1975 - Loren Cunningham.

In 1975 founder of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), Loren Cunningham, received a strategy from the Lord to reach his nation, America and the nations.    He wrote a list of 7 key areas, which he called ‘mind-molders’  or ‘ spheres,’ after the verse 13  in 2 Corinthians 10, that speaks of staying within the spheres (NKJV), boundaries (NLT), area of influence (ESV)  that God has appointed.  These areas are also known as ‘The 7 Mountains.’

The same day he received this strategy he received a phone call from his friend, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and an invitation to meet up.  The Lord had shown Bill  virtually the same list the previous day.  Three weeks later, as further confirmation, Loren watched Francis Schaeffer on TV and heard the same revelation, he believed this to be a final confirmation that he was to act on what he had seen.   Needless to say this strategy became integrated within the YWAM teaching structure from then on.

The following has been adapted from the ‘2007 Transcript of an interview with Loren Cunningham on the Original 7 mountains Vision.’  He explains these seven mountains:

“First, it’s the institution set up by God first, the family.  After the family,  the church, or the people of God.  The third was the area of school, or education.  The fourth was media, public communication, in all forms, printed and electronic.  The fifth was what I call ‘celebration,’ the arts, entertainment and sports, where you celebrate within a culture.  The sixth would be the whole area of the economy, which starts with innovations in science and technology, productivity, sales and service.  The whole area, we often call it business, but we leave out sometimes the scientific part, which actually raises the wealth of the world.  And then of course prediction sales and service helps to spread the wealth.  And so the last area was the area of government. 

Now government, the bible shows in Isaiah 33 verse 22, that there are three branches of government, so it is all three branches: judicial, legislative and executive.  And then there are subgroups under all those seven groups.  And there are literally thousands upon thousands of sub-groups.  But those seven can be considered like Caleb: “Give me this mountain,” and they can be a ‘mountain’ to achieve for God.

To read the full transcript

Dominion

In his 2008 book, Dominion, Dr. C. Peter Wagner states his purpose is to  ‘undergird’ what he sees as the ‘urgent mandate of God for the Church to actively engage in transforming society’.

He says, “Every segment of society should be permeated with the peace and justice and prosperity and life and health and righteousness and joy and harmony and love and freedom that characterize God’s original design for human life.  Earthly societies will be happier and more fulfilled with these qualities of life realised than without them. 

While all committed Christians will embrace these values, Christians are not the only ones who do so.  Many non-Christians agree that the societies in which we live should move in the direction I have just described, and they also want to participate personally in such a transformation.

Since right now we all find ourselves on earth and not yet in heaven, only by following certain earthly rules can we implement this social transformation.  Human society is regulated by seven supreme molders of culture - namely, religion, family, government, arts and entertainment, media, business and education.   It should be obvious to anyone that for society as a whole to change, each one of these molders of culture needs to be led or “dominated” by persons of goodwill, whether Christians or non-Christians.  I put “dominated” in quotes to reflect my choice of this book’s title, Dominion!”

My hope is that those who agree with God’s standards of human life will be those individuals who, at the end of the day, are in positions to have dominion over society, whether it be within cities or states or nations or other territories. “

Dr. C. Peter Wagner, Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change The World, Chosen Books 2008, page 12.

7M University

In 2008, teacher and author Dr. Lance Wallnau ‘launched the 7M University offering online training and personal development courses.

The university offers a wide range of subjects although it seems to emphasizes what it calls specific areas, such as:  Business, Religion, Government, Media, Family, Education, Arts & Entertainment & Science & Technology.

The Chuck Colson Centre for Christian Worldview

Chuck Colson identifies the various spheres of society slightly differently.

The Colson Center website describes them as Worldview Spheres and divides them into 8 categories, they say: :

"Worldview Spheres represent the particular categories of truth, disciplines of study, and arenas of practice within which the Truth comes to light in human experience.

