We are living in the midst of what I consider to be the third great revolution of the modern world. The first was the Industrial Revolution, the second was the Technological Revolution, and these two have given birth to a third: the Social Revolution. The result of the first two revolutions was to make available to the masses what was once available only to the few. The result of this third revolution is to make the masses available to the masses. Not only do we now have access to creative innovations that can enhance the quality of our lives; we now have access to each other!

The two primary contributors to this revolution have been advancements in the realms of transportation and communication. Advancements in transportation have given us greater physical access to each other and advancements in communication have given us greater virtual access to each other, and the way in which the tension between these two areas of advancement is resolved will determine the shape of the future of the modern world.

I say ‘tension’ because it seems that transportation and communication are rivals at heart; the more you have of one, the less you need of the other. Traveling to visit a friend is unnecessary if you can communicate with that friend just as effectively in the privacy of your own home, and communicating with your friend remotely is not so attractively if you find that you can travel to their location without inconvenience. We are finding that moderns highly value both efficiency and intimacy and the realms of transportation and communication are advancing as transportation becomes more efficient and communication becomes more intimate. Because both of these values are entrenched in human nature, we can be sure that both realms will continue to advance and neither will ultimately overshadow the other. There will always be contexts in which we prefer the efficiency of virtual presence over physical presence and there will always be contexts in which we prefer the intimacy of physical presence over virtual presence and for each of us the balance between the two will be at a slightly different place.

While these two areas of advancement seem to be working against one another, in actuality they are working together in a powerful way. (To put it in Hegelian terms, the thesis of transportational advancement and the antithesis of communicational advancement has produced the synthesis of Social Revolution.) The result of the Social Revolution has been the radical redefinition of the term ‘local’. Remember when ‘local’ calls were restricted to your area code and calling even just a few cities away was considered ‘long distance’? Now nationwide calling plans are the standard! That means that – as far as calling plans are concerned – California and New York are ‘local’ entities. What is more, Skype, iChat, Facetime and the like have given us the capacity to have communicate with people in other nations just as easily as we communicate with someone across town. This means that, from a communications standpoint, the concept of ‘local’ is relative to the availability of technology. The ‘local’ and the ‘global’ are becoming less and less antonymous and more and more synonymous. The local and the global are coming together, and this is where the idea of ‘glocality’ is coming from.

So what does this mean for the church?

What the concept of glocality is doing is expanding our understanding of the nature and meaning of the local church. Every other sector of society has transcended a regional concept of locality except the church. Companies are outsourcing and offering remote employment opportunities and communicating through telepresence, etc. Clubs are providing international memberships. Schools are offering satellite programs and online degrees, and the list goes on! What all of these entities are discovering is that locality is about accessibility, and if we can utilize communication technologies to supplement the lag in the development of transportational technologies to make local resources accessible at a global level, we have effectively localized the globe!

The next wave of revival will be sustained by the glocalization of the church. The future of church in the 21^st century is glocality, and this applies not only to the mission of the church to reach the nations for Christ, but to the membership of local churches as well. This element of glocality will come into being not simply as more religious resources (like podcasts, live streams, books, etc) are made more readily available at the global level, but as the element of commitment/covenant is added. We already have access to a surplus of information, but what we are starving for a corresponding surplus of intimacy. What we are finding is that information without intimacy is ultimately empty!

The availability of information, goods and services was the product of the technological revolution, but the availability of community is the promise of the social revolution. The social revolution gives us access to relationships that we otherwise would have no access to because of physical distance. The church of the 21st century must learn to harness this power of connectivity and exploit it for the purposes of the kingdom of God! We must go beyond the dissemination of religious goods and services and actually bring the people of God into covenant relationships. When this happens we will exchange the pervasive consumerism that plagues contemporary Christianity for a robust sense of global presence facilitated through covenantal relationships. Satellite memberships: its the next wave for the church of the 21st century, and in my humble opinion, the future looks bright! 

In the next several posts I’d like to explore this idea further in order to reflect upon the biblical, theological and practical implications of it. I hope you join me for the journey, and I'd love to hear your thoughts and responses!

Parenthood, childhood, friendship, courtship, engagement, marriage... All of these are forms of relationships. They are not mere titles or roles, but they are forms that relationships may take. Neither are they arbitrary, or easily changeable! There is no such thing as pure relationship...relationship that does not take a specific form. Every relationship is specific, and the ability to identify and cultivate the specific form of a relationship will determine the power of it either to heal or to destroy. Happiness happens when relationships are properly stewarded, grief is the result of a failure to properly steward relationships, and the failure to properly steward a relationship begins with the failure to properly define it.

The task of defining the relationship is the task of determining its purpose and therefore the responsibility of each party. For instance, if you are a parent, the purpose of your relationship with your child(ren) is relatively obvious. If you hesitate to correct/instruct/encourage/discipline/engage them because you're worried about overstepping your boundaries, you've misunderstood your responsibility in the relationship. But if you understand that you bear the responsibility to raise them properly and to shape their character, then you will rebuke them when they need to be rebuked, encourage them when they need to be encouraged, instruct them when they need to be encouraged, and you won't feel any angst about it because you're clear on your role and responsibility.

However, defining the relationship can also be a difficult thing to do. For instance, if you are a member of a local church your relationship with your pastor is not primarily a friendship. Your pastor has a responsibility toward you and you have a responsibility toward him/her. If you try to transform that relationship into a mere friendship you will miss out on the resources that that relationship is supposed to procure for you. The failure to properly define that relationship will ultimately lead to grief!

