Every Sunday when I sit down to write the Weekly Speak - which is one of my favorite parts of the week - or to record our podcast, I’m struck by the unbelievable opportunity we have to live Christianly in the world. I’m convinced that in the twilight of a Christian culture the gospel shines brighter than ever. We’re called to bring hope to the hopeless, love the unlovable, and work for the good of our communities. That’s hard work. It’s tempting to wish for a different era or to long for a return to any of several past golden ages, but God has placed us here for a reason, and we cannot preach the gospel and withdraw. We cannot keep what we believe inside our churches. We have to bring all of what God has given us to all of life.
But it’s a difficult time to be a Christian. It’s hard to know how what we read in our Bibles in the mornings applies to the things we hear on the news or read on social media during the day. How can our faith help us think about family, culture, politics, entertainment - even the 2020 presidential race? Here’s what we’re committed to:
We are committed to speaking the truth in love. We won’t compromise on the truth, and we won’t do it at the expense of love. Loving someone does not mean agreeing with them. In our culture, faithfulness requires that we disagree and relationships require that we stay connected.
We are unashamedly biblical. Many who claim to be Christians don’t think biblically. The Bible isn’t a set of arbitrary rules and platitudes; it tells us who God is, what the world is really like, how he made us, and what we should be doing.
We are working for God’s goals in the world. It’s easy to replace God’s plan for the world with a compelling cause, a party platform, or a cynical contrarianism, it’s hard to pursue God’s goals in the world when they’re costly - but only God’s plans will succeed in the end. It’s worth the cost in the short-run to be faithful in the long-run.
In 2020, we are expanding our vision for what we can accomplish through So We Speak. The goal of staying informed without being conformed is to create opportunities to share the hope we have with the world around us. We want to equip you to think Christianly about the world. To make that happen, we need to continue to grow.
These are our goals for 2020:
We’re going to continue to grow the Weekly Speak and the So We Speak Podcast.
We’re going to launch a new podcast channel on Christian leadership.
We’re producing video teaching series.
We’re bringing on more writers for the website.
We need your help to continue to accomplish these goals in the new year. Please consider partnering with us, praying for us, and sharing our content as we come to the end of the year and look toward 2020.
Cole