These may be envisioned in various ways. For our purposes, we will consider eight Worldview Spheres, as follows:

1. Creation / Environment

2. Religion / Spirituality

3. Education / Development

4. Relationships

5. Culture / Institutions

6. Science / Technology

7. Economics / Vocation

8. Community / Government

"The challenge in learning to use these spheres is to understand their peculiar nature and purpose and to discover and practice the best ways of integrating them according to the requirements of truth."

Author & speaker John Stott has outlined some fundamental thoughts on the Christian's attitude towards the world in his marvellous book, New Issues Facing Christianity Today. I have adapted these below and consider them to be a solid foundational for my approach to topics focussed on in Link-Zone.

He says, "I propose to marshal five great doctrines of the Bible, which all of us already believe in theory, but which we tend to cut and trim in order to make them fit our escapist theology. My prayer is that we have the courage to hold these doctrines in their biblical fullness. Any one of them should be sufficient to convince us of our Christian social responsibility; the five together leave us without excuse."

1. A FULLER DOCTRINE OF GOD

" We need a fuller doctrine of God ... we tend to forget that he is concerned for the whole of humankind and for the whole of human life in all its colour and complexity. These universals have important consequences for our thinking.

FIRSTLY, the living God is the God of nature as well as of religion, of the secular as well as of the 'sacred'. In fact Christians are always uncomfortable about this distinction. For everything is 'sacred' in the sense that it belongs to God, and nothing is secular in the sense that God is excluded from it. God made the physical universe, sustains it, and still pronounces it good (Genesis 1:31). Indeed, 'everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4). W should be more grateful than we usually are for the good gifts of a good Creator - for sex, marriage, and the family, for the beauty and order of the natural world, for work and leisure, for friendships and the experience of inter-racial, inter-cultural community, and for musci and other kinds of creative art which enrich the quality of human life.

Our God is often too small because he is too religious. We imagine that he is chiefly interested in religion - in religious buildings (churches and chapels), religious activities (worship and ritual) and religious books (Bibles and prayer books). Of course he is concerned about these things, but only if they are related to the whole of life. According to the Old Testament prophets and the teaching of Jesus, God is very critical of religion, if by that is meant religious services divorced from real life, loving service and the moral obedience of the heart.

'Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world' (James 1:27)...."

SECONDLY, the living God is the God of the nations as well as of his covenant people... when God chose Israel, he did not lose interest in the nations. Amos bravely gave voice to the word of the Lord:

'Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites [or Ethiopians]? ... Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor [Crete] and the Arameans from Kir?' (Amos 9:7). Similarly the arrogant emperor Nebuchadnezzar had to learn that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes. (Daniel 4:32).

He rules over the nations. Their destiny is under his control. Although Satan is called 'the ruler of this world' and is de facto its usurper, God remains the ultimate governor of everything he has made.... More than that, he has promised that in blessing Abraham and his posterity he will bless all the families of the earth, and that one day he will restore what the Fall has marred and bring to perfection all that he has made.

THIRDLY, The living God is the God of Justice as well as of justification. Of course he is the God of justification, the Saviour of sinners, 'the compassionate and gracious God ... but he is also concerned that our community life be characterized by justice.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, The Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. (Psalm 146:7-9).

... That God is a God of justice, and desires justice in every nation and community is particularly evident from the Book of Nahum, which is a prophecy against Nineveh, the capitol and symbol of Assyria. Yahweh's denunciation of Assyria is not just because she was Israel's long-standing enemy, but because of her idolatry (1:14) and because she is a 'city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims' (3:1).

... It is clear from these Old Testament passages that God hates injustice and oppression everywhere, and that he loves and promotes Justice everywhere. Indeed wherever righteousness is to be found in our fallen world, it is due to the working of his grace.

2. A FULLER DOCTRINE OF HUMAN BEINGS

All our philanthropic work (that is, work inspired by love for human beings) depends on our evaluation of them. The higher our view of their worth, the more we shall want to serve them.

Secular humanists who are sincere in describing themselves as dedicated to the 'human case and the human cause' sometimes appear more humane than Christians. But if we ask them why they are so committed to humankind, they are likely to reply with Julian Huxley, that it is because of the human potential in future aeons of evolution. 'Thus the development of man's vast potential of realisable potential,' he wrote, 'provides the prime motive for collective action.'

