Agents Of Change

2 Corinthians 5:18-21

We are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5:20)

IN THE MID-1970S, two well-known ministry founders—Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as Cru) and Loren Cunningham of Youth With A Mission—met for lunch, each feeling strongly that he had a message for the other. As they discovered, they each had the same message: that for a nation to be transformed by God’s Kingdom, God’s people would need to influence seven spheres of society: government, business, education, media, arts and entertainment, family, and religion. The principle has been taken up by a variety of groups over the years and has often been tweaked into different forms. But the idea of influencing these arenas has remained largely intact. Many have embarked on a battle to win the culture not by force but by blessing and influence.

Whatever you think of that specific paradigm, the purpose behind it is good and true. Christians do not belong to this world (John 17:16), but we are definitely in it (John 17:15). We live distinct lives, set apart for his service, but few of us are called to retreat to separate places that confine our influence only to prayer. We are called into culture, not away from it. We are agents of reconciliation, ambassadors of the better way, and we are designed not only to voice God’s appeal but also to demonstrate it.

Many Christians don’t know how to do that. Large segments of entire generations have abandoned Washington, Hollywood, and Wall Street to worldly influences and then complained about how ungodly those culture-shapers are—completely missing the importance of being agents of change and reconciliation in places of influence. As much as a resistant world needs preachers of God’s Kingdom, it needs even more those who will embody it in all of its graces and blessings. The world needs to see a God who is for them in the faces of those who are called by his name. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go in that spirit. Be an ambassador of the extremely good will of the Father, and influence your culture with his creativity, wisdom, and love.

{Father, I hardly know where to begin. My culture is bigger than I am—but never bigger than you. Make me a small catalyst for big change on the mountaintops of your world. Amen.