But earlier today President Obama rocked it anyway telling ABC News:

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

The full interview will air Thursday morning on Good Morning America. Watch the relevant clip here.

So, what are we to make of this sudden turn of events? Over the last few years President Obama has said that his views on same sex marriage were “evolving” along with the rest of the country’s. But why has he chosen this moment to offer an all out endorsement? Here are three things to consider:

1. Obama had already lost the religious vote. Over the last year the administration has made a number of decisions that has alienated religious voters, most notably the matter of non-church religious institutions having to cover contraception in employee health care plans. The decision upset the Catholic Church in particular, and an endorsement of SSM is only going to anger a block of voters already unlikely to vote for Obama. In other words, he’s got nothing to lose.

2. Obama needs his base of young people and progressives more than ever in 2012. Surveys show that young people are far more open to gay marriage than their parents’ generation. They are unlikely to turn against the president for this endorsement. In addition, Obama progressive base, including the LBGT community, has been frustrated with the president’s lack of action on a number of fronts. With his popularity slipping, Obama needs his base’s enthusiastic support come November. His full endorsement of this key progressive issue is likely to do the trick. In other words, he’s got everything to gain.

3. Obama needs to keep the focus of the campaign off of the economy by any means necessary. No doubt the president’s team hoped to run their campaign on the back of a resurgent economy. While things are definitely not as apocalyptic as when Obama took office in 2009, the recovery is showing signs of slowing down–exactly what Mitt Romney needs in order to sell his “smart business guy” brand to the American people. For the last few weeks, the White House has been pushing Obama’s foreign affairs prowess and courage for taking out Osama Bin Laden. With the anniversary of OBL’s death now passed, a new issue was necessary to take the focus away from the limp economy that is dragging down Obama’s reelection bid.

The question is: will Republicans and religious conservatives take the bait? Will they stay on message and hammer away on the weak, even non-existent economic recovery–an issue on which President Obama is genuinely vulnerable? Or will they swerve into a cultural crusade that might fire up their base but ultimately turn off the moderate swing voters necessary to win in November?

Remember, as it stands the marriage equality issue is being addressed by the states, not the federal government. It is unlikely that Obama, or any other president, will see legislation come across his desk in the next 4 years on the subject. And while some states are passing legislation blocking gay marriage, as we saw in North Carolina yesterday, the legal foundation for such laws is growing weaker and weaker. I’ve spoken to a number of conservative legal scholars about the subject, and I’ve always heard the same thing: the church lost the battle over same sex marriage three decades ago. How, you ask? Because the church was silent when state after state passed no-fault divorce laws. These bills essentially removed the state from any interest in preserving or defining marriage. No fault divorce laws defined marriage as an agreement between two individuals that may be entered or dissolved as the individuals desire without state interference or prejudice.

Now some states are trying to reinsert themselves into marriage by defining who may and may not enter into it. But the courts are saying “Sorry, too late.” The state abdicated that role years ago and cannot discriminate who may marry based on gender. Marriage is a contract between two individuals–any individuals–and not the state.

I recap this history only to remind you that the marriage battle is over. It is only a matter of time before the remaining states see SSM laws pass their legislatures or bans are overturned by their courts. Rather than fighting same sex marriage, the church ought to be looking at the next issue on the horizon–protecting religious liberty. If SSM is to be the law of the land, how can Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and others participate in the drafting of these laws in a manner that protects their freedom of conscience and worship? How can we fairly extend marriage rights to our LGTB neighbors while maintaining the First Amendment rights of Americans with religious beliefs that oppose same sex marriage? This is the important, and hopefully more mature, public conversation church leaders ought to be having.

But, if conservatives, including those in the church, want to make same sex marriage the defining issue of 2012, I’m sure the Obama campaign will be happy to comply. Anything to ensure the focus isn’t about how to revive the economy–a battle that is still far from settled.

UPDATE** Obama talks about his Christian beliefs and same sex marriage:

“[Michelle and I] are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president, and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president.”

Read more at Christianity Today.