The inadequacy of this as a basis for service is obvious. If the unimpeded progress of evolution were our chief concern, why should we care for the senile, the imbecile, the hardened criminal, the psychopath, the chronically sick or the starving? Would it not be more prudent to put them to sleep like a well-loved dog, lest they hinder the evolutionary process?

Compulsory euthenasia, not compassionate service, would be the logical deduction from the humanist's premise. The fact that they draw back from this abyss indicates that their heart is better than their head, and their philanthropy than their philosophy.

Christian people have a sounder basis for serving their fellow human beings. It is not because of what they may become in the speculative future development of the race, but because of what they already are by divine creation.

Human beings are god-like beings made in God's likeness and possessing unique capacities which distinguish them from the animal creation. True human beings are fallen, and the divine image is defaced, but despite all contrary appearances it has not been destroyed (Genesis 9:6; James 3:9). It is this which accounts for their unique worth and which has always inspired Christian philanthropy.

For these human but godlike creatures are not just souls (that we should be concerned exclusively for their eternal salvation), not just bodies (that we should care for their eternal salvation), not just bodies (that we should care only for their food, clothing, shelter andhealth), nor just social beings (that we should become entirely preoccupied with their community problems).

They are all three. A body-soul-in-a-community. For that is how God made us.

Therefore if we truly love our neighbours and because of their worth desire to serve them, we shall be concerned for their total welfare, the wellbeing of their soul, their body and their community. And our concern will lead to practical programmes of evangelism, relief and development.

... Motivated by love for human beings in need, the early Christians went everywhere preaching the Word of God, because nothing has such a humanizing influence as the gospel. Later they founded schools, hospitals and refuges for the outcast. Later still they abolished the slave trade and freed the slaves, and they improved the conditions of workers in mills and mines, and of prisoners in jails.

They protected children from commercial exploitation in the factories of the West and from ritual prostitution in the temples of the East.

Today they bring leprosy sufferers both the compassion of Jesus and modern methods of reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation. They care for the blind and the deaf, the orphaned and the widowed, the sick and the dying. They get alongside junkies, and stay alongside them during the traumatic period of withdrawal. They set themselves against racism and political oppression. They get involved in the inner city, the slums and the ghettoes and raise their protest against the inhuman conditions in which so many are doomed to live. They see in whatever way they can to express their solidarity with the poor and the hungry, the deprived and the disadvantaged.

I am not claiming that all Christians at all times have given their lives in such service. But a sufficiently large number have done so to make their record noteworthy.

Why have they done it?

Because of the Christian doctrine of male and female, all made in the image of God, though also fallen.

Because people matter. Because every man, woman and child has an intrinsic, inalienable value as a human being.

Once we see this we shall both set ourselves to liberate people from everything dehumanising and count it a privilege to serve them, to do everything in our power to make human life more human.

4. A FULLER DOCTRINE OF SALVATION

There is a tendency in the church to trivialise the nature of salvation as if it meant no more than a self-reformation, or the forgiveness of our sins, or a personal passport to paradise, or a private mystical experience without social or moral consequences. It is urgent that we rescue salvation from these caricatures and recover the doctrine in its biblical fullness. For salvation is a radical transformation in three phases, beginning at our conversion, continuing throughout our early life and brought to perfection when Christ comes.

In particular we must overcome the temptation to separate the truths which belong together.

First, we must not separate salvation from the Kingdom of God. For in the Bible these two expressions are virtual synonyms, alternating models to describe the same work of God. According to Isaiah 52:7 those who preach good news of peace are also those who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

That is, where God reigns, he saves.

Salvation is the blessing of his rule.

Again, when Jesus said to his disciples, 'How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God,' it seems to have been natural for them to respond with the question, "Who then can be saved?' (Mark 10:24-6). They evidently equated entering the Kingdom with being saved.

Once this identification has been made, salvation takes on a broader aspect. For the Kingdom of God is God's dynamic rule, breaking into human history through Jesus confronting, combatting and overcoming evil, spreading wholeness of personal and communal well-being, taking possession of his people in total blessing and total demand.

