The Need of Worldview Transformation

Far too often we, as the people of God, are either conformed to this world so that it is hard to distinguish the Christian from the non-Christian in the factory, hospital, bank, etc. or we have become so isolated from the world out there that they hardly know we exist. Jesus in what we refer to as the Great Commission commands us to ‘disciple the nations.’ He doesn’t call us to be conformed to the nations, or to be isolated and irrelevant to the nations, but to disciple them. It is impossible to disciple the nations including our own without seriously engaging them and seeking to bring about worldview transformation at the deepest level of our culture. I believe that this is the primary task we face in Australia today at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We are to disciple our nation and bring its people who hold varying ideologies under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Now that is an enormous task. However, it is not an impossible task. It is a similar task that faced the early church as it confronted the Roman Empire. In less than 300 years the early church was successful in overcoming all other competing ideologies and religions within the Roman Empire and become the primary religious force of the Empire. That came about because the early believers were discipled by Jesus and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit they experience a radical worldview transformation. Acts and the Epistles is the record of that transformation as they struggled to bring their worldview under the Lordship of Christ.

If we are to disciple our nation, then we too must be truly discipled and experience radical worldview transformation. However, the church, on the whole, falls far short of these requirements. We fit into three categories:

· Those who have had a conversion experience, but who have not been discipled and haven’t been taught how to live faithfully for Christ.

· There is another group who have been discipled and taught how to live out their Christian lives through prayer, Bible study, worship and fellowship with other Christians. However, their Christian life is focused on themselves and their walk with God, but it does not affect the world out there.

· The third group includes those who have been discipled and had their worldview transformed and brought under the Lordship of Christ. They are sincerely seeking to engage and transform the world in which they live. Their Christianity as moved beyond the private into the public world without them being conformed to the world they are engaging.

The reality is that some churches have failed to disciple their members, others have done a great job in the area of private discipleship; however, few do well at worldview transformation. The result is that many believers live with a foot in the church and the other in the world in a kind of worldview schizophrenia.