Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. – Is 59:14-15
“Christians need to get out of the pews and into the public square, showing the world a better way.” – Chuck Colson – Author, Founder of Prison Fellowship
” The Christian church has only done embryonic thinking in this area (culture). When it comes to culture, most Christians know nothing but a privatized faith or a militant, belligerent faith.” – Timothy Keller – New York City Pastor and Author
“So, want to start a school, plant a church, run a soup kitchen, open a bakery, make a movie, change your community’s perception of Christians, treat cancer, protect marriage, petition city council, launch a rock band, create a website, develop land, improve a city? Want to aim wide, invent the next social network, be president, solve gridlock, cure cancer, retrofit the multiplex? … Take two like-minded companions, add a dozen experts and loyalists. Watch what happens.” – Mindy Belz – World Magazine
“Boice believes that evangelicals have not done a very good job in relating to American culture. The influence of churchgoers on the country’s values is almost negligible. And evangelicals have little to offer in the culture battles.” – review of Two Cities, Two Loves. Christian Responsibility in a Crumbling Culture by James Montgomery Boice.
“It is not enough to condemn, critique, copy, or just consume culture. The only way to change culture is to create culture.” – Andy Crouch – Author
“We live in a Post-Christian culture. Done. Get over it. They don’t play by our rules or understand our values. … We can complain and lament all we want, but sooner or later we have to recognize the inevitable, and act on it. We have to understand how the dominant culture works, speak their language, and engage.” – Phil Cooke – author of Branding Faith
“The case can be made that the great social and political devastations of our [20th] century have been perpetrated by regimes of militant secularism, notably those of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. That is true, and it suggests that the naked public square is a dangerous place.” – Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1986)
“In every generation there have been people who’ve pushed back against the use of technology in spreading the gospel. God has always used just about everything in culture to spread this incredible message. Every time there’s been an advance in technology someone has leveraged that to further the gospel in a city, in a country and now all over the world.” — Andy Stanley
Community pages are an amazing strategy for online outreach which very few people are yet using. The concept is to create a site based on the local community – town, local area/county, state, even a small country. The site must offer the best secular links for the community in a range of categories. It must be a genuinely useful resource at this level. But it also contains appropriate Christian links in various categories. The more comprehensive it is, the more that people in the area will use it as their one-stop local neighborhood site, maybe even setting it as a ‘start page’ in their browsers, and become frequent return visitors. – Internet Evangelism Article
from the Barna Research Group: “Christianity has arguably added more value to American culture than any other religion, philosophy, ideology or community. Yet, contemporary Americans are hard pressed to identify any specific value added. Partly due to the nature of today’s media, they have no problem identifying the faults of the churches and Christian people.”
… the LORD said to Abram, “From the place where you are standing, look up and gaze to the north, south, east, and west … Genesis 13:14