Next Generation Leaders.

I have been spending a couple of hours at lunchtime on Mondays with my cousin Cale. Cale is one of those people that is just flat out likable. He has been married for nearly one year. And is in the process of buying a home with his beautiful new bride in...MID-TOWN OKC!

As Cale and I have been spending time together and I think about how and why God is re-connecting us, I think about leadership. Cale is a leader. You are a leader. And one of my values and purposes is to help develop next generation leaders.

We are working through some wonderful material together, Catalyst Groupzine: The Culture Issue. Learn more about Catalyst at www.CatalystSpace.com and www.CatalystConference.com.

So here are some highlights from Ben Ortlip's article in Session 01 - Engaged In Culture.

"Instead of viewing church as taking place on our campus, we need to start exploring ways to help others encounter the presence of God in everyday life. If we honestly evaluate the premise of the modern church, there's not much about it that's designed to engage the culture.

For the most part, modern churches employ and invitational strategy for engaging culture. Our success at impacting the culture hinges on our ability to get them to show up...for something.

Our impact is limited to what we can accomplish on Sunday morning, or Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, the unchurched continue to exist in a world where Sunday morning is the time for playing golf or planting shrubs.

Instead of putting the focus on getting people into church, this other strategy seeks to get the church into culture.

Just to be clear, we're not talking about moving the church into cultural channels. We're talking about moving the churched into the culture. That's how Jesus taught his disciples to do it. It's how the early church did it. AND IT'S WHERE OUR GREATEST POTENTIAL LIES TODAY.

Engaging culture is more than speaking church to those in attendance on Sunday. It's about becoming an organic part of the culture itself."

Let's dialogue about this a bit...