Author: John Stonestreet and Dr. S. Michael Craven
In many churches, Christianity has been reduced, not necessarily to something false or heretical, but to something much smaller than it is.
Even our understanding of the church’s mission—to exalt Christ, edify believers, and evangelize the lost—are understood in ways that confine Christianity. Worship only happens on Sunday mornings. Discipleship is the acquisition of biblical knowledge or the process of becoming more moral. Evangelism is about securing decisions for Christ.
These are all good things but not the whole story. That’s why Christianity is often highly visible inside the church but largely absent from where people spend most of their lives. When faith is separated from work, worship is disconnected from vocation, discipleship unrelated to culture, and salvation irrelevant to the wider world, Christianity has been privatized.
This would have puzzled the earliest Christians. The New Testament authors constantly present Christ as not only the Savior of souls but as the Lord of heaven and earth. The Apostle Paul declared that all things were created through Him and for Him, and that in Him all things hold together. Christ’s reign extends over every square inch of reality.
If that’s true, then worship cannot be confined to a sanctuary. Worship is how we conduct our business, raise our children, care for our neighbors, create art, pursue justice, engage politics, and steward any part of creation. To exalt Christ is to live under His lordship wherever He has placed us. To disciple believers is about more than knowing Bible facts. It is about transformation.
Paul urged believers to not be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. That kind of formation reshapes not only what we think about the Bible but how we understand reality itself. It teaches us to see the world through the lens of God’s Kingdom, and to see God’s Kingdom as the reality about the world we live in.
This kind of formation is desperately needed today. After all, we’re all being discipled by something. Something is forming our loves, our habits, and our assumptions. If these things are not being shaped by the Holy Spirit through Scripture, it is being shaped by the surrounding culture. A Christian who understands justification but thinks about sexuality, identity, work, technology, politics, or human flourishing in essentially secular terms has not yet been fully formed. The Church’s task is to cultivate believers whose entire lives bear witness to the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord.
In the same way, evangelism is not a single transaction. Jesus did not command His followers to make converts. He commanded them to make disciples, teaching them to obey everything He had commanded.
Thus, the Great Commission is not about getting people to heaven. It is about bringing every area of life under the gracious reign of Christ. This is how the early Church transformed the ancient world. Christians rescued abandoned infants, cared for plague victims, elevated the dignity of women, challenged unjust practices, and created communities marked by sacrificial love. Their message was proclaimed with words and embodied in a way of life. Their faith was personal, but it was not private.
None of this means that the Church’s mission is to seize political power or impose Christianity on others. Far from it. As Chuck Colson often reminded us, Christians are called to propose, not impose. The goal is not dominance. The goal is faithfulness. Our task is not to control but to witness. We do not pursue cultural power but obedience to Christ.
Yet faithful Christians will inevitably influence culture. When believers are deeply formed by Scripture, when Christ is exalted in every sphere of life, and when the gospel is proclaimed and embodied, everything—including communities, families, institutions, and cultures—changes. Not because cultural transformation is the mission, but because it is often the fruit of the mission.
What the Church needs is not a new strategy of engagement. It needs a recovered vision of the Kingdom of God. This conviction is at the heart of the Colson Fellows Program. Not only do Colson Fellows intentionally learn more about the Faith and the world around them, but they learn to see all of life through the lens of Christ’s Kingdom and to live faithfully within it.
Because the Church needs more than informed believers. It needs formed believers—men and women who are prepared to follow Christ faithfully wherever He has called and placed them. Applications are being accepted now for the Colson Fellows Program. Learn more and apply at colsonfellows.org.