GlocalNet

People don’t change the world, the world changes people. I know that sounds like heresy from an evangelical, but it’s true. There are those few “world changers” that seize moments, but it isn’t because they thought it up, it’s because the environment was created that allowed them to see it first and then do something about it.

Paul didn’t come up with an idea to change the world with the Gospel. It came from Jesus. His first encounter with Christians is to stomp them out. He’s traveling and persecuting the church around the Middle East. These Christians have spread out because of the Roman roads, trade routes, and businesses. They don’t run and hide in the desert or band together as tribes, now, because of the road system the Romans have built they can disperse, all of them like Abraham. In context, what Abraham did when he left Ur and came to Canaan was radical because there were no roads as the Romans would develop. It was a radical for him to take that journey as it was for Columbus to cross the ocean.

The gospel could spread because of the road systems, the Roman army and business people. It was a very organic thing.

I’m optimistic about this emerging generation of 20 Somethings and how they are connected, view the world, and are actually doing stuff, not just talking. Everyone has been seeing the world change before their eyes. It’s changing how they act within their tribe, but not so much outside their tribe and/or country. Why? Because those behaviors are not in their DNA. Why is this younger generation changing? Because their DNA is a global DNA. It’s different from previous generations. They’re not changing as much as they are responding to an open world. This open world has yet to be seized by Americans that see everything everywhere - what I call global - which I got from the Japanese.

Why have they changed? How do we change to see global opportunities and seize them? First, there is a product, process, concept that becomes expressed by an individual. When we encounter a new land, a new era, a new technology, a new opportunity most will not see it, but a few will. The first to truly see it is not the scientist or historian, but the opportunist - who sees something to be seized. So, there is birthed a method, a product. In reading Steve Job’s biography, he saw the opportunity more than he saw the technology. The opportunity and methodology or product or practice that comes along with it is seized because it’s better and changes things in a more productive or positive way. Sometimes people are open because the old way is broken and everyone knows it but they don’t know what to do.

Second, there is a relationship with someone or something that defies what they’ve previously been taught. I love that line in “Dances with Wolves” where Kevin Costner writing in his journal says, “These people are not who I have been told they are.” Nothing is as powerful as a relationship. If I’ve learned anything in my life and ministry, it’s this - stay open to people, they may surprise you - and even more significant, you may surprise yourself in how you change and who you get to know. Others show us stuff we would never have seen on our own. When two conflicting world views meet, it doesn’t have to be disaster, it can actually be “enlightenment” for both.

Third, change comes because enough people are in the paradigm that to not move forward would be stupid. I don’t know of a single church that calls its worship “traditional”. In the future, that may be the new “innovative”. Blended is the new word! Liturgical is another way to say it as well, but not traditional. The internet, the travel, the young people in the Arab Spring - the millions of Indians spreading out around the world, and the Chinese, and Africa, and the world migrating everywhere is changing and a new paradigm has been born. It’s not that this generation has changed to a new paradigm, they were born in it. They will never go back. There is nothing for them to go back to, in terms of global paradigm.

Give me freedom here, I may change my mind - just been thinking about this a lot lately . . . . with all my travels, friends, relationships ,etc., . . . .