Tuesday, October 10, 2017

When Disruptive is a Good Thing


People talk all the time about the need for change. Change in the way we do business. Change in politics. Change in the educational system. Change in the way media communicates. Change.

Yet all too often it's just talk. It's venting. Complaining. Pointing out problems without offering constructive solutions. Or...dare I say it...redemptive options.

And in the midst of all the talk, certain buzzwords have emerged. One of those is the term "disruptive". Something that demands or catalyzes radical change. Confronts the status quo and triggers a shift. Disruptive concepts. Disruptive behaviours. Disruptive technologies. Something that breaks in on the scene and alters the landscape in such a way that things will never be the same.

Many Christians, especially in the USA, have been content to live a brand of faith that shies away from disruption. The practical implications of being Christian boil down to being good neighbors, living tidy lives and doing their best to get along with people, at home and at work. They are diligent, conservative, charitable, and hopefully civil. And, probably owing to their largely western European cultural roots, they tend to value strict moderation over passion in pretty much everything that doesn't involve a sports team. They tell people about Jesus and the plan of salvation when an appropriate opportunity presents itself. But they do it as nicely as possible. They are, after all, nice people. Oh yes...and proud patriotic Romans 13-style Americans. Overall, they're probably almost as nice and non-disruptive as Canadians (but that's another article).

Francis Schaeffer, writing from Switzerland in the early 1970's, warned American evangelicals about the insidious danger of wrapping themselves in the American flag and baptizing wholesale the American dream with all its attendant illusions, agendas, priorities and idolatries. 

In his book The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, he wrote, 

“One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary. To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservatism means standing in the flow of the status quo, and the status quo no longer belongs to us...If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.” 
When Schaeffer talked about being revolutionary, he wasn’t talking about being revolutionary in the way the broader culture understood it. While he used terms like revolutionary and radically Christian, these were not vague terms that could be commandeered and filled out with whatever meaning served the purpose of the reader or hearer. These were terms that held specific and intentional content, rooted in a clear biblical understanding of what it means to be Christian and what it means when truth is spoken and lived lovingly but without equivocation in a culture that has lost its moral and spiritual anchorage. And in a church that has lost its biblical and prophetic edge in that culture. He was calling Christians to understand that the biblical gospel was at root disruptive! And yet now, almost fifty years later, much of American christianity has failed to hear that call.

The prophet Amos asked his hearers, "Do you really know what you're asking for when you call for the Day of the Lord? Do you understand the implications? Do you understand the impact that God's reign will have on how you live your own lives?"

We today could be asked the same questions. We talk about advancing God's Kingdom, and we pray...sometimes with little thought..."Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." But do we really know what we're asking? Do we really understand what the Kingdom of God is and the transformative, disruptive power we're asking God to release into our world and our lives?

This is the focus of our latest episode of Marketplace Kingdom. We hope it helps you as you seek to live and move in the name of Jesus and the power of His Spirit, disrupt the way things are, transform your world, and advance His Kingdom right where you are!

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