I heard Kenda Creasy Dean speak several years ago in Indianapolis and I was impressed by her ability to articulate some uncomfortable truths. I have taught a course in student ministry and I used one of Dean's books as a required text. Her new book, 'Almost Christian' has received press on CNN and elsewhere. As usual, she backs up her observations with solid research and questions status quo with intelligence and grace--the status quo inside and outside the church. You can find some of her reactions to the recent press on her blog. Now, stay with me a moment because I am going to switch gears a bit. After all, this is a blog that speaks often of globalization and of the interconnected world in which we live in as people of faith. 

What happens if you take the research of Kenda Creasy Dean and now read it with a global eye, particularly in light of the now famous statements made by Philip Jenkins, such as, “Global denominations are going to have to figure what to do when the bulk of the power and money is in the North and the bulk of the people is in the South.” The moral decline of the West has been well documented and the rise of China and India as ecnomic powers has also been well documented. Dean speaks to the weak faith or no faith being inherited by our children. An ever growing Biblical illiteracy that is teamed with an expanding social network that allows us to make 'friends' with people from around the world. A rather large percentage of new marriages are now happening between people who meet online and this will likely increase as current students age. And in a world of increasingly virtual relationships, we are now concerned with the virtual disapperance of intimacy within the church between parents and children, between children and God, and between parents and God. Let me just ask this: why do students come to faith at all?

Recent books like UnChristian and Almost Christian sound some alarms, loud enough for CNN to notice, but these books are also aimed at people inside the church and to many churches, this is hardly news. No doubt there are concerns abounding all over about the shallow faith of so many families in the West. Most of us fight against pain, sacrifice, and patience with great vigor and civil rights. Yet, remember Jenkins and remember that most of the global, worldwide, body of Christ doesn't live in the U.S. Now, what are your thoughts? Do you see a church in decline or a church on the move? Do you see young people falling away or standing strong in the face of epic poverty and disease?

There is now an estimated 150 million University students in our world today and over 120 million of them live outside of the U.S. Perhaps, Dean and others are correct in that many young people are leaving the church in record numbers due to their apathetic parents and pathetic preachers they are sitting under week after week. I won't disagree. Yet, this isn't the whole picture anymore. The whole picture must include the whole world because the whole Bible speaks to the whole world. After all, the authors of Scripture probably looked more like the immigrants fueling contemporary debate than the middle class, white children leaving church. It is true, many young people need to be taught a more robust, more Biblical, and more grounded faith in the West. And part of that teaching should include the sacrificial example of young people in the global south and east. We may now be living in a time when the U.S. will continue to ask 'why do students come to faith at all?' while young people from the other side of the world set their sites on North America as the next great mission field. I am guessing we're in a transitional phase where we are sometimes almost chrisitan, post christian, or pre christian, but at the end of the day, we will have to have a more global view of what it means to be Christian if we're going to follow Christ.

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When we say the term a Biblical worldview, do we truly mean a view of the entire world? In other words, does our ‘worldview’ stand up to the test of being more universal than cultural; more global than local?

While in Nicaragua a few years ago, I recall giving a presentation to some Christian leaders and the word ‘worldview’ didn’t translate directly. Instead, my Latin American brothers rendered it, ‘cosmo view’ and in a very real way, that made more sense than what I was trying to convey. Our worldview and in particular a Biblical one, should consist not simply of truths from our own local contexts, but truths that make sense universally. Michael Horton, in his book the Gospel-Driven Life, makes the following comment that is relevant to this discussion:

The gospel is unintelligible to most people today, especially in the West, because their own particular stories are remote from the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation that is narrated in the Bible. Our focus is introspective and narrow, confided to our own immediate knowledge, experience, and intuition…

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In the wake of the BP disaster and ecological nightmare, which is unfolding in our Gulf of Mexico, I sit back and ponder the deeper elements of our current social climate, worldview, and social progress. I look at the seriousness of the close to 22% unemployment rate in California (based on the actual 10% unemployment rate and factoring in those who are discouraged workers, entrepreneurs, and those who are independent employees who cannot claim unemployment insurance), a government without any real “teeth” to tackle the greed of our country, and an economic system which seems to only benefit those who are wealthy, I am saddened. Moreover, I am also enraged by the sheer amount of greed, which exists in our country today—and not just our country, but it is passing onto other nations too.

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In the next 30 seconds, a little boy or girl in Africa will die of malaria.[1] Other research tells us that nearly 1 billion people in the world are illiterate[2] and another 1.4 billion can’t get to clean water[3].  So, what would those stuck in poverty have to add to a discussion about education and what could they possibly teach those of us who not only have drinking water flowing from a faucet, but who also sleep free from mosquito nets, with the ability to read ourselves to sleep? Let me pose the question a different way: are there universal methods of education that transcend cultural and socioeconomic lines to the point that we can articulate a core set of principles that may guide educators around the world, thus forming an international set of ideals that blurs the lines of the literate and illiterate and transcends the borders of East and West, North and South?

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Living in an interconnected world is here to stay. One cannot claim ignorance any longer on some parts of the world with 24/7 cable networks visually reporting the recent news and images from around the globe. Couple this with Twitter updates, texts messages, and online updates: information is not our problem. Engagement with that information is another story. How does something like news impact us emotionally? Part of our emotional engagement comes when we actually allow ourselves to be immersed or exposed in a fresh way to people and their stories.

So, to become more emotionally connected rather than mere information collection, here are a few suggestions....

1) Read books written by foreign authors.....don't simply read a book by a Western author about a different part of the world, but truly read a book by someone who does not live here and who has written a book for people who don't live here. Spending hours and days, not sound bytes and minutes, will help with emotional engagement.

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(this is part 5 of 5 of a series of posts on leadership in an interconnected world)

If you have been keeping up with the previous posts, then you'll note that Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Rosa Parks, Steven Spielberg, and William Shakespeare all contribute something to leadership in an interconnected world. To review, let me simply make 5 brief points.

In an interconnected world, leaders will have to:

1) work with people of clashing ideologies (see Lincoln in Goodwin's book Team of Rivals)
2) focus on something bigger than their job or themselves (to me Lincoln is the example again, but a case could also be made for Wilberforce)
3) utilize words carefully and understand that words do leave a legacy (see Jefferson's example)
4) know when to stay seated on principle and when to move ahead; sometimes staying still is progress (see also Rosa Parks)
5) understand who the storytellers are and how their influence shapes ideas (see how Spielberg and Shakespeare have shaped ideas)

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