Being a Change Agent (in an Unfriendly Culture)

Speaker 1: (00:00)
We're living in a culture today that's becoming increasingly hostile to the Christian faith had. Do we deal with that? How do we have influence? We'll stay tuned today. We're going to answer that with my special guests, Dennis peacock. How do I bring my faith to work? How do I tap into the power of God in my work life? Paul, why am I going through this adversity is God mad at me? I'm also a woman and I've been helping leaders like you answer these questions and more for over 30 years. That's what this podcast is all about. Let's learn and grow together. Welcome to TGIM. Today. God is first. Well, welcome through our podcast this week. I'm so delighted to have a very,

Speaker 2: (00:40)
a good friend that I've known quite a while, Dennis peacock out of California and Dennis is with an organization called go strategic and he has a heart to equip leaders just like myself and he's been doing it on the West coast. I've been doing it on the East coast and we've been in a lot of conferences over those many years, and he's had a lot of his Joseph process as well. He fought a major disease in his life that almost killed him. And, uh, God has restored him and get him, given him a second wind like myself. And so, Dennis is great to have you today, uh, good to have you on podcast. See you, Oz. And it's always good to be with a fellow troublemaker. That's right. And so, you know, you've written several books and you've, um, our paths are very similar. And I, I remember the very first time I met you, Dennis, was at a conference you had and my first introduction to you was you walking down the center aisle dressed up as Braveheart. You remember that? Yeah. And, um, but, uh, I've always appreciated your, uh, statesmanship. And then I've been saying to people for the last several years, I said, what has happened to the statesmen in our country and why don't we have them, uh, how did politics get to the place that it's gone to? And so, um, you know, when you look at where our nation is today, uh, what's your greatest concern? What are you seeing?

Speaker 2: (02:18)
Great question. Um, I always, if I'm thinking clearly begin with the church, uh, because of the role that God has for the church as the ekklesia, which again is a Greek word. [inaudible] unfortunately, far too many Christians have any understanding of what Ecosia of the Greek word really means or as a body politic what it was. But when Jesus used that word that he built his ekklesia and he didn't say build a synagogue [inaudible] that would have been as offensive to the Jews

Speaker 3: (02:59)
as drink my blood and eat my flesh.

Speaker 3: (03:02)
And it wasn't a spiritual term at that time, right? It was the ekklesia was the name for the ruling political bodies in the Greek city States, which my background in political theory at Berkeley, I knew what ekklesia was and had studied ekklesia management. They're in the pre Hill, any Greeks. And when I discovered that echo SIA was what we translate church. Mmm. As in many cases, I shook my head and said, how in God's name did we get to where we are now? Because an was SIA is a governing spiritually governing body, very much like a legislature. So when we talk about what's the biggest problem in society, the biggest problem in society is that the instrument God had chosen two manage through Oh his spirit managing through the church and managing through the scripture as in applying biblical principles and biblical law to the structure of society.

Speaker 3: (04:14)
If the church does not understand it's own identity, then that is what produces what we see going on in the secularization of Western civilization. We see nations for which Christ died as his inheritance. Some too, we see them being managed with not only no protest, no real direction from the body of Christ as to how God wants to manage culture and manage society. So that's a long answer, but an important journey that I think the simp