Likewise, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:15-20) and again in Matthew 12:33 Jesus compares people to trees. A person, like a tree, is known by its fruit. A good tree yields good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. The principle is simple and profound. As a friend’s bumper sticker reminded me: Fruit Happens. Who we are will ultimately be revealed by what we do. If our lives are marked by love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness we can conclude that what is in us is from God and good. But if our fruit is anger, discord, jealously lust, hatred, greed, selfishness, and pride…

Still, despite the simple nature of this truth, we are stubbornly reluctant to accept it. We want to believe that we can be full of rotten fruit and still be well-intentioned and good trees. And rather than having our old self (tree) uprooted and replaced with a new self, we’d much rather keep our gnarled old stump and branches and merely decorate them with glittering, fake ornaments.

We’d rather be dead Christmas trees with our roots cut off sitting around in pots of stagnant water for a little refreshment on Sunday mornings–drawing a tiny sip each week to keep our dead needles green. And rather than producing real fruit, we’d rather hang all kinds of lights, and tinsel, and ornaments on our atrophied branches–the kinds of glittering things that people stop to look at and notice with “oohs” and “aahs.”

But in the end, no matter how beautiful and decorated they may be, Christmas trees are all dragged to the curb, taken up by the trash collector, and thrown into some landfill or fire.

I know some Christmas trees. I know some churches that are full of them. They really are beautiful. And sometimes it’s nice to be around their lights and colors and spray-on evergreen scent if only to be reminded of how stunning our fear of death can be.

But some Sundays I much prefer to walk in the forest among the living. The trees there are not electric. They are not waiting to be noticed, and many are not very big. But they are growing. They do not expect to sip water from pots. Instead they wait patiently for the rain that will come in its own time. And they do not expect to be sheltered under a roof or viewed behind a window. They open themselves to the world and invite every creature to nest in their branches.

And when I walk among them, when their season has come, I see fruit–real, natural, nourishing fruit. I know the fruit will not last forever. Its season too will pass. But I take comfort in knowing that long after the Christmas tree shows are over, the living trees of the forest will still be there with their limbs growing inch by inch, year by year, closer to the sky.

Having learned the peril of seeking big impact rather than small faithfulness, Vischer began his next venture, Jellyfish Labs, just as the media world was being transformed by iTunes and digital platforms. He created a new stable of characters led by anchorman Buck Denver (think of Ron Burgundy as a Muppet), JellyTelly- an interactive website for kids, and a DVD series called What’s in the Bible? that walks kids through every book of Bible. But now Vischer has his sights set on an older audience. Realizing his humor resonates with college students and older adults, next month he will begin “The Phil Vischer Show”–a talk show focusing on the intersection of faith with culture, politics, science, theology, and anything else that flows through his mind. Featuring guests and a live audience (and the occassional puppet?), Vischer hopes his show will bring some silliness to conversations about the serious topics of our day.

Skye: When did you sense that God was calling you to engage the media/entertainment world? How did this fit with the ministry legacy of your family?

Phil: My family legacy was all about missions and the pastorate. I had relatives who faced down cannibals. My great grandfather was a radio preacher, and I grew up at the missions conference he founded, hearing amazing stories about the amazing things amazing missionaries were doing for God. I couldn’t figure out how a shy kid like me fit into that picture. I preferred playing with Super8 cameras and my Atari 400 computer at home in the basement. Then MTV turned on when I was a sophomore in high school. I loved the creativity, but was very concerned about the values. Definitely not what I had learned in Sunday School. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe God could use someone like me to bring biblical truth into creative media. Suddenly I had a picture of how I could be on mission with God without ever getting on a plane, or facing down a cannibal.

Why it is so important for Christians to participate in film and television?

These are the media our culture uses to transmit ideas. To abstain from these media is tantamount to abandoning the public square.

Is it better for Christians to create their own media outlets (channels, studios, radio stations, labels), or to participate in the mainstream stuff?

We need to do both. Equipping and encouraging the church is valid and necessary. So is engaging the culture. The trick is to know which you’re doing, and be honest about it. We’ll make a feature-length film, lob it into a few theaters, get our church friends to go see it, and then try to convince ourselves that we’ve engaged the culture. If no one shows up but us, we aren’t engaging the culture. But worship music shows us that not all Christian artistic expression needs to be aimed at the culture. Much of what I’ve written in my life has been aimed squarely at the church, with the idea that a well-informed and well-formed body of believers will then go out and impact the culture. I am unabashedly “preaching to the choir” because the problems I’m trying to address are in the choir loft.