The most poignant context for misdefining relationships is within the complex of possible relationships between members of the opposite sex. It is essential for your present and future happiness that you properly define your relationships with members of the opposite sex so that you can be intentional about stewarding those relationships correctly! The failure to do so will lead to grief...to much grief...too much grief!!! So for God's sake, listen to what I'm about to say!

The most common mistake that single friends of the opposite sex make is allowing for long-term ambiguity in regard to the nature of the relationship. Have you ever been confused about how to define your relationship with a member of the opposite sex? Have you ever found yourself having coffee and thinking, "We're just friends, right?" Ambiguity happens when a male and a female develop a friendship that is more intimate than their other friendships with members of the opposite sex, yet not quite intimate enough to be called a "relationship." So what is it? Its not a friendship, its not a relationship...it can only be defined as a train-wreck waiting to happen!


Why is this the case? Because a relationship that cannot be defined cannot fulfill any specific purpose! Non-purposive relationships are also non-directional, and therefore aimless. If you are confused about the nature of your relationship with someone, confusion becomes the definition of that relationship...and a relationship characterized by confusion can only create confusion. The primary principle for the health of any relationship is the principle of clarity! If you are friends, be friends. If you are boyfriend and girlfriend, be boyfriend and girlfriend. If you are only friends but are acting like boyfriend and girlfriend, you are deceiving yourselves! But before you move into the dating/courtship stages too quickly consider what I have to say next.

The dating and courtship levels of relationship must fulfill a specific purpose as well, and that purpose is not simply to do away with your loneliness! Many people date just so they can have someone to date...so they don't have to be left out on Valentines night. Dating and courtship are not simply for the sake of the thrill of companionship. That mentality leads to debauchery. The purpose of dating/courtship is to move toward marriage. If you are not interested in getting married, you shouldn't be dating. If you know in your heart that a particular person is not marriage material, you have no business dating them!

Keeping this principle in mind will create boundaries in your thinking that will protect you from much grief. Pursue clarity, reject confusion, embrace responsibility. Do this and you'll find happiness!

The Genesis narrative teaches us that desire and need occur only by means of revelation, either demonic or divine. The human soul exists between two revelatory options when it comes to desire; the devil seeks to reveal to us that we desire the things of this world, and the Spirit of God seeks to reveal to us that we desire the things of God. Each time we embrace a particular desire we come to faith in one teaching or the other.

Adam was alone, but not lonely. To be lonely is to consciously grieve the absence of others. Adam did not yet know grief, and so he did not yet know loneliness. He was not conscious of any personal needs...in fact he was conscious only of the fact that God was the provider of all his needs. God had to tell him that he was alone and that it was not good for him to be alone. Adam's need for a woman was a revelation from God. Because God was responsible for revealing Adam's need, he also took responsibility for meeting it, and this is paradigmatic for the life of faith. Whenever God reveals a need he does so because he fully intends to meet it. So he put Adam into a deep sleep and brought out of him the answer to his need. The whole process was instigated by God, executed by God, and completed by God. Adam was passive on all accounts. All that was left for him to do was to yield to the sleep that God brought over him and then rejoice in the woman God brought to him when he awoke.

This is what our lives are supposed to look like. We are so busy trying to figure out what we want from God that we don't stop to listen for what God wants for us. At the end of the day we really don't believe that God wants anything good for us. We think he wants us to be broke, sick, lonely, hurt, and discouraged, and this way of thinking is so unworthy of a God who gives us all things freely to enjoy!

Eve, on the other hand did not desire the fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. All she knew was that God had commanded them not to eat of it, and that was enough for her! She did not naturally desire to disobey God. In fact, she wanted to obey him! She was content with what he had given her and was completely fulfilled. Just as God had to tell Adam that he was alone and needed a wife, so the devil had to tell Eve that she was incomplete without that particular fruit. Temptation always begins with deception! In fact, temptation is a form of satanic revelation. Satan is constantly trying to reveal a lie to God's people! The lie is that you want sin!

This is where the rubber meets the road, and this will set you free if you truly get it! Most believers who struggle with sin issues think they are struggling because of their evil desires! This is the greatest deception that the enemy has sent to the people of God, and I'm exposing it right now! Hear this and hear it well: If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have been regenerated by the power of the Spirit and your flesh (sinful nature) has been put to death. The new nature of righteousness has been born in its place and you have been completely cleansed of your sin. You do not desire sin anymore! Now you desire God and his Spirit and his kingdom and his righteousness and his power and his love and his blessing and his favor and his will and his ways! In order to get you to sin, Satan has to convince you that you still want it! But that's a lie!


Then why, you might ask, do I still feel the desire for sin? You still feel the desire for sin because you still believe that you want it. You are no longer under the power of the devil, but you still think you are. You are no longer in your sins, but you still think you are. Once you unmask the power of the deception of sinful desire, you have virtually conquered sin because you are now established in the truth that your soul thirsts for God, for the living God!

How do we do this? Easy! Its called repentance. But most believers repent for the wrong thing! Don't just repent for committing the sin and walk away believing that you still desire to commit the sin. Real repentance is a change of mind (that's what the word metanoia means, after all), not saying sorry for an action. To change your mind you need to repent for believing that you desire to do what you have done. Sin requires faith. Repentance is the rejection of faith in the demonic teaching on desire. Jesus commands us to repent and believe the gospel. Stop believing the demonic lie that tells you that you are still bound by the desire to sin and begin to believe the truth that Jesus has set you free...and not only has he set you free from the act of sin, but from the desire for it! The Spirit of God is ready to release that revelation into your life, and if you receive it you will not only conquer sin, but you will find that your desire for God and for the things of God will jump off the charts! But the truth is (and I speak by revelation) your heart's desire is for God and God alone.