Is it possible for you to change culture for the better? In this episode of the SALLT Leadership Podcast, Wes Lane addresses what it means to be an agent of change in culture, and some practical steps you can take to start addressing change right where you are.
Episode 5 Show Notes
“What it Means to be a Change Agent to Culture”
“Before we were even born, he gave us our destiny; that we would fulfill the plan of God who always accomplishes every purpose and plan in his heart.” - Ephesians 1:11 TPT
“Culture is the ‘artificial, secondary environment’ which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organization, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values.” – Richard Neibuhr
Key Takeaways:
The story of William Wilberforce.
Three things you should know about Wilberforce and his friends
Change agents can be for both good and evil.
Being a change agent first and foremost means our personal pursuit to become increasingly like Jesus in order that the culture around us looks like love. It means being salt and light wherever it is that God has planted you. It means starting within and working your way out because you can only give away what you’re carrying in your own heart.
Next Steps:
00:05: Well, welcome to the SALLT Leadership Podcast, the podcast for men and women who want to live a purposeful existence, they want to grow in their faith and they want to maximize their abilities and influence for the Kingdom of God. I'm Wes Lane. And in case you have slept since the last podcast and you don't recall what is the context for all of this? Well, this is the context for the podcast and for you, and it's this, you have been designed, built by a living, loving God who has sent you into a moment of history to the community that you live in as a part of an overarching strategy on God's part to redeem and restore everything to Himself, your life matters, it's purposeful, and God has a vested interest in seeing to your success, that's what this is about, and the adventure is all there for you to discover, it's the grand adventure, all waiting for you to step out on to what I call the Holy bread crumb trail and discern and be led by the Spirit. And I'll tell you what, and if you will dare do that, you will not turn back.
1:22: So let me give you just one verse, Ephesians 1:11, "Before you were even born, He gave us our destiny, that we would fulfill the plan of God, who always accomplishes every purpose and plan in His heart." It's the supernatural life with God, that's what that looks like. And the title of today's show is this, this is Episode 5, "What it Means to be a Change Agent to Culture." So let's talk first about what is culture anyway? Richard Niebuhr put it like this, and I think this is a pretty good definition, it says, "Culture is the artificial secondary environment, which man super imposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organization, inherited artifacts, technical process, values, all of that." It's the world that we live in. It's kind of like the aquarium the fish swims in. Culture also comes in at every different level, a microcosm, macrocosm, it can be a home, office, locker room, a Facebook group, all of that, every single one of those, every single culture is capable also of being in a constant state of change. In fact, so example, if you have a toxic work environment that can change with the right effort, it can change, and very importantly also, there are tipping points to culture when 10%...
03:02: If you want to see a community culture change... The Christian culture, if you want to see the Christian culture take a different bit, which is what we're interested in at SALLT. You need 10% of that culture, that community, if you will, to say, "This is the direction we're now going into," and when 10% come to a strongly held belief and pursue that. Everything changes, all the rest follow in that. So today, I want to talk to you a little bit, I want to tell you a story about about a small group of people that radically changed their culture, you know I hear this all the time, I've heard it for years, and I'm sure you've heard it as well, people lamenting the current culture surrounding us right now in this age right now, you hear... Oh no, this is terrible. There's no…
03:58: And you hear all varying levels of hope and all that sort of stuff, but I want to just share with you, this is not the darkest moment by a long shot of how life has been in fact the era that I want to take you back to makes this era look like a light show compared to the culture in that period of time . So let me just describe that, in this culture, and this was England, by the way, England in circa 1790, so in the late 18th, early 19th century. This is what this looked like, and let me tell you, it had looked like this for 100 years, so this was well embedded, but as historians referred to it, it was not fashionable to be good.
4:43: Can you imagine that? It's not fashionable to even be good. Christianity was largely dormant, in fact, what you would see people would routinely scoff at people who are really deeply engaged Christians, people that actually took Jesus seriously. People would scoff at that. In fact, the only people that were engaged in what we might call social justice matters, I mean people that would be attending to widows, orphans, aliens, prisoners, that sort of thing, were those crazy Christians, the ones that were really thought to be by everyone else, just over the top. In fact, you wouldn't see charitable gatherings, like today you see them all the time, charitable gatherings, you're clinking your champagne glass celebrating whatever is it, that was unheard of during that period of time, people didn't do that because it wasn't fashionable to be good. And on top of that, it was absolutely normal for people to be publicly drunk at every level of society, whether you are living in a really rough part of town, or whether you're on the floor of parliament getting ready to give a speech. It was called the Gin era or the Gin epidemic. In fact, you would see paintings, drawings of this, it was incredible.