How has your understanding of God’s calling on you changed since Big Idea?

Massively. My focus early on was to have as much impact as possible, as quickly as possible. That was my math for finding God’s will. More, more, faster, faster. My quest for more/faster resulted in my having little or no personal joy, and, ultimately, a collapsed ministry. Out of that, God taught me that what he is really looking for is obedience, not impact. Little things done with joy are much more attractive to the world than big things done by cranky people.

What can the church do to help young people who feel called into the entertainment industry?

Validate the call. Pray for them. Find older Christians in entertainment that can advise and mentor. And help them make stuff. Our churches – especially the larger ones – have amazing media resources in-house. I was recently in a church that had its own green screen studio. My first comment was, “Do the high school kids know this is here?” We know kids love creative media, so we often think, “We grown-ups had better make media to entertain our church kids.” That’s the wrong way to think. Put the tools in the kid’s hands, and let them make the media. We too often turn our churches into shows, and turn our kids into the audience. Our kids should be the producers. The audience is the world. Hand out some cheap camcorders and get out of their way.

You’re now expanding beyond a children’s audience. Why?

My goal was never specifically to focus on kids, it was really about families. The idea behind VeggieTales and What’s in the Bible? was to make something a whole family could sit down and watch together. Then I started noticing that high school and college age kids seemed to like my stuff as much as younger kids. That was unexpected! We have a lot of great teachers in the church, but a serious lack of silly. We tend to teach like Walter Cronkite reported the news – in a deadly serious “voice of God” tone. But our culture has replaced Walter Cronkite with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. We like silly. The church is completely missing this trend.

Tell us about “The Phil Vischer Show.” Will there be puppets?

I wouldn’t be surprised if a puppet or two dropped by every now and then, but the Phil Vischer Show is really about finding a thoughtful yet humorous take on the issues facing Christians today. The goal is to bring a dose of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert to a genre that has been dominated by very dour, older white preachers for far too long. There are too many important ideas that aren’t being discussed in a public forum, and even if they are, aren’t being discussed with the “spoonful of sugar” (read: humor) that can make them palatable to a broad audience. Someone needs to take a crack at this, and I’ve decided it might as well be me.

Skye: Rob Bell thinks part of the reason we don’t talk about vocation is that we’re ignoring Gen 1 and 2 and jumping straight to the “bad news” in chapter 3. Do you agree?

Jim Gilmore: I don’t agree. His statement in the interview that you did with him — “a lot of Christians have been taught a story that begins in chapter 3 of Genesis, instead of chapter 1″ — struck me as blatantly absurd. I’ve never ever met a Christian who didn’t start with Genesis 1, right along with John 1, for that matter. The very first sentence of the Nicene Creed affirms the first two chapters of Genesis; ditto the Apostles’ Creed. Of course, to the extent contemporary churches no longer affirm and recite the historic creeds… But seriously, today it’s Genesis chapters 3 and 4 that gets downplayed in many circles. That’s the case with most all liberals — and certainly among the prosperity-gospel types.

What do you think of Bell’s call for the church to “ordain everyone”? Are we diminishing other callings and only lifting up pastors/missionaries?

Now, I believe in the priesthood of all believers and that every Christian should be a theologian. But let’s not turn churches into places with all shepherds and no sheep; places full of self-actualizing experts. To me that’s a perfect definition of Hell (a word I capitalize by the way, for its an actual place, like Peoria). To abandon the notion that certain of us are ordained by God to hold church office, well, is there any surer way to eradicate sound preaching and good teaching in churches than that? As James says, “not many of you should presume to be teachers.” To me, this is just further evidence that business-thinking, especially that of Silicon Valley, has infiltrating organized — make that disorganized — religion. It’s “the cult of the amateur” that Andrew Keen warns about, now permeating Christianity.

Bell says, “What you believe about where the story is headed deeply impacts how you live now and what you believe matters, now.” What role does your eschatology play in your understanding of vocation and mission?

I’m a pan-millennialist — as the old joke goes: it will all pan out. Of course eschatology is important here. And either an over-realized of under-realized eschatology can muck up one’s thinking. But let me also offer this: what one believes now and how one lives now, matters for all eternity, not just in the here and now.

Any other comments that you would like to add concerning the Rob Bell interview?

