I was watching Louie Giglio speak at Q. Here’s some high points:

“Our message to the world isn’t, ‘hey, you need to enhance your life.’ Our message is ‘we have met life.’”

“What does transcendent leadership look like? It looks like leadership that is old enough to be informed with confidence [through] the acts of God. It’s present enough to convince every person that they are known and understood. And it is forward enough to breathe hope, no matter the circumstance.”

“We have to be a confident church. That comes from being linked to the past. We have to be a relevant church. That comes from being linked to the present. And we have to be positively motivated to the future. All those things are linked to our connectivity to Jesus.”

He goes on to use an illustration about how they save trees in Hong Kong in the process of building the skyscrapers. Here’s the choices they have:

1. No go. We can’t build for the future, because we have to preserve the past.
2. Clear cut everything. We need to move forward and we’ll do that even at the expense of our past.
3. In the process of modernizing, preserve. This is the longest and most costly way. They honor the past, but lean forward.

God told Moses that His name was I AM. That was a memorial name (I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). I AM is present (I AM here now, Immanuel, God with us). And I AM is future (Ps 135:13 – Your name, O Lord, endures forever; your fame, O Lord, is known to every generation.).

It is important that we embrace our past. Christianity has a rich 2000 year history which was birthed out of Judaism which was born at the creation of time. We hold to an ancient, God-breathed, canonized text. We cannot leave it and must believe in it’s power to shape us today and our future. Although our world has changed a lot, our core hasn’t. We have things to learn from Augustine (died 430), Luther (1546), Wesley (1788) and Chesterton (1936). Our history is rich. We’d be fools to ignore it.

It is important that we embrace our future. As Giglio points out, “we live in a country where the church is designed primary for and funded by 45 and 50 year olds, and that is not going to work. If you’re not already a culture-shaper by [that age], you aren’t going to be.” To engage, and thus, effect culture, we must embrace the future generations, “constantly capitulating to what is to come.” It is important that we reach out to our children, youth and young adults.

In a culture that values the “latest and greatest,” I hope this stirs something in you…

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord:
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church*,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

~ The Apostle’s Creed was written over 1600 years ago.