My last post was about the book To Change The World, by James Davison Hunter. Here are a few more thoughts ….
How many times have you met a young person who says they want to change the world? It’s actually such a cliche now that most folks don’t say it aloud. But you can still tell they think it and have ambitions for it! These well meaning young leaders often end up in non-profits.
When I meet such young people, I find it challenging to tone down their expectations without dampening their enthusiasm. If I say, “That’s ridiculous…you won’t be able to achieve such lofty goals”, then I’m labeled as an old curmudgeon. When I say, “Wonderful, go for it!” I feel like I’ve enabled their overly ambitious goals that can easily lead to their disillusionment.
But Hunter’s book offers a middle ground that I really appreciate. His perspective on how culture changes can be a lesson for those in the non-profit world. He calls us to live a life of “faithful presence.” Defining what that means is difficult. Hunter does a great job of simplifying the complex methods that Jesus modeled in his earthly ministry, but there is no one sentence explanation for faithful presence.
Faithful presence is not only individual in practice but institutional in practice. Thus we can go into any vocation and have an impact on culture. Faithful presence is intensely personal (i.e. a life of piety) but also very engaged with the world around us. It means to be fully followers of Christ, fully engaged with our culture, and fully present in all walks of life. The idea is to be agents of change in the world precisely because we are not attempting to be such agents of change! Counterintuitive? Obviously. And brilliantly.
There is often a “messiah” complex that wants to change the world, but we need to learn that such a goal is beyond our abilities. I’m struck by this recent article in the NYTimes about google.org promising to reinvent philanthropy. Google.org was seduced by the “change the world” mentality, and even they have learned that such goals are too lofty. If Google, with their billions of dollars and brilliant people, finds it difficult to change a narrow sphere of the world … then we need to be even more cautious about our goals of transforming culture.
Hunter’s insights are as applicable to non-profit groups wanting to save the world as they are to faith-based initiatives that want to redeem the culture. And it will surely help me as I search for just the right words to share with an ambitious young dreamer.