Transcript: From Leadership to Discipleship: Nurturing Christian Worldview in Organizations // S. Michael Craven, Colson Center

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“From Leadership to Discipleship: Nurturing Christian Worldview in Organizations“

February 12, 2024

Michael Craven

Intro: What does it mean to have a Christian worldview, and how can you help your employees grow in this aspect of discipleship? How can you live out your faith to have a positive impact on today's culture? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we'll focus on how you can live courageously and influence the culture that you're in. Listen in to learn how you can grow in your Christian worldview and help others lead on this journey as well.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, which was a finalist in the Christian Book Awards. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

I’m delighted to welcome S. Michael Craven to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast today. Michael’s the vice president of Equipping & Mobilization for the Colson Center. And ever since he left his corporate CEO role, more than 20 years ago, Michael has been working to equip the church with a robust Christian worldview.

Throughout our conversation, you'll hear Michael Craven talk about his own faith journey from business CEO to Colson Center leader, what Christian worldview is, the fallacy of the sacred/secular divide, and the important role of business in God's world, the importance of disciple making for all leaders in sacred and secular organizations, and the multiple resources that Colson Center provides to help develop a Christian worldview.

I think you're going to love this interview with S. Michael Craven. But before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Leadership 360 and our leader and group coaching. We can help transform your leadership effectiveness through our stakeholder-based coaching process. To learn more, go to workplaces.org/coaching, and check it out today.

And I also want to welcome our new listeners. Thanks for joining us. And we have the goal to honor your investment of time by creating valuable resources and episodes like this.

So, a little more about S. Michael Craven. Michael is an accomplished executive, a worldview expert, a cultural apologist, and author. He serves as the vice president of Equipping & Mobilization for the Colson Center. Michael is the author of Uncompromised Faith: Overcoming Our Culturalized Christianity, and is a founder of the Center for Christ & Culture in 2001. His weekly commentaries grew to reach over two million readers. He's been a featured speaker in many venues, including the University of California, Berkeley; the National Conference of Christian Apologetics; and numerous churches across the country. He served as an adjunct professor at Western Seminary, and he taught cultural apologetics.

But prior to joining the Colson Center, Michael served for four years as the president of BridgeBuilders, an inner-city ministry in South Dallas, where he pioneered the missional strategy for transforming the culture of poverty into a culture of flourishing. The Colson Center equips Christians through Breakpoint, their daily radio and email broadcast; video short courses; podcasts; and their flagship program, the Colson Fellows program. And you'll hear more about that. The Colson Center is the largest Christian fellowship program in the world dedicated to worldview formation.

So, here’s my conversation with S. Michael Craven.

Michael, it's great to have you on the podcast. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Michael Craven: Al, I'm happy to be here.

Al: Great. Well, we met at a C12 get-together. And let’s start off just by giving our listeners some insight into the Colson Center and the resources that you provide to equip Christians. What's the vision for the Colson Center, and what are a few key programs that make that vision a reality?

Michael: Yeah, that's a great question. And to answer that, you'd really have to go back to our founder, Chuck Colson, whom many of your listeners are probably familiar with. If you're not, Chuck was notorious for his involvement in Watergate, and ultimately, he was part of the Nixon administration. He was the White House attorney, ended up going to prison, and prior to entering prison, he experienced a radical conversion to faith in Jesus Christ. And this was transformative for Chuck.

And following his experience in prison, he really came out with a new passion, vision, mission given by God, and that was for prison reform. And he founded Prison Fellowship, which was then and remains the largest prison ministry in the world today. And while he was ministering in the prisons to men, he realized, he recognized that so many of them were there because the cultures from which they derived had shaped their conceptions of reality and informed their decisions, their choices. And inevitably, they made wrong choices, immoral choices, and this was a contributor to why they ended up in prison. And he recognized that there was a great need to equip people generally and the church specifically with a robust Christian worldview.

