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This past weekend was our annual Culture Impact Forum featuring award-winning broadcaster, writer, and speaker Dick Staub. He delivered four captivating sessions from his latest book entitled ‘The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity-Lite.’

I started Friday night’s introduction with the metaphor of ‘poor vision.’ The Church suffers from poor vision insofar as we struggle to see how Christ’s kingdom gets worked out in culture. At the conclusion of the seminar I closed our time by suggesting that Dick had given us the gift of improved sight, a sort of theological Lasik surgery, if you will. Let me share just one element of this vision.

The idea is not new, but I suspect it came into sharper focus for everyone listening. Simply put, Dick asserted that the enrichment of culture with gospel life must happen on a grassroots level in the context of community. Moreover, the engine that drives this vision is a simple piece of furniture located in most churches today: the pulpit. The pulpit and the two square feet of space located behind it are the most important pieces of real estate in the entire world, for it is there that God speaks through a mere mortal. Why does the Church often fail to infuse the culture with gospel life? Listen to what is being preached from today’s pulpits and you will find your answer. The late Gardiner Spring explains this concept in some detail.

Gardiner Spring (1785-1873) was minister of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City from 1810 to 1873, establishing it as a center of powerful evangelical preaching. He was regarded both for his preaching and his writing, and one of his significant works was The Power of the Pulpit. First published in 1848, this volume remains an enduring text on pastoral ministry.

“What would New England have been without her pulpit? . . . There is no part of Christendom that has not acknowledged these incidental influences of the pulpit, in forming its habits and character, in elevating and purifying its institutions, in stimulating and extending its literature, in modifying its usages and laws, and in giving more or less of peculiarity to the measures and policy of its government. It necessarily gives a direction to the current of human thought,—men of talent, in every department of human life, feel its influence. It has been felt everywhere;—in the councils of warriors in the field, and of statesmen in the Senate-house. Kings on their thrones have listened to its voice, and the populace has been moved by it. Men of all religious persuasions, and of no religious persuasion, believers and infidels, feel its influence; all orders and combinations are, to a greater or less extent, subjected to its power.

In past ages of the world, few moral causes did more in moulding the habits of human thought, than the various forms of scholastic philosophy, but its powerful influence waned, and eventually was eclipsed by the Christian pulpit. Other influences there are which act upon the public mind; the press acts upon it; seminaries of learning act upon it; legislation acts upon it; courts of law act upon it; the theatre and the opera act upon it; the fine arts act upon it; and the exchange acts upon it; and all with prodigious power. Some of these are the immediate and direct antagonists of the pulpit; and its business is to oppose and neutralize them. Some of them are directly auxiliary to it, and some of them indirectly. As such, we honor them. But if we draw a line around any other department of human influence, and compare it with the pulpit, we must do the greater honor to this divine institution. It has no physical force to boast of; it is its moral power which is its glory. Its conflict is not the conflict of rushing bayonets, but of truth with error; nor are its victories those where men are trodden down and trampled on, but where they are lifted up. It has power above the field of battle, above the Forum, above the Senate-house. Yes it has power above them all. Compare them. Inspect them. And then say which has the more important influence upon national character. Inspect them impartially; and whose sway is the widest, and which occupies the largest space?1”

If you would like a CD recording of the Dick Staub seminar, you may obtain one by contacting my assistant, Ms. Sarah Schneider at SSchneider@College-Church.org.

Footnotes:

1 Gardiner Spring, The Power of the Pulpit (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1848), 55-58.

International adoptions have soared in recent years. Less than 9,000 children came to America in 1995, but by 2006, this number increased to well over 20,000. The vast majority of these adopted orphans came from mainland China, Guatemala, Russia, and South Korea.1 Parents are compelled to put their children up for adoption for a number of reasons. Chinese authorities fine families with more than one or two children, while extreme poverty in parts of Russia has filled up orphanages with starving kids.2 As a result, more and more needy children are finding homes in developed Western countries.

Today, parents adopt children with every conceivable background and make them their own. This was not always the case. Historian Julie Berebitsky pointed out that as recently as the early twentieth century, adoptive parents sought to ensure that the children they chose came with the appropriate pedigree. She pointed to a letter written by Mrs. Robert Powell to the Washington City Orphan Asylum in 1913, requesting “some orphan girl, born of good parents” to adopt.3 Mrs. Powell’s concern with the morality of the parents reflects a belief that vice was inherited. In fact, twentieth-century eugenicists objected to adoption for this very reason. They based poverty (which often led to children being put up for adoption) on a biologically defective character; adopting children from poor families would only spread poor character throughout society.4

Thankfully, the eugenicists did not win the day. Almost immediately, their theories were contested by those who argued that individuals are as much a product of their environment as they are their genes.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with wanting to give a child a good environment and a loving home. The Christian, however, has an even more compelling reason to consider adoption. Every Christian, after all, has been adopted! Every Christian is an orphan when God comes to him, but each is folded into His family (Gal. 4:5). Every Christian understands what it means to become the object of divine affection. All of these themes are beautifully displayed in the act of adoption, whether the child is 11 years old and in foster care in the inner city or is an impoverished infant in Russia. Randy Stinson, director of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, put it well:

Outside of Christ, we are all orphans . . . All people are born outside of the family of God and the only way to get into the family of God is through Christ. The doctrine of adoption is at the heart of the Gospel and if we are going to be a Gospel-centered people we should take seriously this thing (adoption) that is in front of all of us. Actually adopting someone is a stark picture of the Gospel.5

It seems strange to recall a day when adoptions were discouraged for fear of spreading immorality, and it is easy to distance oneself from such a bad idea. For many, it is harder to overcome the notion that adopting a child makes better theological than practical sense: “It is too expensive.” “The ethnic barriers are too hard to overcome.” “We can’t care for a child with special needs.” “We have already fulfilled God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.” Perhaps so, or maybe this is one more way for God’s people to do what they have always been called to do, to care for orphans.

Footnotes:

1 “Immigrant Visas Issued to Orphans Coming to the U.S.,” U.S. Department of State Website, http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/stats/stats_451.html (accessed August 22, 2007).

2 Allison Tarmann, “International Adoption Rate in U.S. Doubled in the 1990s,” PRB Population Reference Bureau Website, January 2003, http://www.prb.org/Articles/2003/InternationalAdoptionRateinUSDoubledinthe1990s.aspx?p=1 (accessed August 22, 2007).

3 Julie Berebitsky, Like Our Very Own: Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood, 1851-1950 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 17. Italics in original.

4 Ibid., 28-29.

5 Quoted by Garrett E. Wishall, “Adoption Provides a Picture of the Gospel, Stinson and Moore Say,” The Towers Online, February 9, 2007, http://www.towersonline.net/story.php?grp=news&id=399 (accessed August 22, 2007).