Influencing Culture

by Gabe Lyons

It Only Takes a Few

Unity of Message

¹⁷

Expressions of the Gospel

Commitment to the Big Idea

The uniqueness of the church channel is that we continually acknowledge God’s sovereign work in all things. It is His agenda we work for and not our own. His Spirit can sweep through a nation in ways no tactical or strategic plan could fashion. We must humble ourselves and recognize that He will accomplish His purposes in our generation and that He chooses to work through willing and available people who are more interested in His fame than their own name.

THE CHURCH’S OPPORTUNITY TO INFLUENCE CULTURE

I believe that the church is the hope of the world and is positioned like no other channel of influence to shape culture. Its people are called to be in the world. As John Stott puts it, “we find ourselves citizens of two kingdoms, the one earthly and the one heavenly. And each citizenship lays upon us duties which we are not at liberty to evade.”²³ Although the work of culture creation may take place outside the physical walls of a church building, the local church creates a natural space where social networks of leaders, within all seven channels of culture, can work together towards a common goal. Nowhere else does this potential for synergy exist. Unlike other channels, the church is a living organism where God’s spirit constantly moves and seeks to express Himself through a willing Body.

Sadly, by focusing on just the “spiritual” and the afterlife, the Christian church has strayed away from its potential influence in the here and now, positioning itself instead as just another subculture. Many Christians currently hold unique and influential positions throughout the seven channels of culture, but have never been supported by fellow believers.

Engaging Cultural Leaders

Consider my 34 year-old friend Dan, an amazing leader in the business channel of cultural influence who convenes captains of industry and strategic leaders throughout the free world. He cares deeply about Christian engagement in the place God has called him, but doesn’t feel comfortable labeling himself a Christian due to the negative baggage that comes with it. When we first met four years ago, Dan was desperate for a community of believers that could understand him and his life in the culture. He had no community or church that could support him as he tried to fulfill his calling. Dan had given up hope and felt like the only Christian in his predicament.

His story is all to common. In the work that I do, I come across cultural leaders that feel disconnected from the local church or worse yet, misunderstood or used. The story for some is that the church tends to only be interested in them if the church organization can benefit in some way. Church leaders fail to recognize the current and potential influence these leaders have within the culture and unknowingly drive them away.

Still, an undeniable opportunity for the church to regain ground still exists. My friend Jon, a top model in the fashion industry, experienced something different in the local church. As he pursued the opportunity to lead a culturally redeeming project to captivate the vanguard of the fashion industry, he found help and support. His pastor spent time with him and probed deeply to find ways the church could actively support these efforts. Whether volunteering to help at local events or assisting in the organizational and administrative details of his project, this church provided the back-up Jon needed to engage where God has placed him.

Jon’s Christian community exemplifies a shift in the church. As one piece of a greater movement, we’re just beginning to see what might happen. As Tim Keller writes, “If we produce thousands of new church-communities that regularly attract and engage secular people, that seek the common good of the whole city especially the poor, and that produce thousands of Christians who write plays, make movies, express creative journalism, begin effective and productive new businesses, use their money for others, and produce cutting-edge scholarship and literature we will see our vision for the city realized and our whole society changed as a result.”²⁴ This vision demands that leaders in the church wrestle with the complexity of embodying the Gospel in culture. As the church rediscovers its unique role in culture, and supports the calling of their cultural influencers, it will be a force for good in our communities, cities and the country.

The Way Forward

The call to the church and to all Christians of our time is to rediscover the cultural mandate, embracing the opportunity to influence culture. In the church, we must teach about calling and cultural influence and provide vital support to cultural leaders. We must become an integral piece of the local culture, convening and encouraging creation of future culture that serves the common good. We must become connoisseurs of good culture, recognizing and celebrating the good, true and beautiful to the glory of God and begin to lead the conversations that will shape future culture.

There’s the big idea. The vision. The challenge. The opportunity. If your mind is racing and your heart is beating like mine was that week not so long ago, there are several steps you can take to realize this vision personally and throughout your church.

EXPLORE AND EMBRACE THE CULTURAL MANDATE
Educate yourself on the full story explanation of the gospel and become familiar with how the story (creation, fall, redemption, restoration) shows up in all of life and brings clarity to the Christian’s responsibility in a fallen world. Read Genesis 1 and 2 with this perspective in mind and investigate other writings that delve deeply into the topic. Read books by C.S. Lewis, John Stott, Os Guinness, Chuck Colson, Nancy Pearcey, Michael Metzger or Neil Plantinga for specific insight into the cultural mandate.

TEACH ABOUT CALLING AND CULTURAL INFLUENCE
Inspire people within your church to discover their callings and pursue them with excellence, while celebrating their successes. Educate those around you about how cultural influence happens. Find the people within your church who hold unique and influential positions throughout the seven channels of culture. Help them cultivate and create culture that serves the common good. Your interest in serving them will go along way in building their confidence in the church’s understanding of their opportunity for influence while reminding them of God’s provision.

CONNECT WITH YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY
Ask yourself, “If your church were removed from the community today, would anyone even notice?”²⁵ As an integral piece of your local culture, integrate a missional approach to the needs of your community. Add value to the culture, support local artists, businesses, and schools and serve the community with volunteers for good events that are redemptive in nature. Be an advocate for goodness and beauty throughout your surroundings so that if you ever left, you’d be sorely missed.

LOOK FOR THE GOOD
Become known as connoisseurs of good culture, able to recognize and pick it out in a fallen world. Instead of being offended when confronted with darkness, be provoked to get involved.²⁶ Challenge yourself to find something good in all things and identify the redemptive nature of humanity and its place in creating a better world.

CONVENE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT FUTURE-CULTURE
Initiate conversations about the values of your community. Host them at your church or in a neutral location and drive the cultural conversation instead of simply responding to it. Raise issues of injustice and offer potential solutions. Be the first to praise the good culture being created in your community and inspire imagination around opportunities that support the common good, elevate beauty and align with truth. Most of all, convene the cultural leaders in your church to encourage and inspire them to renew their channel of influence.

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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.

Michael Cranmer

Gabe can you answer my questions concerning your organization and its cause:

Do you agree and support the LGBT and its cause?

Do you agree and support the Planed Parenthood organization and its cause?

Do you agree that the church is a local assembly of baptized believers organized to carry out the commission to evangelize, to teach, and to administer the ordinances of believer’s baptism and the Lord’s table, and how does your cultural mandate accomplish this?

What is your degree in?

Madeleine F

Craig,

Although Jesus did not try to overthrow the Roman Empire, he did question and break with cultural tradition/ideology that was a product of worldliness and not from God. I think his anger at the moneychangers in the temple and his consistant treatment of women as equal inheritors as God's children both speak volumes about how we too must question and actively struggle against the dynamisism of sin in the world.

Business and government, when used correctly, are not about dominating people. It's about serving them, protecting them, and providing services which outside of a larger framework could not occur on the same meaningful scale. Of course, when in the wrong hands the power that comes from both business and government is Babylonian and worldly, so why not take it back and lead by serving and conduct business in a Gospel-centric way?