Now, a lot of people will ask, “Well, what on earth is a worldview?” Well, everybody has one, whether they are conscious of it or not. And a worldview is, ultimately, it's the way we interpret reality. How do we make sense of the world, or what do we think is the order of things? Well, fortunately for Christians, God has not left us alone to cobble together our own worldview. He gives us an explanation of reality in His written Word. He tells us where we've come from. He tells us the purpose for which He has created all things. He tells us the purpose for which He has created us and called us to do. He's given us a job description in the beginning. He explains what has gone wrong, with the fall and sin and death entering into the world. And He gives us the only true solution or hope to that problem. And so armed with this understanding—and this is what I've, obviously, just laid out is very elementary—but this can take us so deep into every aspect of life and reality—whether we're talking about politics, economics, business, science, technology—all of these things are to be organized and ordered in a way that corresponds with reality, and reality is created and written by the hand of God.

Al: Yeah. Michael, it's interesting. I've always reflected. I came to faith within a year of when Chuck Colson did, and actually, one of the informative books that I read in those early years was Born Again, and it was quite a story. And I've really enjoyed, worked with Prison Fellowship and stayed at the Colsons’ apartment there. And what a testimony. I remember listening to Chuck in conferences in the ‘80s particularly, so persuasive and particularly around this issue of worldview.

So what was your own journey to discipleship in this area? What attracted you to it? You had a successful business career in commercial construction. You were the CEO of a building-materials company. You left that arena now 20 years ago and really have dedicated yourself to equipping Christians in their Christian worldview. So how was your own thinking in this area formed, and how did God change your trajectory to doing what you're doing?

Michael: Yeah. I came to faith in Christ at the age of 21, and I would argue I was a lot like a lot of people. I took my faith seriously, but if I were honest, I really treated my faith as a component of my life. I had, in other words, I had my own plan, my vision of how I wanted my life to go. And it was toward this area of prosperity; affluence; peace; living a life uninterrupted by trouble, so to speak. And as I began to have a family, I had two young children, and when you have children, of course, you start thinking about the world outside yourself, right? and the world into which they are growing up. And that concerned me. And I think the Lord began to really deepen my desire to know Him. And I remember getting to a point where I just said, “Lord, I'm tired of playing games with You, and I want You to take all of me and do with me what You must do in order to make me useful.” Now, I didn't understand how dangerous that prayer actually was at the time, but He heard that one.

And it wasn't long after that that my youngest child was born, Maddie. And when she was born, there was something that was obviously wrong, and the doctors at the time couldn't describe. They couldn't tell us. They couldn't diagnose what was happening. And she remained in the hospital for about three days in a state of uncertainty. And I remember having a conversation with the pediatrician at the time, and I asked her, “Is she going to live?” And she said, “I don't know.” And I was, as you pointed out earlier, I was the CEO of a large manufacturing company and a pretty hard-knuckle business, and I was accustomed to getting things done, and I had a tremendous amount of confidence in myself to move mountains. But I couldn’t move this one. I couldn't do anything to help this little girl. And the Lord used that to really bring me to the end of myself and show me just how completely weak I was, but that He was not. And that was really a beginning of a significant transition in my life, away from a self-centered life to a Christ-centered life.

And I remember the company that I was the CEO of was the U.S. subsidiary of a very large German manufacturer, and we were introducing a new technology into the U.S. market for the first time, which in the construction industry, commercial construction industry, is an exceedingly risk-averse industry. So we don't like new things. So we were pushing a giant rock uphill and fortunately making progress and invested about $83 million, the investors did, invested about $83 million in this enterprise, and we were really getting to the top of that hill.

And one day the chairman of my board from Munich, Germany, is waiting in front of my office when I arrive. That’s never a good sign.

Al: Surprise.

Michael: Yeah. And a wonderful man, dear friend, Udo Bauer. And Udo says, “Michael, I just have terrible news. The owners of the company,”—it was a privately held company, 1.7 billion-dollar, privately held company—“have decided that they want to sell the German parent, and they want to sell to a European buyer.” So they were in 36 other countries, the U.S. being the largest market. We were just five years into a startup. And they said, “They want you to shut everything down, liquidate all the assets.” And I knew the moment he spoke those words, this was God answering that prayer. And I said, “Okay. Here we go.”