6:07: It was incredible, and we don't see anything like that. Or sport and entertainment, sport and entertainment would consist of animal cruelty, breathtaking animal cruelty. In fact, the animal cruelty, where they would set different animals, well, bulldogs on bulls, to the death, bloody fights to the death called bull baiting is what it was called. And people thought that was hilarious. That was like a comedy show. Or how about the fact that public executions of humans. But it wasn't just the public hangings that was popular, like let's go to the movies, let's go to a hanging, it was the public dissection of the body afterwards, cutting it up. I mean, people just thought that was fun. You and I can't even fathom what that's like. And of course the underlying economic engine to the empire, the British Empire was slavery. And if that wasn't hard enough if anybody wanted to change that, the slaves weren't even viewed as being human.
7:16: That was the norm during that period of time. And into that cultural reality, rose up a group of friends led by a 28 year old member of parliament named William Wilberforce. And those guys, those men and women, they were from business, from government, from the arts, from the clergy and they were friends and they broke bread together, they prayed together, they hung out together, they liked one another. And in fact, when Wilberforce became a believer at age 26 or 27, somewhere around in there. He very famously, he made this declaration, he said this, "God almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners." Now folks, in today's lingo, the reformation of manners means the reformation of morals. Now, can you imagine a 26, 7, 8 year old member of parliament or a member of the state legislature here?
8:21: Can you imagine somebody standing up on the Capitol Steps and announcing, "God has sent me to reform the morals of Oklahoma." I mean, people would think he was nuts, right? Well, that's pretty much what they did in that time. And yet these men and women who when they looked out at that culture that I just described a moment to you before, they looked out at that, and they said, "This is inconsistent with the heart of God for this nation. How about we just change it?" And they did, they did. Over the next 40 years, they not only abolished slavery from the British Empire, they murdered the idea in the entire world for that time forward, that slavery was even a good idea, which had been commonplace before that.
9:22: Nobody thought about it, "It's just the way things are," not after that. Or when you think about today, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That was a group of British Christians that started that, 200 years ago, and it's still in effect today. So here's three things that you need to know about Wilberforce and his friends, the people who were salt and light to a dark, dark culture and changed that entire culture over time. First of all, they lived their lives imitating Jesus to the best of their ability. Number two, they had deep and abiding relationships with God and one another. In other words they fulfilled the two commandments that Jesus said were the two most important, love God, love your neighbor.
10:17: That's what they did. They loved God, they loved one another and they loved their neighbor. They loved the slave. They loved all of this, all of this. And then thirdly, there were two things that motivated their missional commitment to a transformed culture. And the first was this, they were concerned for the lost. All of those who did not have a relationship with Jesus Christ, that motivated them. They were concerned about the deadness of British Christianity or so called Christianity during that period of time. And finally, they also had a belief, they sincerely believed that they could influence the world to be a better place to live in. It's kinda like what you'll hear me talk about from time to time, "Our city should be a better place because God's kids are in town, period."
11:07: So what does it mean to be an agent to culture? So let's be really clear, first of all, a change agent. And that's what I mean, a change agent to culture. What a change agent, as you can well imagine, can be both for evil and for good. And so when we talk about changing anything in this podcast, it's with the love of Jesus who came to Earth because of God's great love for all people. And He died on a cross out of that same great love and desire to set people free from sin and death, so there's that. And so being a change agent, first and foremost, means our personal pursuit to become increasingly like Jesus. In order that, the culture around us looks like love, which is the currency of the Kingdom of God. It means being salt and light, wherever it is that God has planted you. It means starting within ourselves to see if we are plumb with God. And when I say plumb, what's a plumb line? Plumb is when you take a string, you put a weight at the end and it goes straight down, that is a perfectly straight, perfectly vertical line.
