How many days stock of grain does the world have left?

Political leaders follow – they don’t in fact lead.
They follow popular culture.
The question that pastors and church leaders have to ask is – who then is calling the shots; who is determining the prevailing values?

I’m finishing off a rather unusual read for me - A New Kind of Conservative by Joel C. Hunter -and Hunter speaks a little into this very issue.

(These days I’m reading more political books in my attempt to pull together reading material that we will suggest to people as the heat builds up in the US’s quest for its next President - books to help people think about politics with the mind, love and concerns of Christ.)

Hunter suggests that “whoever is putting forth the ‘big ideals,’ which come from the big ideas, are the thought leaders of the culture.”

This makes me rather anxious. I don’t know of too many pastors who live with the big ideas.

I don’t know many pastors who live in the realm of the big.

Most pastors I meet live in the realm of the local.
They are experts on all things local.
Every day they engage with myriads of stuff all relating to their staff, their congregations, their church, their community – but few live in the local with a good grasp of the big.

Yet, effective Kingdom leaders will live closely with the big.

Here’s a few of the big that I think pastors have to better live with:

Will Islam modernize?
Will China continue to expand?
Will geographic tribalism redraw the world map?
Will environmentalism and the changing climate determine most other issues?
Will gas or water be the most influential commodity?
Will the predicted population explosion to 9 billion by 2050 cause the food and energy crisis also predicted?
Will the church embrace the conceptual age?
Will AIDS ravage Asia the way it has Africa?

The questions could go on………
These are some of the dominant questions.

In coming months and years these big issues will become the currency of political discussion, debate and policy. But, church leaders need to engage with them before politicians get to them. Church leaders cannot be followers, we must be leaders.

Imagine if every church leader in the over 300,000 US churches spoke into the big questions – how much could we influence prevailing values which politicians follow after.

The church needs to begin to speak the language of the big not just the local.

But we speak the language of the big in the context of the local.
We redefine reality for people. We lift people out of their local world and help them see a bigger reality, a bigger world.

This is core to the Gospel. The Gospel is about the world.
The most memorized bible verse – 3:16 …..places the Gospel within the cosmos not simply the local or the individual.
Church leaders have shrunk not only the world, but the Gospel.
Too small a world – too small a Gospel.

May pastors become learners of the world.
May pastors be leaders who know the big questions.
May pastors be leaders who lead well in the local by helping people see the big.
May pastor influence the big by leading the big in the local.

Do you know that we only have 40 days of grain to feed the world left in stock!
Do you care?
Does it speak into how you lead?