worldview training. There are a number of approaches to the development of a biblical worldview. Here are several resources that are a start:

"Thinking Like a Christian: Understanding and Living a Biblical Worldview"and "Understanding the Times: The Religious Worldviews of Our Day and the Search for Truth" by David A. Noebel and published by Summit Ministries.

"Countering Culture: Arming Yourself to Confront Non-Bilblical Worldviews"

"The Truth Project" published by Focus on the Family.

Living Orthodoxy

The church in the 21st Century is struggling to answer the call of the culture. In his new book, George Barna predicts the church will lose 50% of its attendance in about 20 years. Barna used to be an advocate of the church. Now he has given up on the organized church in favor of a more personal or micro involvement with Christianity. Both Barna and the organized church are headed in the wrong direction. Barna is giving up and the organized church is giving in.

Barna misses the mark, because he fails to understand that true Christianity is about community. Each person is responsible for working out their own salvation through Christ, but to be a Christian is to be in community. A true Christian community is more than several people gathered together. A church is where there is bibilical worship, teaching, accountable relationships, missional outreach, and governmental structure. The New Testament imagery is clear: a body made up of many interdependent parts, a building made up of living stones fit together, a place where loving discipline is administered through different levels of oversight, and a place where there is an umbrella of protection and resource.

The danger with the post-Christian, post-denominational, post-modern era in which we live is that we will strive for relevance at the expense of truth, or retain tradition at the expense of relevance. Either way is a death sentence for the church. the former leads to living herecy and the latter leads to dead orthodoxy.

We should strive for a living orthodoxy. For many of us that means we engage in a real dialogue with the next generation in a way that brings the incarnational reality of Jesus Christ into today and tomorrow. God has no grandchildren. Every Christian in every age comes to Jesus Christ within the incarnational context of their age.

Worship wars and what Len Sweet calls "cultural imperialism" have no place in the Kingdom of God. Worship wars stem from self-satisfying worship that is no worship at all. Cultural imperialism means that you do what I say, like what I like because. . . because I pay the bills, I built this place, I know better that you.

Every generation of leadership must make a way for the next generation of leaders regardless of music styles, clothes, hair, etc. BUT

The but is there as a placemarker for truth. A contemporary, relevant context for the gospel leaves no room for dumbing down, or watering down biblical truth. The truth is the truth regardless of post-modern whining. The reality of the Son of God dying on the cross for my sins is not optional theology. We may not need to pound it on someone, but it is still the truth. We need grace to abound and truth to prevail.

Times of crisis quickly move people from subjective discussions to wanting objective fact. We are in times of crisis, and people need to know what to believe and why. They also need to know how to live and why. It is time for the church to be a living orthodoxy.

Coaching: An Answer to Post-modern Leadership Development

Just when I thought I had it all wired, the world changed. THAT'S NOT FAIR! Who gave those punks permission to change the philosophical underpinnings of my world. I grew up in the baby-boomer, Sunday School, command and control, modernity, Christianized America. Now look. Just when I figured out how to change the ribbon on my IBM correcting selectric, my hard drive crashed. What's up with that.

Ranting aside, in case you didn't notice on your way out from under the dot com rubble, the 21 Century is different. Let's compare:
Modernity vs. Post-modern
Christian nation vs. Post-Christian
Mom and Pop vs. WalMart
WalMart vs. Amazon
Amazon vs. EBay

Lot's of things that I once was either familiar with or actually formed my worldview have a "post" in front of them. I'm an immigrant in the land of the 21st Century. Just like grandparents who moved to the US from the "old country", I speak a different language, believe different things, eat different things, listen to MY music, think this new culture is harmful to my kids.

In order to navigate in this post-modern world, my foreign approaches do not work well. Instead of leading by command, and pronouncing truth as if it were an imperialistic decree, I must learn to lead and communicate in the real world of the post-moderns. If you study history, you will note that our day (early 21st Century) is much like the first millennium at the time of Christ. What is known as the Pax Romana back then ushered in a new age. The Romans adapted from the Greeks, and added their global nation-state mind-set. They created a First Century "interstate" system of roads, there were two  common languages (Latin and Greek), and there was a multi-cultural element to society as Rome assimilated conquered people groups.

Today, we have globalization, the world-wide-web is our post-modern interstate, English and HTML are our common languages, and modern transportation and the Internet have created a multi-cultural mindset.

Aside from a good terrorist attack or war, truth is open for discussion. A post-modern is less likely to adopt your truth just because you force it down their throat. Everything seems to be open for discussion and relativistic adaption. Leaders need to re-learn how to communicate in a world starved for truth and meaningful relationships. But truth to a post-modern is like broccoli to the former President Bush--take it or leave it.

Here's where coaching comes in. Coaching is not in this context like a football coach. I'm talking life coach, performance coach. A coach listens rather than tells. A coach lets the client set the agenda. A coach believes that the client can find the answer. The coach believes that the client should own their action steps.

Christian leaders should take note here. The next generation is looking for real relationships, and coaching's listening feels a lot like love to the next generation. to a generation of latch-key kids, and kids of divorce, relationships are critical. When a coach demonstrates caring and believing they open up to their destiny. Rather than telling, we need to listen and let our post-modern clients discover for themselves the truth.

If you followed Hersey and Blanchard's "Situational Leadership" you will be thinking about the need to be more directive with novices. That's true, but we must be prepared to move along the scale to coaching and releasing styles of leadership if we are going to develop leaders in the new millennium.

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