The Great Divide

I am extremely excited and so thankful for the opportunity to launch this blog, The Great Divide, on Patheos! In reading the subsequent blogs, a theme should arise. To help you better identify it, I have a few thoughts to share before we get too far down this path.

Everything I write is through the lens that God did not create a separate space for the Church to inhabit in today’s culture and in fact, just the opposite is true. Well meaning church movements have expanded the church in such a way that it has given rise to subcultures where the majority of today’s Christians find themselves isolated The church has grown so big that it lives separated from society in so many ways, thus the great divide has emerged.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth, He did not create the heavens and the Earth divided into secular and sacred; He created the Earth. The goal for this blog is to first identify where walls have been erected in our culture and then how to strategically come together to tear them down.

Today, God is raising up men and woman who are divinely created to smash the walls and teach others to do the same. These leaders hold the gospel of truth so tightly, but the form, incredibly open handed. They are the breathing embodiment of”in the world, but not of it.” I believe many of you reading this are called to this mission.

We are taking innovators, revolutionaries and rebels, and we are reentering culture to flip it upside down. The climate is fierce and requires bravery and savvy to navigate today’s culture without compromising the values and integrity we must own as Christ followers.

This is not a new idea. Jesus said “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” Matthew 10:16. What a strange thing to tell someone to be a snake? We are called unashamedly to live the gospel out in out lives in a culture that does not agree with it, and to accomplish this, we must be wise and we must be intentional. This will not happen overnight, but I do believe that more and more Christians will begin taking bricks down in their lives, families, social groups and cities.

Two men who are leading the way today are Mark Burnett, in his bible project, the apprentice, and Lecrae. God is using them like wrecking balls to break down walls and to bring the gospel to their spaces of influence. They live sacred lives right in the middle of their secular worlds; this is what we must aim for.