Where do I start? First his notion of “ongoing creation” is most confusing. And the notion that we somehow “co-create” with God is simply silly. Stewardship provides a much better model for thinking correctly about our role on this planet. I sound like a broken record here, but let me point out that the idea of “co-creation” is one that has been floating around for some time now in business circles — and it’s another example of the corrupting influence of business on our churches. The world would be much better off if we reversed the flow of thought here — and have the biblical idea of stewardship exert greater influence on leaders within the business community.

Secondly, Bell is not the first to point out that “desire” need not be a bad thing. There’s this guy in Minneapolis named John Piper! And may I point out the obvious contradiction in Bell’s remarks here: he says in one breath that it is “destructive” to have people think they are to “deny their hearts” — and then in the very next breath he says Jesus “insists that we can be transformed in such a way that our desires and God’s desires for us become the same thing.” Which is it?

Finally, I would affirm Bell’s admonition to view a broad array of occupations as potential vocations. But I do think he does so in the context of a much too over-realized eschatology. So much so that I fear he has mankind taking on roles that are God’s alone. Or course, that lands one right back in Genesis 3: you shall be like gods.

The American auto industry has made a remarkable comeback in the last few years. After a nearly fatal collapse in 2008, the car markers are seeing record sales. But the boom isn’t evident among the young who are failing to buy cars at the same pace as earlier generations.

An article in The Atlantic by Jordan Weissmann reveals that automakers are struggling to connect their products to teens and twenty-somethings. The problem isn’t the cars, or even the economy, but driving in general. Fewer young people are getting drivers licenses. In 1998 nearly two-thirds of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license. In 2008 it was less then half. It’s hard to believe, but trends indicate young people in the 21st century no longer view a car as the symbol of adolescent independence. As one Toyota executive noted, “Many young people care more about buying the latest smart phone or gaming console than getting their driver’s license.”

What’s the explanation for the shift away from the car culture most of us remember from our teenage years? Cities. Millennials are much more likely than earlier generations to live in large urban communities where cars are unnecessary. Weissman writes:

About 32 percent reside in cities, somewhat higher than the proportion of Generation X’ers or Baby Boomers who did when they were the same age, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center report. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, surveys have found that 88 percent want to live in an urban environment. When they’re forced to settle down in a suburb, they prefer communities like Bethesda, Maryland, or Arlington, Virginia, which feature plenty of walking distance restaurants, retail, and public transportation to nearby Washington, DC. 

If the Millennials truly become the peripatetic generation, walking to the office, the bus stop, or the corner store, it could mean a longterm dent in car sales. It’s doubly problematic if they choose to raise children in the city. Growing up in the ‘burbs was part of the reason driving was so central to Baby Boomers’ lives. Car keys meant freedom. To city dwellers, they mean struggling to find an empty parking spot.

These urban-loving, automobile-ambivalent young adults pose a significant problem for the church and not just the car industry.

Late twentieth century American evangelicalism has been dominated by megachurches, and many congregations that do not rank as “mega” have nonetheless had their approach to ministry shaped by these influential churches. But the values inherent to many of these churches are out of sync with what we are discovering about Millennials. For example, when “white flight” occurred in the 1960s many evangelical churches abandoned the city. The space they discovered on the edge of metropolitan areas allowed some to expand their ministries to previously unimaginable sizes. The megachurch boom was ignited. In the late 1970s there were only 10 congregations in the country with 2000+ attendees per week. By 1990 there were over 500. Megachurches remain a predominantly suburban phenomenon that survive by drawing attendees from a wide geographical area. They are predicated on the automobile, as their sprawling parking lots and florescent-vested traffic volunteers reveal.

But how are these ministries going to reach Millennials that don’t drive as much as their parents and prefer an urban rather than suburban lifestyle? There’s a lot happening in the realm of urban ministry and church planting these days, but what will become of the churches in the ‘burbs and their asphalt halos?

The Atlantic article and other research about Millennials should help church leaders recognize that there is no silver bullet solution to getting young people in the church. There are massive social changes underway that are challenging the assumptions held by the American church for generations. Hiring a younger preacher, lighting some candles, and a church Facebook page aren’t going to cut it. Even the auto industry is scrambling to figure out a way to adjust to what’s happening. And in this fluid environment having non-liquid ministry assets, like a massive building in the suburbs, may not be an advantage. The smaller, more nimble ministries are the ones more likely to adjust to the times. But if their big-haired pastors still want to see more young people in their aging churches, then perhaps they should focus on getting more of them into a car.