The Church is meant to be the kingdom community under the rule of God and a challenging alternative to secular society. Entering God's kingdom is entering the new age, long promised in the Old Testament, which is also the beginning of God's new creation.

3. A FULLER DOCTRINE OF CHRIST

We need to recover an authentic picture of him ... We need to see him in his paradoxical fullness - his sufferings and glory, his servanthood and lordship, his lowly Incarnation and cosmic reign.

... The Son of God did not stay in the safe immunity of his heaven. He emptied himself of his glory and humbled himself to serve. He became little, weak and vulnerable. He entered into our pain, our alienation and temptations. He not only proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God, but demonstrated its arrival by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, forgiving the sinful, befriending the dropout and raising the dead. He had not come to be served, he said, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom price for the release of others. So he allowed himself to become a victim of gross injustice in the courts and as they crucified him he prayed for his enemies.

Then in the awful God-forsaken darkness he bore our sins in his own innocent person.

Should not this vision of Christ affect our understanding of his commission, 'As the Father has sent me, I am sending you' (John 20:21).

For if the Christian mission is to be modelled on Christ's mission, it will surely involve for us, as it did for him, an entering into other people's worlds.

In evangelism it will mean entering their thought world; and the world of their tragedy and lostness, in order to shre Christ with them where they are.

In social activity it will mean a willingness to renounce the comfort and security of our own cultural background in order to give ourselves in service to people of another culture, whose needs we may never before have known or experienced.

Incarnational mission, whether evangelistic or social or both, necessitates a costly identification with people in their actual situations. Jesus of Nazareth was moved with compassion by the sight of needy human beings, whether sick or bereaved, hungry, harassed or helpless; should not his people's compassion be aroused by the same sights?

4. A FULLER DOCTRINE OF SALVATION

There is a constant tendency in the Church to trivialise the nature of salvation, as if it meant no more than self-reformation or the forgiveness of our sins, or a personal passport to paradise, or a private mystical experience without social or moral consequences. It is urgent that we rescue salvation from these caricatures and recover the doctrine in its biblical fullness. For salvation is a radical transformation over three phases, beginning at our conversion, continuing throughout our earthly life and brought to perfection when Christ comes. In particular, we must overcome the temptation to separate truths which belong together.

FIRST we must not separate salvation from the Kingdom of God. For in the Bible these two expressions are virtual synonyms, alternative models to describe the same work of God. According to Isaiah 52:7 those who preach good news of peace are also those who 'proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

That is, where God reigns, he saves. Salvation is the blessing of his rule. Again, when Jesus said to his disciples, 'How hard it is to entr the kingdom of God,' it seems to have been natural for them to respond with the question, "Who then can be saved?' (Marck 10:24-6). They evidently equated entering the Kingdom with being saved.

Once this identification has been made salvation takes on a broader aspect. For the Kingdom of God is God's dynamic rule, breaking into human history through Jesus, confronting, combatting and overcoming evil, spreading wholeness of personal and communal wellbeing, taking possession of his people in total blessing and total demand.

The Church is meant to be the Kingdom community, a model of what human community looks like when it comes under the rule of God, and a challenging alternative to secular society. Entering God's Kingdom is entering the new age, long promised in the Old Testament, which is also the beginning of God's new creation. Now we look forward to the consummation of the Kingdom when our bodies, our society and our universe will all be renewed, and sin, pain, futility, disease and death will be eradicated. Salvation is a big concept; we have no liberty to reduce it.

SECONDLY, we must not separate Jesus the Saviour from Jesus the Lord. It is little short of incredible that some evangelists teach the possibility of accepting Jesus the Saviour, while postponing a surrender to him as Lord. But God has exalted Jesus to his right hand and made him Lord. From that position of supreme power and executive authority he is able to bestow salvation and the gift of the Spirit.

