5 Major Challenges In 21st Century Media Evangelism

As people who are called to be salt and light, we must be aware of the challenges we will face in bringing change to our immediate environments and be adequately prepared otherwise our efforts at influencing the world with our lives will lead to us being contaminated with its influence. I've highlighted some challenges facing us today as preachers of the good news of Christ and solutions to some of these issues raised. Read on (and share with a friend too)

Challenge #1 > Contact without contamination
Many, in their bid to make the gospel acceptable to many have shipwrecked their faith. For most contact has led to contamination. For example, there are quite a number of choir members that have gone into music reality TV shows and returned with new identities: inspirational singers. Obviously, their interactions with the world of entertainment has changed their perspectives and positions about being popular as against serving the will of our Father.

Solution:
An active relationship with God (in worship & the word) is the only antidote to staying untainted in the culture we interface with. (Rom 12:1,2) As long as His word abides in us and we in Him (His word) we can be guaranteed not to be swept away. An active fellowship with a body of believers is also key to overcoming living. Daniel and his friends maintained a fellowship in Babylon. This helped them a lot.

How To Unlock Creative Flows

The Tunes Of Jubile Creatives' Workshop is happening again in June. This is a monthly interactive session where we learn how to engage and influence the culture we live in using media as our tool of influence and impact. At the last edition in May, we considered the challenges christians face in getting involved in the transformation of our immediate society. You can download the pdf here.

This time we'll be looking at how we can access a steady flow of creativity for creating exceptional media content for our comedies, dramas, movies, songs, dance presentations, books and so on.

Date: June 8th and 9th 2013.
Time: 5pm (on both days)
Venue: The Youth Chapel, Methodist Church Nigeria, Agodi, Gate, Ibadan.
Details: 08170686445 | apostledavid@rampageoutreach.org | eyitope.lala@gmail.com
I've included a map for the venue for those unfamiliar with the place.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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Cultural Change from the bottom up

I start today's post with this quote from a blog I stumbled upon in a Google search about christians changing culture. It goes like this:

In his book, To Change the World, James Davison Hunter asserts that many Christians have adopted a false theory for social change, believing that the majority belief determines the social norm. Therefore, change occurs when a majority adopts a belief that differs from the existing norm. The LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia argues that this faulty theory has led Christians to invest a large amount of energy in resources and strategies to effect cultural change that prove ineffective. 
http://truthseekerblog.com/2011/03/07/strategies-for-changing-culture/

I cannot but marvel at the wisdom the prince of this world uses to infiltrate the world with his own influence in the homosexual issue for example. He uses very simple steps in an effective strategy-

• Remove the *"yuck factor" in homosexuality. (The yuck factor is a belief that an intuitive negative response to a practice, idea or something should be interpreted as evidence of its evil or harmful character.) This has been done by placing homosexuality in a favourable light using movies, sitcoms, comedies and even children's cartoons.
• appeal to sympathy from fellow humans by presenting homosexuals as innocent victims of social, racial and religious bigotry. Something like the feelings of sympathy evoked in the fight against slave trade.

Slowly and steadily the majority opinions towards homosexuality are gradually eroding giving way to more liberal views even among believers. While all this is also as a result of the speed of light changes happening in our world today, there's a simple strategy that I see the devil using. Interestingly it's obvious the devil copied this from the Author and Finisher of our faith as God has always used a seed approach in building anything on the earth.  Unfortunately we Christians have tended to try to infiltrate the power structures to effect a societal change. While this is laudable and can be effective, we live in times when social change is now more in the hands of the "consumers" than the "sellers". 

Jesus NEVER used power structures to try to change society. He went for the core of society that was hurting and needing help and caused tremendous city-wide waves of change. Remember the Samaritan woman? Or the Gaderenes (ex)demoniac? A city policy was issued because of what Jesus did to that man. Jesus did not come as a senator but as a servant. He hated the religious bigotry of the Pharisees and repudiated their beliefs but he poured Himself into the society He was living in humility, love and kindness saving weddings, healing the sick, casting out demons, accepting the unloved into the fold and providing a (better) alternative path (lifestyle) to the already established and acceptable norms of the society.

Platforms already exist for us to bring the change our societies need. (I recently watched a  Youtube video, that has hit more than 20 million views in the space of four months!) In the light of this, I would like to personally invite you to a seminar/interactive workshop taking place this weekend where believers can learn better ways to infiltrate our world with the kingdom of God culture. Follow this link for more details!