But the evidence is mounting that reaching or retaining the young is going to take a lot more than new music styles or even a systematic rethinking of church leadership and organizational structures. There is the larger cultural matter of politics.

An eye-opening article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam titled “God and Caesar in America: Why Mixing Religion and Politics is Bad for Both,” is a must read. Using research among young adults, Putnam and Campbell ask why the next generation is increasingly identifying their religious affiliation as “none.” They conclude that politics is a significant reason. They write:

“The best evidence indicates that this dramatic generational shift is primarily in reaction to the religious right. And Millennials are even more sensitive to it, partly because many of them are liberal (especially on the touchstone issue of gay rights) and partly because they have only known a world in which religion and the right are intertwined.”

Their last point is an important one. Those raised in the evangelical tradition under the age of 30 have no experience of Christianity separated from conservative politics–what some are now calling “Christianism.” And the most visible Christian leaders in the media for the last three decades have been political activists fighting for conservative cultural causes. A 50 or 60 year old pastor may have fond memories of the Jesus Movement, campus ministries, or the innovative spirit of American evangelicalism of the 1960s and 70s. But my generation associates faith with Jerry Falwell, the Religious Right, political crusades, arguments about abortion and homosexuality, and a combative posture toward “liberal” neighbors. (I suggest reading Jonathan Merritt’s article in The Christian Science Monitor on the impact of the current GOP primary on young people in the church.)

Even for those raised in apolitical congregations, like me, this has been an inescapable part of our experience as a Christian. My college years made this abundantly clear. I attended a secular state university. When my identity as a Christian was revealed to my peers, I often spent the majority of my time fighting the assumption that I was a homophobic, judgmental, Republican, racially insensitive, misogynist. To be honest, I grew so tired of fighting these stereotypes that I was often tempted to “hide my light under a bushel.” I was eager to talk about Christ and his Good News, but getting to that subject required crawling through the sewage of so many political and cultural issues that I sometimes concluded “why bother.”

One might conclude from Campbell and Putnam’s article that the church simply needs to jettison partisan politics. Reject the religious right, keep your mouth shut about politics and controversial social issues, and the young people will stop leaving the church. But it may not be so simple for two reasons.

First, even where churches avoid politics, the general perception of Christianity as politically conservative in our culture is still firmly established. Just as this view took decades to establish, it will also take decades to dismantle. And, second, there is no evidence that churches avoiding Republican partisanship are having any greater success reaching the younger generation.

Peter Berger responded to the Campbell/Putnam article with a more nuanced explanation for why young people have left the church. He writes:

Let me, with all due respect for Campbell and Putnam, suggest a hypothesis of my own: Most “nones” have not opted out of religion as such, but have opted out of affiliation with organized religion. Among Christians (the great majority of all survey respondents) there are different reasons for this disaffection. The two authors are very probably correct that, broadly speaking, those who are turned off by Evangelicals and conservative Catholics do so because they don’t like the repressive sexual morality of those churches (the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church has not helped).

But the “nones” have also exited from mainline Protestantism, which has been much more accommodating to the liberationist ethic. Here, I think, there has been frustration with what my friend and colleague Thomas Luckmann long ago called “secularization from within”—the stripping away of the transcendent dimensions of the Gospel, and its reduction to conventional good deeds, popular psychotherapy and (mostly left-of-center) political agendas. Put differently: My hypothesis implies that some “nones” are put off by churches that preach a repressive morality, some others by churches whose message is mainly secular.

So, we are left with a narrow path. Veer too far to the cultural right and the young will dismiss the church as a puppet of Republican politics. Veer too far to the theological left and the power of the Gospel is lost amid cultural accommodation.

The younger generations, and our culture as a whole, needs evidence of a third way to be Christian. It will require more than individual voices, but an organized and identifiable community of believers that reject Christianism and stands for Christ’s Good News, manifested in good lives, and evident in good works.

I call myself a Common Good Christian. Here’s why.

