{"id":25584,"date":"2020-01-25T15:37:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T23:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=25584"},"modified":"2020-01-25T15:37:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-25T23:37:44","slug":"leveraging-the-christian-faith-to-create-more-impact-in-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leveraging-the-christian-faith-to-create-more-impact-in-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Leveraging The Christian Faith To Create More Impact In Society."},"content":{"rendered":"

Having resources, position or knowledge is one thing and maximizing their usage for better results is quite another thing. Leadership is about mobilizing people and other resources to achieve the set objectives and maximizing the results. The measure of one\u2019s leadership ability is the results that you produce. Mark Knoll, in analyzing the Evangelical churches, highlights some very interesting statistics that inform his concern for harnessing the Christian mind. It is clear that Mark Noll feels that the Evangelicals form the largest single group of religious Americans with immense wealth, status and political influence but \u00a0have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship in North America[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Noll is Francis A McAnaney Professor of History at the university of Notre Dame and also the McManis professor of Christian thought in Wheaton College. In the words of Mark Noll, \u201che grew up in a Christian movement where, because God had to be given pre-eminence, nothing else was allowed to be important. He says that he has broken through to the position that because God exists, anything else has significance\u201d[2]<\/a>. God created all thing through Christ and in studying created things they are studying the works of Christ[3]<\/a> and is therefore what Evangelicals should do. If God created all things, it follows that as believers and followers of Christ, there is nothing wrong with studying his creation and influencing His creation to create more impact. As a way of influencing God\u2019s creation, Mark Noll sees the intellectual process as a key way of increasing influence and should not be shunned or ignored by evangelicals. The scandal of the Evangelical Mind is that there\u2019s not much of the evangelical mind. It is clear that Noll feels that the existence of an evangelical mind would have created more influence in the North American society than was the case and is challenging the evangelical community to turn around the situation. He is probing and unsparing in his judgement of the evangelicals in his first book, The scandal of The Evangelicalism Mind but is sparing and more positive in his second book, Jesus Christ and The Life of The mind.<\/p>\n

As Mark Noll highlights the failure of the Evangelical Group to develop the Evangelical mind to create more influence and impact on the North American society, this is sobering and affirming for the step I have taken to pursue my doctoral studies. I am persuaded that Christianity has had a great influence on the Western civilization and informs the economic prosperity and dominance of Northern Europe and North American economies. As I seek to empower Christians economically in the vulnerable communities in Kenya and beyond, I appreciate the fact that adding intellectual knowledge will give me more leverage. By acquiring more intellectual knowledge, will give me not only knowledge but also a better platform as a Doctor of ministry, to disseminate that knowledge. The fact is that people respect intellectual knowledge and the title Doctor that go with it. \u00a0As a responsible Christian leader, I have the choice of expanding my sphere of influence and creating more positive impact which choice, I feel obligated to take a good steward.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Mark Noll, The Scandal of The Evangelical Mind ( Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eardman\u2019s Publishing Company, 1994).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Mark Noll, Jesus Christ And The Life Of The mind<\/em> (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eardman\u2019s Publishing Company, 2011), Loc 349.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., Loc 338.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having resources, position or knowledge is one thing and maximizing their usage for better results is quite another thing. Leadership is about mobilizing people and other resources to achieve the set objectives and maximizing the results. The measure of one\u2019s leadership ability is the results that you produce. Mark Knoll, in analyzing the Evangelical churches, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1745,35,806,1744],"class_list":["post-25584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jesus-christ-and-the-life-of-the-mind","tag-leadership","tag-mark-a-noll","tag-the-scandal-of-the-evangelical-mind","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25585,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25584\/revisions\/25585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}