This weekend the family hosted my friend Andrew Marin. I suppose most people know Andy as a controversial speaker and author who is trying to help the church build bridges with the gay community. I know Andy more as a friend. We met last summer in preparing for National Youth Workers Convention where he was a general session speaker. In exchanging some Facebook messages  for a guest post I knew Andy was the real deal. There was something about him I instantly liked. Humble, yet bold. Courageous, with a healthy measure of fear. I could tell he had been biten by a few sheep as well. Then when we met in Sacramento he joined Cathy and I for a trio of fun that carried us all through the convention season.

The point of this post isn’t my friendship with Andy.

The point of this post isn’t that sheep bite.

This post is about you and I bringing change to the world.

The reason for change goes back to two core things which shape the world. First is the fall of man, which leads man towards a life in pursuit of sin, expressing enmity towards God and entropy in all systems of people. (Governments, local organizations, Christian organizations, etc.) Second is the redemption of mankind through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t come to the world merely to provide a way to salvation and for us to patiently wait for the world to go to pot until His return. [Honestly, this is the view of the Evangelical church in the last 30 years.]

No! The Gospel cannot be limited to a singular, man-focused individualistic message! He came, first and foremost to be the Savior of mankind… but He also charged the church to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and the rest of the earth. He set us up to be agents of His. As Ephesians 2 points out… we (both individually as believers and as the church) were called by Him to do good works. We are meant to effect change. Our role as believers to to make life better. Our job in a life with Jesus is to change the world and make it a better place for others. Our desire must always be to fight systemic entropy. Our focus as belivers must be to continually force Jesus’ redemption into systems of church, government, charity, and friendship.

The world will not right itself. The world will never wake up by itself and say… “You know what, we should stop this injustice. We should stop oppressing people. We should stop trapping them into slavery. We should stop corruption. We should stop stealing.”

The world needs us to be agents of change. The world needs people who are absolutely driven, like Andy Marin. He is brave enough to look eye-to-eye with the most powerful men and women in Evangelicalism and say, “How you treat gay people is wrong. Let me help your church apply some principles that build bridges instead of walls.”

One of my favorite songs right now is John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change.” I listen to it every Monday morning on my walk to work. It fires me up, it reminds me that I am not meant to wait for the world to change. I am meant to change the world. If you know Jesus as your Savior, you are meant to lean into the insane call of changing the world.

Me and all my friends
We’re all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There’s no way we ever could

Now we see everything that’s going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don’t have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

What are you waiting for?