It is precisely because he is Lord that he can save. The affirmation 'Jesus is Lord' and 'Jesus is Saviour' are almost interchangeable. And His Lordship extends far beyond the religious bit of our lives. It embraces the whole of our experience, public and private, home and work, church membership and civic duty, evangelistic and social responsibilities.

THIRDLY, we must not separate faith from love. Evangelical Christians have always emphasized faith. Sola fide, 'by faith alone,' was one of the great watchwords of the Reformation and rightly so. 'Justification', or acceptance with God, is not by good works which we have done or could do; it is only be God's sheer unmerited favour ('grace'), on the ground of the atoning death of Jesus Christ, by simple trust in him alone. This central truth of the gospel cannot be compromised for anything. But although justification is by faith alone, this faith cannot remain alone. If it is living and authentic, it will inevitably issue in good works, and if it does not, it is spurious.

Jesus himself taught this in his 'sheep and goats' description of Judgment Day. Our attitude to him. he said, will be revealed in, and so be judged by, our good works of love to the least of his brothers and sisters.

The apostles all lay the same emphasis on the necessity of good works of love. James teaches it: 'Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead ... I will show you my faith by what I do' (2:17,18). So does John: ' If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has not pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?' (1 John 3:17). And so does Paul. Christ died to create a new people who would be 'eager to do what is good' (Titus 2:14). we have been re-created in Christ 'to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do' (Ephesians 2:10). Again, 'the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love ... Serve one another in love' (Galatians 5:6, 13). This, then is the striking sequence - faith, love, service. True faith issues in love, and trul love issues in service.

... saving faith and saving love belong together. Whenever one is absent, so is the other. Neither can exist in isolation.

5. A FULLER DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

Many think of the Church as a kind of club, rather like the local golf club, except that the common interest of its members happens to be God rather than golf. They are religious people who do religious things together. They pay their subscription and are entitled to the privileges of club membership. In that frame of mind they forget William Temple's perceptive phrase that 'The church is the only cooperative society that exists for the benefit of non-members.'

In place of the 'club' model of the Church, we need to recover the truth of the Church's 'double identity'. On the one hand the Church is a 'holy' people, called out of the world to belong to God. But on the other it is a 'worldly' people, in the sense of renouncing 'otherworldliness' and being sent back into the world to witness and to serve.

... Seldom in its long and chequered history has the Church remembered or preserved its double identity. Sometimes, in a right empahsis on its 'holiness' , the Church has wrongly withdrawn from the world and become insulated from it. At other times, in a right emphasis on its 'wordliness' (i.e. its immersion in the life of the world), the Church has wrongly become assimilated to the world's standards and values, and so become contaminated by them. Yet without the preservation of both parts of its identity, the Church cannot engage in mission. Mission arises out of a biblical doctrine of the Church in society. An unbalanced ecclesiology makes mission unbalanced too.

Jesus taught these truths himself, not only in his famous expression, 'in the world but not of it' (see John 17:11-19), but in his vivid metaphors of the salt and the light. 'You are the salt of the earth,' he said, and ' you are the light of the world' (Matthew 5:13-16). He implied that the two communities, the new and the old, the Church and the world, are as radically different from one another as light and darkness and salt from decay. He also implied that, if they were to do any good, the salt must soak into the meat, and the light must shine into the darkness. Just so, Christians must penetrate non-Christian society. thus the double identity and responsibility of the Church are plain.

In a similar way the apostle Peter describes the members of God's new people on the one hand as 'aliens and strangers in the world' and on the other as needing to be conscientious citizens in it (1 Peter 2:11-17). We cannot be totally 'world-affirming' (as if it were good); we need to be a bit of both, and we particularly need to be 'world-challenging', recognising its potentiality as God's world and seeking to conform its life increasingly to his lordship.

This vision of the Church's influence on society is best described in terms of 'reform' rather than of 'redemption'. As AN Triton has expressed it, "Redemption is not an infection of social structures ... it results in individuals restored to a right relationship to God. But that sets up horizontal shock waves in society from which all of us benefit. These benefits are in terms of reforming society according to God's law and not redeeming it by the death of Christ.'

The effectiveness of the Church depends on its combination of 'holiness and worldliness'