The Pendulum

Thank you for your prayers.

Culture is my business.

Culture
is sometimes described as a pendulum.
Although many folks want to put everything
on a "left vs. right"
political spectrum,
the cultural pendulum is a lot bigger than that.
Politics follow culture.

Culture swings from one kind of excess to another,
and generally
the force of gravity keeps things somewhere near
the cultural center.

The pendulum swings
from libertine to puritan,
from freedom to tyranny,
from excess to simplicity.
But throughout Western Civilization,
most of the time
the pendulum stays somewhere in the center.

I've been in ministry for thirty-two years,
and experienced my first inkling of a call
forty years ago, May 1985.
You see a lot in forty years.

The last time the cultural pendulum
swung freely and naturally
was in the 1980's.
This was a response to the 1960's and 70's.
For most people
those were not happy times.

In the 1990's
a number of things happened
that upset the natural swing
of the cultural pendulum.
One was the end of the Soviet era
and the Cold War.
Another was the beginning of the Internet age.
And another can be symbolized by Bill Clinton,
who came of age in the early 1970's
and was old enough to be President
in the 1990's.
The folks of Bill's era
seized the moment,
and began propping the pendulum.
And not just propping it,
they pushed it in one direction.

I have warned leaders in private
that the cultural pendulum
has been pushed
and artificially held in place
by social coercion,
media,
and institutions
for a long time:
About 25 years now.
My warning was this:
when that pendulum breaks loose
there will be a fury like nothing
you have ever seen.

You know from physics,
that every action delivers an equal
but opposite reaction.
And so,
there has been energy building up
for a quarter of a century
against this artificial pressure.

There are signs that the props
are breaking.

Culture is my business.
I am called to raise up an army of artists
and to build Jesus a throne in the earth.
I am called to raise up people
who will bring the culture of heaven:
sound, light, color,
values,
and beauty,
into a world on the edge of hell.

I came back to the US
after being in exile
to sort out a few administrative problems.
It's become a total rebuild
and reorganization.
More and more
those words from Isaiah 61
are before us:
you will rebuild the ruined cities,
and the places long devastated.
I'm praying in the fore-runners
and the leaders.
I'm praying in new board members,
and start up funds,
and looking for the physical hub
for our global system of spokes.
And of course,
listening to God about our open-source
media company.

As the fury is unleashed,
we have to seize the moment
and lead,
not respond.

Over the next few weeks I want to talk about
what this looks like.

The best really is ahead.

He Never Fails,