Dr. Albert Mohler on Cultural Shift, Church Planting, and Believers in Utah
It
was my great pleasure, along with Bryan Catherman of SaltyBeliever.com, to host
Dr. Albert Mohler the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on
our podcast Salty Believer Unscripted.
Dr. Mohler was kind enough to sit down with us after a long day of
lecturing at Brigham Young University in the morning and preaching at a small
conference called “Contend” for area Christian pastors at First Baptist Provo
in the evening. As an alumnus of
Southern Seminary I am always excited to have Dr. Mohler in the state of Utah. This was Dr. Mohler’s second address at
Brigham Young University in Provo Utah, which was a follow up, and continuation
of his first address earlier this year.
At
“Contend” Dr. Mohler preached out of 1st Peter and focused on the
cultural shift that we are experiencing in Christian culture and wider American
and Western culture. Dr. Mohler emphasized
the fact that Christians are “elect exiles” (1 Peter 1:1). In contrast, Dr. Mohler pointed out that
for most of modern history in American Christians have been living in a
temporary and unheard of time of social influence built on a lot of social
capital, but our influence has really been more of a mirage that was always
destined to fail. Dr. Mohler aptly
demonstrated that Christians have lost the culture wars, have cashed in
their social capital, and our temporary time of influence has evaporated. In the words of Dr. Mohler, “And that’s
a good thing.” Dr. Mohler went on
to show that the social position the Christian Church is coming to in the
United States is the position the Church has historically been in and will
begin to share the experience of being in the minority that many of our
brothers and sisters in Christ experience around the world. Our inheritance has never been found in
the kingdom of our own building here on earth but rather is kept imperishable,
undefiled, and unfading, in heaven (1 Peter 1:4). Dr. Mohler finished his sermon with a call to continue to
follow Christ despite the growing social costs and to “keep our conduct among
the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they
may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter
2:12).
After
Dr. Mohler’s sermon and a time of Q & A with the general audience and a
fellowship with area pastors, Dr. Mohler was gracious enough to speak with
Salty Believer Unscripted late into the night. Particularly we discussed the question “How do we plant
churches that will be able to survive the cultural shifts that are going
on?” Following this question Dr.
Mohler then gave some great insights into the culture that is developing in
Utah and particularly in the Wasatch Front. Dr. Mohler had the following to say about believers in Utah:
"You are on the cutting edge of what America is going to look
more like…the fact the evangelicals are in a minority and have been for a very
long time, virtually from the beginning of Utah as a territory, means you're on
the cutting edge as a laboratory of what Christians in the rest of America are
going to wake up and find. I'm not asking you to rejoice in every
particular; I am asking you to consider the fact that the Lord has giving you
the stewardship here to help the rest of the Church to figure these things
out."
Bryan and I are very
thankful for the time Dr. Mohler spent with Salty Believer Unscripted and
overjoyed for his encouragement to believers Utah. I highly encourage you to listen to our podcast with Dr.
Mohler HERE. If you would like to
hear more from Dr. Albert Mohler, please visit his website AlbertMohler.com or
subscribe to his daily podcast The Briefing, which deals daily with worldview
analysis of top news headlines.
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