So I took the next six months, shut the company down, liquidated the assets. They were pleased with how we closed things out. I really wanted to do that well. And as I'm approaching unemployment for the first time in my life, my adult life, I feel comfortable, confident, good. And I realize that I am feeling so because I have money in the bank. And the Lord at that point reminded me that my wife and I had made a significant pledge, a three-year pledge, to our church, and it's a very large building fund. And of course, these prior six months, I am reasoning with the Lord going, “No, You don't understand. I may be unemployed. I'm going to need this money.” And He didn’t respond audibly, but what I heard was, “No, you don't understand. I am going to do something in you, and I need you to trust Me and not rely on the work of your own hands. Fulfill your pledge.”

And so we, essentially, wrote the check that depleted our available income, our available assets at the time, our liquid savings, and that's how I entered unemployment. And what followed was 19 months of absolutely no income. And we watched as the Lord generously, graciously, miraculously provided. In hindsight, I was realizing He was teaching me that I could indeed trust Him to meet our daily needs, that when I asked Him to give us this day our daily bread, He meant it, and He would. And I needed to know that. It was preparation for where He was going to lead me, which was ultimately into vocational ministry.

And about 12 months into this 19-month season, I have an encounter with an organization that offers me a position. It seemed like the right thing to me, and they offered me a salary. At least, that’s what they called it. And I remember it was $45,000 a year. And I'm thinking, “I cannot raise a family in Plano, Texas, on $45,000 a year.” And I had a crisis of faith, and I panicked, and suddenly, after 12 months of watching the Lord miraculously provide, I doubted Him again.

And in the midst of this crisis—this is interesting. You'll love this story—I get a phone call, and the caller says, “Is this Michael Craven?” I said, “Yes, it is.” He says, “Well, you may not remember me, but this is Judge Robert Eichenberg. I was the arbitrator on you and your wife's case.” Eight years prior, when we lived in San Antonio, we'd had a water pipe burst beneath our house, caused foundation damage, filed a homeowner's claim, insurance company wouldn't pay it. I elected to go to arbitration. This was the judge that presided over the case. And he said, “Michael, I've been looking for you for two years. I hired a private investigator, discovered that you had since moved to Dallas,” and he said, “because I think I ruled incorrectly in your case.” I'm thinking, “Well, I knew that eight years ago.” But then he said, “Because I follow Jesus Christ, I want to make it up to you.” And he asked me how much money was involved. And I said, “Oh, gosh, I think it was, like, $15,000.” And he said, “Well, the figure I recall was $17,000.” He said, “I can't send it all to you now, but I'll send you $4,000 now and the balance before the end of the year.” And I hung up the phone, and I don't think I've ever been more ashamed of myself, that once again I doubted the goodness of our great God. And I was right. We could not live on $45,000 a year, but evidently, we could live on $67,800 because he sent $21,000 or $22,800 instead of the original $17,000. And the Lord did this just to, once again, patiently, mercifully demonstrate to me, “Don’t worry about what you will eat, what you will drink, and what you will wear. I know you need those things. Seek first My Kingdom. I will take care of those things.”

So that led me into vocational ministry, where I began to write and speak and teach, primarily focused on the reformation and renewal of the church, the awakening of the church. As I was watching my children grow up in a culture that is devolving right before my eyes, where we are today, some 20 years later, is astonishing but predictable, to be quite honest. But more concern to me was the inability of the church to do anything about the culture. When I knew enough about church history to know that the entirety of Western civilization and all that is good in it owes its origins to the Christian life and worldview. And I wondered what has happened? Where did it go? Where did that intellectual depth, breadth, and vibrancy go to? Why did it vanish?

So that's really what we are working to do at the Colson Center is to reengage the church with the larger story of what God is doing in the world—creation, fall, redemption, restoration—and help them rediscover their part in God's story rather than trying for us or us trying to fit God into our story. And if you think about how we do that, I mean, it's so powerfully summarized in the phrase we use all the time, “I invited Jesus into my life.” Now, I understand the sentiment of that, and there's no doubt that our salvation is deeply and profoundly personal. But the biblical reality is that we are not inviting Jesus into our life; He is inviting us into His. And that is a significant paradigm shift for the Christian to really lay hold of and understand what He means now when He says, “Your life is not your own. You have been purchased with a price, and you have been brought under the rule and reign of God to live and rule and reign in His Kingdom that has come, is coming, and one day will be fully and finally come.”

