Change-Agents: If We Don't Someone Else Will

There's always a battle going on -- a battle of unseen (and seen) powers waging to gain ground in the realms of light and of darkness in this world. There is no neutrality. Either things are moving toward an increasing darkness or an increasing light. And what each one of us does effects the direction in which things move.

Over the last year or so I've been sensing an increasing frustration and cynicism within our culture toward specific areas such as government, media, family, and the church. It seems many people are tired, while others have given up, while still others are in a near desperate search for a way they can move the mountains of problems that have or are setting in within our culture and world.

It also seems to me that it is a critical and significant time in history, and it is in this seeming of things I have been hearing a call to have hope and to not give in to the lie that darkness will win.

So in light of these things, yesterday I was happy when I heard a perspective that resonated much with my own via a guest speaker on Midday Connection. The guest's name was Os Hillman and he has written a book called Change Agent. Though I have not read his book (yet) I appreciated hearing the concepts he shared from it, especially those related to the stages or processes he has observed to be present in the lives of every change-agent both historical and present which he has studied. They have helped me to further articulate some of my own experience and they are as follows:

Recruitment phase. Os says this is the phase where we are thrust into the larger story through some type of crisis. It is a shaking or waking up so the speak that often throws us into something we weren't excepting at all.  

Character development. It's in this stage that we are prepared for something specific through a season of often great adversity.

Isolation phase. After we've been thrown into something, and as we're being worked on, we then find ourselves in a season of isolation. Os says that "seasons of isolation are for that going down deeper into the soil of God to discover something we might never get had we not those isolation periods." An isolation period may feel like a figurative cave, desert, lone island. Os says in this phase we discover that God "turns messes into messages and then into messengers."

The Cross. Os says, "The cross is often where I find that we are thrust into many times betrayal." This is where we are tested to see if "we're willing to wash the feet of our own Judas's." 

Problem-solving. Here is where we really begin moving into doing the work of a change agent. Os believes that we're all called to solve a problem and that "society doesn't care who solves their problem, they just want their problems solved, and [that] if you begin to solve someone's problem you will have influence." Which is really where the crux of being a change-agent lies.

Networks. The last stage a change-agent enters is becoming unified with others and/or "leveraging your resources for the sake of the kingdom." This is how the change begins to spread and really make an impact.

As I was listening to Os talk about these stages I saw how these phases have been happening in my own life over the years, and though I wonder what changes will be effected through my own life eventually, I find myself thinking much louder thoughts in relationship to those around me, and they go like this:

If we don't do something, someone else will. And if we don't, who might be that someone else? and will it be a someone else who brings light? or darkness? 

As I reflect upon these things further I realize that being a change-agent is costly, but that it is the change-agents who have made all the things we enjoy today possible. Things might seem bleak in our culture, but that is only one perspective on things. There is another perspective and that is that no matter how things seem, the light will never go out. It may seem dim or become obstructed, but the reality is that at any time we can set our own torches to the light and send the darkness that seeks to destroy our culture packing!