In the mid-twentieth century, the church was being split by polemic forces. On the left liberal theology dismissed the authority of Scripture while advocating a socially engaged gospel. On the right the fundamentalists called for a retreat from the culture in order to preserve biblical truth. Billy Graham, among others, recognized the error of each extreme and rallied the divided church to a third way–one that held to orthodox Christian beliefs but also recognized the importance of cultural engagement. This middle way was called “evangelicalism” or “neo-evangelicalism.”

60 years later, the label “evangelical” has become so widely used in American culture that it has lost much of it’s meaning. The media uses the term interchangeably with “fundamentalist,” and some on the far theological left who deny core doctrines of orthodox Christianity still consider themselves “evangelical.” The term has ceased to be useful. But that doesn’t mean its original meaning, or Graham’s desire for a Biblical, culturally engaged faith, was flawed.

When one surveys the landscape of the church today, it seems as if we are facing another period of fragmentation and polarization. Factions have emerged within evangelicalism that mirror the extremes seen 60 years ago. Once again the most popular voices are amplifying the false dichotomy of social engagement or doctrinal purity, and the mingling of rancorous partisan politics with Christianity has only made the poles more distant from one another. And those at the poles are well branded, organized, and resourced. That leaves the majority of Christians in the middle with no voice, no rallying point, no identity by which they can differentiate themselves from the voices in the media that claim to speak for “Christians.”

But they don’t speak for me.

Two generations ago Billy Graham suspected that if an identity and rallying point were created in the middle, a real alternative to the fundamentalists and the liberals, the majority of church leaders and members would identify with it. He was right then, and I believe he’s still right today.

Many of us are looking for an identity that captures our commitment to orthodox Christian doctrine as well as our commitment to a culturally generative posture; one the reveals our desire to see all people reconciled to God through Christ, but also to see this world God created and loves restored to him. One that recognizes the diversity of our callings within God’s kingdom, rather than applying a single call upon all of God’s servants.

We long for an identity that speaks to the personal, communal, and even cosmic scope of the Good News of Jesus Christ in contrast to the self-absorbed, therapeutic psudo-Christianity that fills much of the church. And we don’t want to be identified with one political party, one cultural crusade, one theological tradition, or one celebrity preacher, but wish to embrace the full communion of saints and the diverse expression of the church global and historical. And we want an identity that reveals the church’s presence in this world is a gift from God; that the church exists for the blessing of others and not itself.

This gospel-centered, culturally-generative form of faith is what I call “Common Good Christianity,” and is summarized in three ideas:

Good News- Through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, God is reconciling all things to himself. As his people, we are called to live in intimate communion with God and to be agents of his reconciliation by proclaiming and demonstrating his Gospel. We are to be a people of faith.

Good Works- God’s kingdom, which brings flourishing to all of creation, is breaking into our world. He has gifted and called each of us to reveal his reign through our vocations and service in every channel of the culture for his glory and for the benefit of others. By this work we participate in the kingdom that will be fully revealed in the age to come. We are to be a people of hope.

Good Lives- In Christ we have not only been reconciled to God but also to one another. Delivered from sin and bound by the law of Christ, we increasingly bear the good fruit of the Spirit as our lives grow to reflect the character of our Lord. We are to be a people of love.

I am a Common Good Christian. Are you?

Share your thoughts in the comments below, and on Twitter (#commongoodchristian). I’ll be writing more in the coming days about being people of good news, good works, and good lives.

Jim’s bio will fill you in on his business chops and publishing accolades, but he’s best described as a “professional observer.” And his skills are highly sought after by companies and universities. When I’m curious about a random topic, an email to Jim will include a reply with five must-read books on the subject. He seems to know something about everything! He’s also the only person I know who teaches at a business school, seminary, and architecture program. As I continue my research for my next book, I spoke with Jim about the current state of the church and how Christians should think about engaging the world.

Skye: You spend a lot of time in the gap between the business world and the ministry world. Why do you find this space so important?

Jim Gilmore: Because business is the most corrupting influence on the visible church today. I only became fascinated with this space when I learned of so many pastors reading our book, The Experience Economy. I would normally have been delighted to have readership emerge in any pocket of the population, except the book was not being read to obtain a better understanding of the commercial culture in which congregants live, but in many cases as a primer for “doing church.” I found it particularly troubling when our models for staging experiences in the world were being specifically applied to worship practices.