Al: Yeah. Well, thanks, Michael. Fantastic story. It's amazing. I know each of us can kind of point to critical moments in our faith journey. And yeah, you pray that prayer, “Take all of me,” and it never happens immediately, but God does graciously takes us on that journey.

So let's go to this topic of a Christian worldview. And we use that term, and we've talked about it, but really, what do you mean by it? And I know it's a big topic, but let's just talk about what Christian worldview is. What are some of the key areas of understanding that people need in order to develop even a Christian worldview? So let's talk about that.

Michael: Well, obviously, one of the fields that is of great interest to you and to me as well is the area of business and the role of Christian in business. And I think often, either directly or indirectly, the message communicated from the church is that that's your secular activity. That is secular work. It is not sacred. This is a platonic fallacy. This is Platonism, this bifurcated world in which there is a sacred and that there is a secular. All of it is sacred. All of it belongs to God. He says so. He created everything. He calls it good. He reestablishes authority over creation in Christ when He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to the King who is King over all: Christ.”

So when we think about business and we think about, let's say, for example, the context in which business operates in the West, free markets, free markets are not the conception of economists. They are not the conception of secular thinkers. They are the direct result of theologians thinking deeply, consciously Christian, about what work looks like under the rule and reign of God, in the economy of God, within the created order of God, that we are made to work. And work, when you stop to think about it, in a free-market system is the primary means by which we make ourselves available to the service to our neighbor. So in a free-market system, you're not engaging in subsistence work; you are engaging in market work. So you are producing more than you can consume, and you're sharing the excess with others, and you're doing it in a system of free and voluntary exchange. I give you a product or a service, and you in return give me money willingly, by your free will.

This is actually a beautiful system that accomplishes one of God's great purposes, which is the prevention of poverty. And the fact of the matter is, since 1970, more people have been lifted out of poverty worldwide than in the previous 1,000 years combined. And it has not been—I know this will be a shock to many—it has not been the result of government programs. It's been the result of jobs created in market economies. And I used to lead a large inner-city ministry where jobs were a significant problem. And I used to tell people all the time, “The greatest poverty-alleviation program ever devised is a job.” And it gives people human dignity. We are not made to be objects of charity.

So as you go to work and you think about your role as a CEO, a business owner, I think it's important to really understand your domain within the Kingdom of God, that of the three offices—prophet, priest, and king, whom Christ fills all of those offices—but we are also called to fill those offices. And so some of us are prophets, some of us are kings, some of us are priests. But I would argue that business owners fulfill the office of king. They steward communities. They, in many cases, they rule and reign over communities that have more people and more economic resources than many ancient kings ever thought about, because these were little city states, right? And so that king has responsibility for the common good and for the welfare of his people. So a CEO, that man or that woman who is so gifted to serve in that capacity, they have to understand that those gifts are given by God to be used in the service of others, and that when they are building a successful business that promotes the common good, that provides services and products that help other people—which free-market products and services tend to do, otherwise the market will punish you and put you out of business—they are actually doing Kingdom work. They are doing God-honoring work. They’re participating in a system that God has designed in some part because we are made to work or made to fulfill and subdue the earth, to bring the fullness of God's creation into being.

This was the original job description given to humanity. And part of the way we do that is through innovation and technology, ingenuity, all of the wonderful things that we are able to do through the course of work to create solutions to problems, to promote human flourishing on a scale that the world has never, ever seen before. This is so consciously and deliberately God-honoring work, and we need to grasp that concept. And when you go to work, you realize, “This is the gift that I have been given.” And it's not reducible to this, you've got to—I hear this a lot, you know, when you talk to Christian business leaders, and what they hear is, “Work is a means to some spiritual end. It has no spiritual value in and of itself.” That is so patently false. It has spiritual value in and of itself. And it's not an instrumental good; it is intrinsically good.

