Influencing Culture

by Gabe Lyons

I’ve heard it said that you don’t choose the books you read - great books choose you. In some peculiar way, I believe that is what happened in 1999 as I consumed Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey’s, How Now Shall We Live. Never before had I planned to read a six-hundred-page, non-fiction book, but once I devoured the introduction, I couldn’t put it down. On vacation in Mexico, I found myself reading this thick, hardcover, green book by the pool, on the beach, and in my room during every waking moment. My worldview was being challenged and my view of Christian influence was being invigorated. Naturally my wife was wondering what had gotten into me – and with good reason. When was the last time you saw a grown man creating flash cards for something that wasn’t required…on vacation?

Up until that time, I had been wrestling with several questions surrounding the role of my faith in this world. I had no problem grasping the idea of eternal life and the need for personal salvation, but the answers were deficient when it came to how that practically played out during my years on this earth. I had questions like:

What do non-Christians really think about Christians?
Is it really the media’s fault that Christians come across as judgmental, angry and ignorant representatives of Christ?
Why am I embarrassed to call myself a Christian?
Is Christianity in a crisis that no one wants to talk about?

Whenever I asked these questions, I got the same answers. Everywhere I turned, it seemed the same talking points for Christianity slapped me in the face.

“Find God’s will for your life”
“Read your Bible and pray every day”
“Work on your personal relationship with Jesus Christ”
“Be bold and evangelize those around you”
“Jesus is the answer to everything”
“Fight for the sanctity of life and marriage”
“Defend Truth at all costs”

While all of these statements were true, they weren’t answering my questions. They felt more like circular arguments designed to stop me from thinking about my questions. Nobody addressed what to me seemed an obvious problem: Christianity has gained more conversions in America over the last two hundred years than any other faith. Simultaneously, Christianity has steadily lost cultural influence despite its rapid conversion growth.

As I read Colson’s book, for the first time in my life I felt like a Christian had dared to set aside the talking points and “go off message”. Someone else recognized the problems and offered biblical and logical solutions. I began to reconnect to Christian purpose. Colson laid out all of what being a Christian was about. He challenged my worldview and invigorated my view of Christian influence. It felt simple, yet complex, true and historic. I was convinced that everyone I knew needed to read this book. I just knew that if more Christians could grasp this bigger picture, it could change the face of Christianity throughout our nation.

Unfortunately, I knew none of my twenty-something friends would want to read a six hundred-page book. So I was left with two choices. Get new friends. Or, do everything within my grasp to take these ideas and convey them in the most practical, life-giving, and encouraging way to everyone I could.

I chose the second and I invite you to join me on the journey. As Henry Blackaby says, the role of every Christian is to “watch to see where God is at work and join him.”¹ A shift in Christian praxis within our culture may be one such place that God is at work. I believe God is calling the Church of America to grasp its calling to influence the greater culture. We can feel it in the rebuke of pretentious Christianity and sense it in the hearts and minds of young Christ-followers desperate to live out a life pleasing and honoring to their Maker. I can’t imagine anything more important or significant in our lifetime, than to be a part of the church recapturing its role in shaping culture. When we do this, the life-giving message of Jesus Christ will go forward in ways unprecedented throughout the 21st century.

THE ORIGINS OF CULTURAL INFLUENCE

As modern day evangelicals, we are most familiar with God’s saving grace—the means by which God’s saving power, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, can redeem people from their sin and give them new life in Christ and throughout eternity. What we hear less about today is another theological concept called common grace: “the grace of God by which he gives people innumerable blessings that are not part of salvation.”² This common grace is available through and to all of His creation. David refers to it in Psalm 145: “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made…The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing.”³ Jesus also referred to it when he admonished us to: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”⁴

Understanding both saving grace and common grace helps us understand the cultural mandate. It dates back to the Garden of Eden when, on the sixth day of creation, a momentous transference takes place as God hands Adam the responsibility to pick up where he has left off. He is called to reflect God’s image and to have dominion over all things, to steward God’s good creation and all of its resources in the service of God and man (Genesis 1:26-28)⁵. God’s declaration to humanity of their divinely appointed duties provided deep purpose and meaning to humanity. Humans were called to partner with God in the work He wanted to do throughout His creation.

Ultimately, it was Colson’s explanation of the cultural mandate that grabbed my mind and my heart: “God cares not only about redeeming souls but also about restoring his creation. He calls us to be agents not only of his saving grace but also of his common grace. Our job is not only to build up the church but also to build a society to the glory of God. As agents of God’s common grace, we are called to help sustain and renew his creation, to uphold the created institutions of family and society, to pursue science and scholarship, to create works of art and beauty, and to heal and help those suffering from the results of the Fall.” ⁶ This understanding of the cultural mandate and common grace has been at the root of Christianity’s growth and spread throughout the world. As believers who are created in the image of God, committed to God’s glory, and called to be a light on a hill we bear the responsibility to redeem entire cultures, and not only personal souls.⁷ When Christians live to serve the common good of their neighbors, it creates unmatched influence on the culture.

