The artifact that I choose was one of the January Series lectures. The lecture that I attended was titled The Next Christians: How a New Generation is Restoring the Faith. The speaker of this lecture was Gabe Lyons. He spoke about the Christians interactions with the current culture.
In culture many perceptions of Christianity are that Christians believe in anti-homosexuality, they are judgmental, hypocritical, sheltered, and too political. The lecture went on to talk about the interactions that Christians have with the current culture. Lyons describes three different types of Christians. They are separatists, cultural, and restorers. Separatist Christians are described as separate from the world and that they are one group who think, act, and look alike. Cultural Christians are described as people who blend in, have a close alignment to culture, and just put themselves in the category of Christians. Restorers are described as Christians practicing what faithfulness looks like. He went on to talk about the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration and continued saying that the cultural Christians only look at the creation and restoration, while the separatist Christians only look at the fall and redemption. Lyons then says that the restorers look at all the whole story form creation to redemption, while the other two only look at half of them. Restorers are provoked because they get engaged and involved and through this we can see he kingdom showing up. Restorers are also called to creation; this is true because they create and environment, experience, conversation, or an organization that is bettering the kingdom. Restorers are also called they are to use the gift’s that God has given them; Restorers use their gifts to redeem and restore that world. He continues that it is important to not escape from the world but to renew it and also that reconciliation can happen with anything and pleases God because it changes our hearts. He then finishes up saying that there are seven channels of culture and they are church, business, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, and social sector. He says that pretty much everyone is a part of one of the channels.
1. How can we get engaged and create the world as it should be?
2. Which of the seven channels do you think you could be apart of? Why?
Good report on the lecture, Kacey. What did you think of it? What resonance do you see between what Lyons said and what we've been discussing in class? It seems like Plantinga and Walsh/Keesmaat have both been concerned with exploring what the lives of "restorers" might look like in practice.
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