And the instrumental view is one that says, well, in order for you, the Christian businessman, to validate your work, to sacramentalize your work, you need to do two things. You need to be pious. You need to be moral and pious. Well, I would argue that even a good atheist figures out that's just good business to be moral and ethical. So that's nothing out of the ordinary.

The second thing is evangelize in the marketplace. And when I say evangelize, what I mean is only tell people about the personal plan of salvation as if that's all the Gospel is interested in. It isn't. It's much bigger than that. It's the Gospel of the Kingdom. It's not the Gospel of personal salvation. That's part of it, but it's much, much bigger than that. And I think you have to be careful if you're in a position of power, how you do that anyway. I think you're probably more in a position of demonstrating the Gospel than proclaiming the Gospel, if you understand the Gospel of the Kingdom, demonstrating what business ought to look like when it is operated under the rule and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And finally, if you make money—God forbid, because we all know money is evil—then the only way you can sacramentalize that money is to give it to real missions, as if business is not a real mission. Again, all of those are just false paradigms.

So that would be one way that worldview works itself out in a very tangible way, just within the context of business.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back to my conversation with Michael Craven.

Michael, we work with also Christian nonprofits, schools, churches, as well as Christian-led businesses, and the leaders of these organizations serve as shepherding the employees God's put in their organizations. First Peter 5:2 is one of my favorite verses, saying, leaders or elders, particularly, to shepherd the flock that God has entrusted to them. Sometimes I'm in conversations with Christian nonprofit leaders who feel like the responsibility for discipleship lies solely with the church. You know, we're not a church; we're a Christian not-for-profit. We're a school. We're a, whatever we are. But we're not the church. And talking about theology and discipleship is not really part of our role. So they hire Christian workers who agree to a faith statement. But that's the limit of the role of the Christian formation that we've seen historically. Now, I also believe that culture has changed. But what responsibilities should Christian workplaces have in helping them form a Christian worldview, and in which I also consider discipling their employees? As we see people coming into the workplace who are Christians but may have a low level of biblical knowledge, and again, we're seeing generation after generation, the level of biblical knowledge that even Christians are bringing to the workplace is lower, is different. So what role should discipleship and worldview training take? And let's start off with Christian nonprofits as a start, even the church.

Michael: Well, here again, I think, is the consequence of confusion over these absolute categories that we establish when we talk about things like the church, we talk about things like business. If we think about what the Bible means when it talks about the ekklesia, what it's talking about are the called-out ones, the community of God's people, just like Israel was a community of God's people, out of which flows His blessings to the entire world, extends the Gospel to the entire world. So before we are called to say or do anything, we are called out from the world and gathered together as a distinct people who bear witness to what life looks like under the rule and reign of Christ. And then, we have some liturgy. We have some forms of worship which we are commanded to participate in. We have some sacraments that we are commanded to participate in. And those have historically convened on the Sabbath, and they have convened in a community that ultimately began to build buildings and inhabit those buildings. And over time, really going back to Constantine and the fourth, fifth century, as Christianity achieves cultural hegemony, its mission begins to change slightly, from this outward-looking emphasis of the early church that looked at the world around it and saw itself as a political movement that dared to proclaim that Christ is King, Caesar is not, to instead its own institutional maintenance. And things began to go inward.

So now when we say church, our first thought is about the building where we go on Sunday that is organized and administered by the priests, using that word, which is important, and it's necessary, and it is very much a part of the sacramental life of Christians. But it does not constitute the entirety of what we mean or what the Bible means when it says the church. So when the church goes to work, when Christians go to work, they are still the church, and they are sent out into the world, and they've been given a commission to “go therefore and make disciples” of what? “all nations.” We are to Christianize everything that we touch. We are to Christianize the nations. And I know some people will probably argue that, “Well, sounds like Christian nationalism.” Well, no, it isn't. But it is what the Bible tells us to do, that is desirable to see the nations Christianized rather than paganized. That's what we're called to do. And we do that in our companies every single day, or we should be doing that in our companies every single day. And we could do that, as I described earlier, by running our companies, running our nonprofits, our organizations, our ministries. Everywhere we have gathered a group of people, we are fulfilling that Great Commission. We are making disciples. We are teaching them how to live in right relationship to God, themselves, others, and creation. And in creation is our vocation. So that's disciple making, is teaching people how to live in right relationship to the truth in those four relational areas.