12:27: That when you're checking, is this plumb? Is this wall plumb? That's what you do. And you can see it’s perfectly straight up and down. Is our plumb line with God, is our heart straight with God in how we're doing and what we're doing? So it's that unchanging, consistent, dependable role model being Jesus. Jesus is the plumb line, He's the plumb line. Here's what Peter said, In 1 Peter 1:14-16, "As God's obedient children, never again shape your lives by the desires that you followed when you didn't know better. Instead, shape your lives to become like the Holy One” In other words, like Jesus, “who called you. For scripture says, ‘You are holy because I am holy.’" So it's not being co opted by culture, you're seeking to change. It's not by being co opted by the culture you're seeking to change in the first place. It means not being afraid of breaking loose of the herd. Well, let me amplify that just a little bit. Here's what I've observed over a long time. And I think if you think about it, you'll know it. People are afraid of breaking loose from the herd. It's a comfortable thing to be in the midst of all the herd, even if the herd doesn't know what they're about. It's the shame culture, it’s the fear of man. It's wanting to be unique. Think about this, how many of you want to be, "I want to be unique,” and yet at the same time, you're afraid to step away from the herd? Because the herd will criticize you.
14:17: Just think of the social media, you say something that is inconsistent with the herd, you get shamed for it. I guess maybe one way to put it is, so what herd are you hanging out with? Are you hanging out with the herd that it's like putting your finger in their mouth and saying, "What do we think today? What is the plumb line? It's Jesus." That is our plumb line? That is pure love. It's not selfish. It's not all about what do I look like? What do people think of me? Because it's irrelevant. It's what does Jesus think? How am I looking like Him? So it's boldness in the face of a shame culture, its boldness in the face of being fearful of what will people think of me? I hear that all the time. People, so afraid. What will people think? What will people think? Well, just about anything on any given day, that's what they think. But Jesus is the plumb line. That means being Jesus and He did nothing that He didn't see His father do first. It's the importance of intimacy with Him. And being one with Him. You only have to please one person at that point. You don't have to please here and there and this person and that person, you just have to please One. And that's the living God, the One who loves you perfectly.
15:44: It means being Jesus. And in fact, being the Jesus that we're supposed to look like as Christians. I always think about Mahatma Gandhi. This was the guy who in the 40s, he was the Indian lawyer, who led India to break loose of British colonial domination. And he said this famously, he said, "You know, I like your Christ. I just don't like your Christians." Think about that. That's our reputation. That's the stuff that we work on. And the way we do it is by consistently looking like the original Jesus. So Wilberforce and his friends did just that. He was the plumb line. And those things in a British dark, dark culture that didn't look plumb. They sought to change. They changed their world. They were change agents. So can you. So can you, whatever your world is, however great, however small, just being Jesus in that place. I'm wrapping up here. There's a profound and I'm going to hammer this every time we finish up because I want you to understand that there's a profound move of God taking place in our city right now. He has sent you to be on his team. In this moment. No one else is coming. We are the team on the ground right now. And what do you see God doing in this movement? He is unifying his kids in this community into an army of love, an army that looks like Jesus an army of salt and light that changes things for the good, for the glory of God.
17:31: It's a people who profoundly love their city and who love one another profoundly. It's a people from whom darkness flees. That's what's happening right now. God has always been looking for men and women who are salt and light, always been looking for change agents. He's always been looking for what Jesus calls a city on a hill, that city who shines so brightly that it illuminates the country to the world. And there is no city like that today. There is no place in this country like that today, although He is willing, for every community to look like that He's willing for this city, the greater Oklahoma City metro area, Central Oklahoma to be that city on a hill, a beacon to the world. And hear this, a spiritual epicenter to the world, a spiritual capital to this nation. That's what's happening, a place, a city to which kings and nations will be drawn to our light. That's the moment you're living in. That's what He's willing to do. If you'll dare, He's looking for a remnant of kids to rise up and embrace that and make a new culture. If you will believe that. And embrace what God's willing to do. Wherever it is that you've been planted. You will live a purposeful existence, you will live a life that matters, you will be that person and everything will change.
19:05: And this world will indeed be a better place to live because God's kids are in town. So here's the next right step for you this time, discover the stories of other change agents, fill yourself with them, build your faith by seeing how God works through them. Eric Metaxas for example wrote a wonderful book about Wilberforce and his friends called Amazing Grace, just like the song “Amazing Grace.” Or there's other good books, I've read books by a Chinese Christian, by the name of Brother Yun, it was called The Heavenly Man. Or there's another one called God's Smuggler, a remarkable story by a guy by the name of Brother Andrew. Drink these stories up because what you'll read is, this is how God does stuff through you and me, and He is still the God of the impossible. He's still looking for opportunities to show up and to show off through you. That's the high adventure He's calling you up to. Imagine a city in which it's commonplace for every follower of Jesus to actually believe He is still the God of the impossible. You can do this. Rise up. I'll see you next time.