The world has changed.
Forget linear and orderly.
Everyone is walking around with palpable stress.
Angst has erupted in anger.
Nobody wants to wait in the lemming line anymore.
And Time Magazine nailed it with the unveiling of
2011's Person of the Year: The Protestor.
Lights flickering from pixels and television sets reveal daily uprisings, demonstrations, chants, and occupiers.
Everyone has a cause. Maverick is envogue.
But, as Dennis Miller once said, the collective mistake we're making is this:
Anger used to be a bass line that we used to merely provide a funky bottom to our cultural zeitgeist. It's now broken out into a shrieking guitar solo that's drawing a rivulet of blood from all our ears.
In 2012, focus and synergy will carry the day.
I believe this moment is tailor-made for Gospel-advancement.
Jesus attracted revolutionaries.
The Scriptures acknowledge that the system is scratched and broken.
The heartbeat of the Church is a battle cry for mavericks:
Things don't have to be this way!
We are FOR the beat-up and broken!
There is always room for more to join our movement!
You like celebrations? We rally behind a Dead Guy who's Alive!
Let's make heaven crowded!
Instead of worrying about not losing the insiders, what if we instead focused our energies and dollars on engaging and reaching the outsiders - - people who are actively looking for change and hope?!
It was Steve Jobs who once said,
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the navy."
Nobody wants to join your musty, creeky, old church-navy with its legalistic rules, dress code, sneering glances, and prejudiced opinions. No one will ever follow you down the street if you're carrying a banner that says, "Onward toward mediocrity."
Instead, we are living in an Age of Pirates. Everyone is desparate to be part of something bigger than themselves that goes against conventional thinking - to become awash in the wave of protesting the norm and forging the future. That wave can be the Church! The wind blowing is none other than the Spirit of God!
I believe that if we dropped the insider-church-politics, came clean in repentance for how we've hurt people (people!) in the name of religion, and passionately pursued lost people with all our hearts and guts, the 2012 Time Magazine Person of the Year would be... the Church!