The talk of “multi-sensory worship,” the installation of video screens, the use of PowerPoint, having cup-holders in sanctuaries — and I’m not talking about for the placement of communion cups — and even more ridiculous applications really took me back. I even read of a pastor who performed a high-wire act, literally–above his congregation. All of this effort to enhance the so-called “worship experience” arose at the same time that I detected a decline in the number of preachers actually faithfully preaching the gospel through sound exposition of the scriptural text.

Why do you think it’s so dangerous to use what’s effective in the marketplace in the church?

The church is to stand apart from the marketplace. The church is not a business; she should sell no economic offerings. In an age when more and more of life is being commodified — we are going beyond just the buying and selling of goods and services and now charging for life experiences and personal transformations — the church needs to refrain from participating in this activity. Just because experiences and transformations “sounds like what we do,” as one pastor once told me, that is not a reason to abandon the very limited role for the organized church as prescribed in scripture. The church should not number itself among other worldly enterprises, performing roles properly assigned to other institutions. Instead, the church should be the place where individuals are equipped for when they go forth in their daily pursuits.

I am greatly influenced here by Abraham Kuyper’s spheres of sovereignty and recent ”Two Kingdoms” thinking. We are dual citizens of an eternal and a temporal kingdom, but we should not confuse the two. If in sharing this perspective I turn some of your readers off, well, let me point to someone of a very different theological stripe: Robert Farrar Capon. I love his treatment of the parables of Jesus. Every pastor who truly wants the best for his flock should read his three books on the parables. Capon makes it very clear: the church and pastors are not here to help improve peoples’ lives. Leave that for the marketplace and private charity. No, they’re here to provoke people into understanding the need to die to self and to be found in Christ. No orchestrated experience can substitute for good old fashioned preaching of the gospel.

We were at a conference together last year, and you got very uncomfortable when a presenter repeatedly said, “The church is in the transformation business.” Was he wrong?

The church does not exist to help guide transformations, and this goes for two types of transformations. The church has no role in guiding personal transformations in individuals, which only contributes to turning Christianity into what Christian Smith has described as therapeutic moralistic deism. Neither should the church see itself as guiding collective transformations–ushering in some new worldwide ethos-system, the kind of ”parousia” nonsense that Brian McLaren fantasizes about.

The church exists to proclaim the gospel: to preach the Word, to administer the sacraments, to exercise proper church discipline. And that’s about it. The rest we should do as private individuals and in collective efforts with others outside of church.

So what is the solution to the captivity of ministry leaders to business models?

I’ve got a theory: to the extent that the church does not know its Bible, really know the Bible, the more it seeks distraction in terms of participating in other ministries and making junkets to ministry conferences.

We truly neglect the reading of God’s Word today. We give it lip service, beginning with pastors. But I have heard too many pastors who obviously know more about Seth Godin’s Purple Cow than know about historical-critical interpretation of the Bible.

And I’ve got a very simple suggestion. Pastors should preach through the book of Galatians and read the epistle in its entirety every day in the process. Encourage your congregation to do the same. Luther called Galatians the Magna Carta of Christianity. If we committed ourselves to that, we probably wouldn’t need most of these ministry conferences. Let me add, no church should ever send any pastor to any conference if they have not first read Luther’s commentary on Galatians.

How is ministry a different calling than leadership in other areas?

“Ministry” in the church should not be singled out as distinct from other vocations in terms of being ministry. I’ll tell you who and what is very helpful here: Os Guinness and his book, The Call. We do a great disservice when we treat those who do not hold positions in the church as somehow not equally called to ministry. We set up a false sense of guilt. Worse, we end up with some of the most unqualified men in the pulpit.

I’m working on a book, in part, about vocation and how Christians should relate to the world. Who has influenced your thinking on that issue?

Again, I find Os Guinness so helpful here. As he puts it, calling means “Do what you are” not “You are what you do.” And I’ve always held as a conviction what I heard James Boice preach during my college days at Penn: Labor where God has placed you. How should one relate to the world? Don’t develop grandiose schemes for greatness, just labor where God has placed you. Don’t do some rain dance; dig some ditches.

And how should pastors think differently about the culture?