Al: I remember 20 years ago, starting out with the Best Christian Workplaces, talking to a Christian nonprofit leader, publishing leader, and he said, “Well, we've got a policy. You pray on your own time. We want you to be a Christian. We want you here. We want you working eight hours a day. We want high levels of productivity, and we want you to, you know, we've got a policy. It's not written, but we've got this kind of pray on your own time. We want you to be working while you're here.” So a little bit in contrast to what you're saying, for sure. Yeah.

Well, I know several organizations that use the training of the Colson Center, the training that you offer. One of them is our Best Christian Workplace ministry partner called Calvary Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the largest Christian school in America. And they felt that they had the need to really make sure that all of their faculty and staff had this crystal-clear understanding of a Christian worldview. And so when I talked to the leader of their school on the podcast, he mentioned, well, they're using your resources to train their teachers and their staff. So can you give us an example or two of other employers who have benefited from your resources, who are really taking what you're describing here of running our organizations to make disciples, in that sense?

Michael: Well, you mentioned C12, and we've been working with C12 for many years, and Mike Sharrow, a wonderful organization, and we have had the privilege of hosting many C12 chairs as students in the Colson Fellows program, which is our flagship program. It's a 10-month deep dive into the study of worldview Christian philosophy as it applies to every aspect of life and reality. And this in turn, what they report back to us is it gives them this deeper understanding of how to apply the Bible to everything that they touch, that as we think through all of the challenges that we face every day, their members face every day, as business owners, as people who run organizations, that worldview is not reducible to a polemic. In other words, it's not a set of arguments that you learn so you can win that argument with that leftist uncle whom you sit next to on Thanksgiving.

We teach worldview, and what worldview actually is is it’s wisdom. It's a skill. It's the ability to analyze facts, analyze realities, analyze the world around you and discern and determine what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful, and advocate for it, live it out, demonstrate it. This is also part of the way we demonstrate the Gospel. This was certainly the testimony of the early church that overcame Rome. It wasn't reducible to evangelism in this modern sense. It was very much demonstrable and this communal sense. They lived an alternative ethic, and they invited people to repent of their self-rule and submit to Christ's rule.

So I don't care what anybody does, what endeavor they are engaged in, if we don't understand the nature of reality, it is very difficult to live in right relationship with reality, and God gives us that definition.

Al: So Michael, you said three words: started “true,” ended with “beautiful.” What's that middle word?

Michael: Good.

Al: Good.

Michael: True and good and beautiful.

Al: Yeah.

Now you're teaching business leaders and—

Michael: And every kind of leader, frankly.

Al: And every kind of leader, yeah.

Michael: Yeah.

Al: And I'm even thinking, so they're going back to their workplace. And of course, we have in the for-profit world, we have rules about not discriminating based on religion. And so, you know, it's critically important that they understand a worldview and how to apply that even in a business setting.

Michael: Well, and today they are facing additional external threats such as ESG and all of these strange philosophies that emanate from false worldviews that are attempts to moralize humanity, attempts to redeem humanity, apart from Christ. That's what they are, ultimately. They're false gospels, and they don't work. So as we see in our churches, many of our churches are actually being infected with some of these same ideologies, believing that they're actually consistent with Christian faith, because on the surface, they may have the appearance of being good and being kind and being moral, but the question then becomes, but are they true? It doesn’t matter how good they are or appear to be. What matters is, are they true? Because if they're not true, they're ultimately not good.

Al: And if it's not true, it's not going to ultimately work, yeah, is my view on that. True, yeah.

Michael: Well, one of the things that we say often is—and everybody is quite familiar with this paradigm—ideas have consequences. Very true. But bad ideas have victims. And Christians, because we are in the victim-care business, should care deeply about the ideas that animate our world, that create victims. And because we have been indifferent to those ideas, unaware of those ideas, they have swept over our culture like a tsunami, and they are doing a multitude of damage and harm to human beings made in the image of God. And thus, we have a responsibility, under the charge to love our neighbors, to understand those ideas and to be able to lovingly, gently dismantle those ideas and set people free from them where we can.

