Cultural Reformation

 Stopping the Civil War

The GOP is learning a hard lesson this election cycle (at least we hope they learn). You cannot make campaign promises and claim you are the natural home for conservatives, evangelicals, and constitutionalists; and then retreat to the halls of government and forget the goals you were sent to accomplish. This election cycle demonstrates there is a full blown civil war brewing in the ranks of the GOP because it’s leaders are not responding to the grassroots frustration. Political job security and tenure are based on how well goals were accomplished and plans were executed. The upheaval we are watching in this primary is really the job evaluation. The grassroots profoundly believe that the GOP has failed. I illustrate this blog subject with this reality because a similar dynamic is happening within the pro-life movement (PLM). In much the same way, there is a brewing civil war within the ranks of the PLM between what some have called the “establishment” pro-life advocates and the grassroots supporters.

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Teach / Preach on the Theological Mandate of Cultural Engagement.

Several years ago I decided I was going to preach through the book of Acts expositionally. Take my time and go verse by verse, chapter by chapter and get the whole book into our spiritual system. I originally did that because I wanted to underscore our local church roots as a Pentecostal people. What happened? I was blown away by the evidence of a church that consistently engaged the culture with the Gospel and the repercussions that took place with regards to liberty and litigation. To say the early church was not political is to ignore the entire book of Acts.
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Identify Solid Members who have a “Call” in this Area and Empower Them.

I am a pastor so I “get” the history of people in your church who have a passion for social issues and governmental concerns. Often times (unfortunately) their passion becomes your pain in the neck. They call you, bug you, and generally stress you out over an area that up to this point you weren’t that concerned about. Please hear me out on this one…

There was a time I was just like that as well…
But the Lord had to arrest my attention and candidly, theirs too.

My story goes like this…
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Preach a Biblical Sermon on a Relevant Cultural Issue

The current church growth mantra of our era is “relevancy”. The Church is being exhorted from every direction that it wants to remain viable it must become “relevant”. Of course, defining relevancy is an interesting pursuit as it can mean anything from upgrading your technology to rebranding your image to repackaging your messages to getting a fog machine. Some Pastors have even gone so far to change their doctrine to accommodate the need to be “relevant”.
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   CHANGE YOUR VOCABULARY

Words are vehicles by which we communicate and sometimes those vehicles carry baggage. There are few words which can evoke more negative images than the word “politics”. For many people politics infers (if not outright describes) everything that is antithetical to Christianity. Politics is about ego, self-promotion, self-interest, acquisition of power, compromise and a host of other qualities that are diametrically opposed to what a follower of Jesus should be concerned about. Our tendency is to confuse the character of the participants with the validity of the process.

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