A HERITAGE OF CULTURAL INFLUENCE

While the idea of influencing culture felt new to me, I wondered whether the greater church over the last 2,000 years had practiced this. Without the benefit of a “History of Christianity” seminary class, I did my own research and was quite astonished at our track record. Looking back, it became obvious to me that the idea of cultural influence is not new. It is actually quite old and part of the historic roots of Christian practice and theology. So let’s put history on the pedestal for a moment, and brush it off for all to see.

In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark asserts that Christianity’s 40% growth per decade during the first three centuries A.D. can be credited to their deep involvement in the fabric of their culture:

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services. ⁸

1 2 3 4 5 Next

Comments

Ted Rodgers

When you refer to "social sector" in 'The Seven Channels of Cultural Influence' section of this paper, what exactly are you refering to?

Thank you.

Gabe Lyons

Ted, good question to clarify. Other people define these channels in different ways. But the way I differentiate the social sector from the others is that it is made up of organizations advancing social good exclusively as non-profits (NGO's) or foundations. These are usually organizations committed to community development, fighting injustice, defending the defenseless and helping those who can't help themselves. Their measurement isn't profit, but lives touched. This is a bit of a generalization, but hopefully it helps clarify it a bit more.

Ted Rodgers

It helps. Thank you, Gabe.

curtis taylor

In your quick spread over the 2nd Great Awakening, you say," They ( the preachers) initiated special invitations to capture the most possible conversions from a given audience in a limited time." May I ask, did 'they' or did the Spirit of God choose to convict and convert those hearers in such a manner, and in such numbers?

You continue that when the evangelists moved on shortly there after this resulted in a learning vaccum (my term) among the newly saved, yet spiritually ignorant Or at best inexperienced not knowing much about the love of Jesus that just gave them eternal life.. Thus, if I follow your meaning, these babes in Christ who lacked " ...the depth of the message of Jesus." , were left behind to fend in the Faith on their own, and were powerless to effect any real cultural change in their environs. Is this a bridge point you wish to use to bring forward about gay intolerance in the " Old Guard Church" today?

I may have missed in my glossing over Un Christian, so I ask during your three years of research, did you compile any audio and video interviews with any Christian former gay and lesbian groups such as Exodus International?

Katerina Ilic

Perhaps you would like to read this Orthodox Christian treasure--a real how-to

in terms of changing ourselves---if we want to have any hope of changing the world

around us.

"Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives"

http://www.stherman.com/Catalog/Spiritual_Counsels/Elder_Thaddeus_Book.html

Jerry Miner

Hey Gabe, I think this is background for the message you delievered at CAT East back in October. You had a diagram of the seven cultural areas. Do you have that somewhere for download.

Craig Bertrand

There is no "Cultural Mandate" in Genesis. Considering there is no New Testament basis for domionism I suppose it is the best Abraham Kuyper (Francis Shaffer, Chuck Colson, etc) could do. It says that we humans have dominion over animals ie the natural world. Not over each other.

People have dominion over each other via business, government, etc in the Babylonian system.

Jesus came to Inaugurate His Kingdom not fix up Babylon! We are ambassadors here and we do serve here ie widows poor and orphans those outcast by society. I am not for a Kumbaya--My-Lord Christianity but there is another option then the 2 stories you give as options here.

Lets think about it. Jesus is our example.

He did not try to change laws or overthrow the oppressive roman empire. Yet the Kingdom He started (like a mustard seed) continues to grow. Rome fell. Now if He thought that His time was better spent discipling others then what makes us think we could do it better that the master?

Why paint the walls on the Devils castle when our King had no place to lay His head?

Bob Pietrs

Gabe,

I'm just curious, are you a member of a local church? If so, which one?

Thanks

Mike Dodaro

The thing that seems to be missing in most current discussions about influencing culture is some awareness of how important development and tradition is in the creation of great art, science, polity, community, and most everything that has lasting influence. The Catholic Church understands tradition and how important it is in church polity and doctrine, but it is also important in every other area of human life.

The renaissance was not inherently about innovation. Renaissance artists looked back over two millennia to the Greeks. They took everything of great value in history to build their art and science. J. S. Bach worked in a tradition of music and added innovations that became the core of western standard practice. The Irish monks were preserving the best literary works of their predecessors, not throwing out tradition.

Christian musicians, who have destroyed the best choirs and church music and substituted loud noise, are talking about influencing culture. Most of what is going on seems to be kids who grew up in Evangelical churches and always wished they could be like everybody else who now have made church into a reflection of pop culture.

There are times when breaking with tradition takes courage and intelligence. We live in the reverse situation. If there is to be development of a great Christian culture, it will require intelligent understanding of the best culture of the past and the courage to buck the trends of mediocre invention.