Al: So, Michael, you're interacting with current and next-generation Christian leaders, particularly through the Colson, the Fellows program, the Colson Center Fellows program, and you've already talked about that a bit. But so what are some trends that you see in the next generation of Christian leaders? Are there any direction that you're seeing? Can you give us maybe even an example or two of hope and energy that you see in the young people who are taking their faith seriously and want to influence their culture?

Michael: Well, I'm going to say something that may shock your listeners, but I am more hopeful about the future of the church in America than I have ever been in my life. And I think as a consequence of the increasing and, at times, brutal cultural pressure being imposed upon the church, God is doing something amazing in and among His people. And if I look at the next generation—and I talk to a lot of young people—the one thing I can tell you is a common thing, they are so disenchanted with the state of the church, and primarily what they see is what I would call reductionism, where the Gospel has been reduced to nothing more than the personal plan of salvation. Thus, we have eschewed any sort of cultural engagement, caring for the poor, or being involved in the world around us, or being rather indifferent to the world around us. And this is why you see so many young people gravitating to these other pseudo-gospel messages such as climate alarmism, and social-justice causes under the rubric of critical race theory or critical theory generally, because we are created to do great things. We are created to be involved in something that gives us meaning and purpose, and the only thing that is sustainable is the meaning and purpose that is derived from the Kingdom of God breaking into this world, coming, and one day the anticipation of being fully and finally come, that there is a future and a hope for this world. This world is not a wrecked vessel that is to be discarded; it is something that Jesus Christ is making new. And He invites us into this. And this is the vision that we need to cast for the next generation and help them understand that all these pseudo gospels will not satisfy, only the one true Gospel of the Kingdom. The King has come, and He has set up His Kingdom, and He has called us to be His people, His ambassadors of that Kingdom, to bear witness that Christ is reigning. And I think when we do that as the church, they will return to the church, and they will know the joy of the Lord, and they will live accordingly.

Al: Amen. That's a vision, yeah. Thanks, Michael.

And I'm interested. You've talked about the Colson Center Fellows program. What other resources are available that people might be able to dig into this topic? I'm wondering if there's a couple of current books or podcasts? Or do you do webinars? How is it that you work with organizations to help them develop their Christian worldviews?

Michael: We have a wide array of resources. So obviously, not everybody wants to immediately jump into the deep end of the pool and enroll in the Colson Fellows program. It is a rigorous—it is, like I said before, it’s our flagship training program. It's 10 months, and it's a significant commitment in terms of time. It's anywhere from six to 12 hours a week. It's a graduate-level program. But it is transformational. This year we have 1,545 people enrolled. It's the largest Christian fellowship in the world dedicated to worldview formation. God has just continued to bless and grow it. Five years ago, we had 142 people in the program. That was the average for the year. And like I said, this year, 1,500. So there is a yearning out there.

But obviously, that's not necessarily the best place to start if you're new to worldview, although we do have a lot of folks that are new to worldview that do start and jump right in. But we've got Breakpoint, which is our daily broadcast through email, podcast, radio, hosted by John Stonestreet, where John walks people through the issues and events of the day, what's happening in our culture, and he offers them an analysis. He tells them how to interpret what's happening, from a consciously and deliberately Christian perspective. And so he, in essence, what Breakpoint aims to do is give people immediate answers to urgent questions about what's happening in the world, teaching us what we ought to think from a Christian perspective.

And then we've got Strong Women, led by Sarah Stonestreet, John's wife, which is just a phenomenal program. It's not limited to women. I listen to it all the time. I think it's one of the most powerful podcasts on the air today of really talking to women, yes, but learning from them these deep spiritual truths as they share their experience as women following Christ. And as we know, the early church was predominantly women. So I think we have a lot to learn there.

Upstream podcast with Shane Morris, which is one of those deeper, more theologically rigorous discussion formats, forums, where you really get down into the depth and beauty of theology, biblical theology, systematic theology.

We've got some great resources, video-based resources, called What Would You Say? that answer questions that a lot of folks increasingly have today. What would you say if, you know, somebody that says that gender is fluid, and these kinds of questions that Christians are increasingly looking for answers to, need answers to, and not only just to understand the culture around them, but these things are influencing and affecting their own families. So there's a whole host of resources. People can go to colsoncenter.org and see all of the array of resources and tools.

Al: Yeah. I remember reading Chuck's book How Now Shall We Live? is one of the, probably, first ways I got oriented into a Christian worldview. Yeah. Excellent, excellent. Well, so, really just a number of resources, and I think our listeners are fascinated, and I'd really encourage them to go that way.

Well, Michael, this has just been such a great conversation. We've talked about your own journey, and thanks for sharing. Yeah. The Lord wants to take all of us. He doesn't want us to rely on ourselves, and for us to become fully devoted followers of Christ, we need to be fully trustworthy. And you talked so much about there is no divide between the sacred and the secular. We need to really think about that, and how it's the Christian theologians who really helped to create free markets and how we can work under the order of God to do that and how it's a great—I loved when you said it's the way to prevent poverty and how jobs created in free markets have really alleviated poverty more so in recent years than ever before. And the role of prophet, priest, and king, and how, yes, we need all three. And oftentimes in the business world and in leadership circles, whether it's Christian nonprofits or business, it's the king role where we steward the reign and rule of communities. And that's exactly what we do. And so, yeah, just a great conversation. The resources that, again, the Colson Center provides. And the need for—I just want to reinforce—we can all see the need for understanding the Christian worldview for any Christian-based organization and to make sure we're all schooled up and trained on that viewpoint.

So thanks so much, Michael, for what you've shared. How about one bottom-line thought that has been piqued as a result of our conversation?

Michael: I would say this, if you were to ask me, “What is the problem that we aim to solve?” or maybe, “What is the biggest challenge facing the church in America today?” I would say that it is the privatization of Christian faith, this idea that the Gospel is only concerned with my eternal destination. If you think about what we have been doing with respect to evangelism and “sharing the Gospel” over the last 125, 150 years, it's really been reduced to sharing a few facts about Jesus, asking people who agree with those facts, and telling them upon doing so, “Pray this prayer. You're now safe. Move on and do likewise.” But we've not actually made disciples where we have brought them into the fullness of God's grand story of creation, fall, redemption, restoration. What He is doing, this is God's great creation project that He is inviting us into, and it is we have rebelled against this God, and yet this God has demonstrated His love for us in that He sends His only begotten Son. But He says He does it because He loves the whole cosmos, His creation. And this is how He shows His love to the creation. And Jesus promises that He is making all things new. And then, of course, the picture we have in Revelation 21 is not of us going to heaven; it's of heaven coming to earth and God once again dwelling with man, which is the whole purpose of His creation, is to dwell with man. He will be our God, and we will be His people. And we need to recover this beautiful story and live it out and share it wherever we go.

Al: Yeah. The big difference between Christianity and other religions is that He is seeking us. He's inviting us. We don't need to search for Him to do good works to earn His love, that's for sure. Yeah.

Well, Michael, thanks so much for your contribution today. Thanks for participating in this podcast. Most of all, I appreciate your commitment to equipping Christians to live courageously, as you have, to influence the culture. And thanks so much for taking your time out today to speak to so many of our listeners.

Michael: Al, it is my privilege, but great to be with you.

Al: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Michael Craven. And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

And you can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we talked about in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast and have any questions about creating a flourishing workplace culture, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to improve your leadership, expand your organization's impact for good, and see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us to achieve our goal to see more flourishing Christian-led workplaces. To help, please share this podcast with another leader or launch a program in your own organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. If you're interested in learning more, go to workplaces.org and request a sample report.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: Our guest next week will be Jeremie Kubicek, the author of The Communication Code: Unlocking Every Relationship, One Conversation at a Time. I know that you're going to really enjoy this conversation and learn more from Jeremie about communication.