Why, oh why, do they have this need to “engage the culture”? The culture ain’t interested back. Now, I think pastors and elders, and deacons, and all church members should seek to understand culture. I teach a course in cultural hermeneutics at Westminster Seminary California. Here’s what I tell my students: Invest the minimal amount of effort for the maximum amount of understanding so that you can know the cultural norms in which your congregants are situated.

Some simple suggestions: Read The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and your local newspaper daily; these are wonderful filters for what is happening of significance. Channel surf TV once a week on different nights of the week, with your spouse, so you know what others are watching. Read movie reviews more than you actually watch movies. Movies, while the dominant medium of our time, are an enormous waste of time. Visit the magazine rack once a month; take note of the headline topics, and look especially for premier issues of new publications. Walk the mall. Watch what people wear, and notice what they do. If you look closely, you’ll find it quite easy to engage culture simply by calling attention to what you observe. Jesus had this skill of observation. Seek likewise to look, really look, for yourself. I think just noticing what others miss as they walk by, head buried in a screen, goes a long way in this regard.

Senator Obama’s speech was courageous because it targeted the most established of political obstacles: the “God Gap.” That is the term used to describe the near monopoly Republicans have on religious voters. Except among African Americans, religious affiliation is the single most reliable predictor of how a person will vote, and for the last generation religious Americans have voted Republican.

But from the moment Barack Obama came on the national stage he has challenged this assumption. A single line in his 2004 speech at the Democratic convention caught the ears of many evangelicals. “We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” Obama declared. Did a Democratic senator just quote a Rich Mullins worship song? Yes, he did. It was Obama’s first olive branch to religious voters.

Then came the 2006 speech in which Obama advanced the idea that progressives might “have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.” His theory was tested in his 2008 bid for the presidency. Despite scandals involving his own pastor, Obama managed to win more religious voters than either Gore in 2000 or Kerry in 2004. Maybe the God Gap wasn’t a permanent feature of the political landscape after all.

When Obama took office in 2009 he seemed to prove that his respect for the role of faith went beyond the campaign trail. Not only did he retain the Office of Faith-Based Partnerships created by George W. Bush, an office hotly criticized by many Democrats, but Obama expanded it. At the announcement of the office’s new role, Obama again reached out to religious Americans:

“I don’t expect divisions to disappear overnight, nor do I believe that long-held views and conflicts will suddenly vanish. But I do believe that if we can talk to one another openly and honestly, then perhaps old rifts will start to mend, and new partnerships will begin to emerge.”

President Obama was saying and doing all the right things to bridge the God Gap. He represented a new kind of Democrat that respected the role of faith in the public square, and he sought to restore a moral and religious dimension to progressive politics. But three years later Obama is being blasted as the anti-religion president, and early Republican primaries are showing the God Gap may be wider than ever before.

What happened?

No doubt many will credit attacks by Obama’s opponents who like to question the authenticity of his Christian faith. But the explanation does not rest with Republicans alone. In the last year the administration has made decisions that have opened the president to the accusation of being anti-religion, and evidence is growing that Obama is not as interested in winning religious voters as he was in 2008.

First, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has gone dark. President Obama appointed a much-lauded faith council in 2009 with advisers from across the religious spectrum. They completed their work in March 2010 with a 163-page report. The White House vowed to assemble a new faith advisory council for the President, but two years later we are still waiting. Given the current debate about faith and government, the absence of an advisory council for the President seems miscalculated if not politically foolish.

Second, in 2011 the administration joined the discrimination lawsuit of an employee fired by a church. The case hinged on whether the government may interfere with a religious institution’s hiring and firing practices. In a nine to zero ruling, the Supreme Court called the Obama Administration’s view “untenable.” Even the most liberal judges, and one appointed by Obama himself, rejected the administration’s argument. The case has opened Obama to the accusation that he does not respect religion–the very message he spoke against in his 2006 speech.

Finally, the recent controversy requiring Catholic institutions to provide contraception to employees has sealed the perception among some that Obama is anti-religion, or at the very least deaf to the values and concerns of religious citizens. Although the President changed the requirement after the outcry, the damage was done. Ultimately the problem was not the administration’s final decision on contraception coverage, but how religious leaders were handled in the process.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York met with President Obama in November about his health care plan. Dolan reported that the President assured him those morally opposed to contraception and sterilization would be protected. He left the meeting “hopeful.” But when the plan’s details were announced in early 2012, Dolan felt betrayed. “I don’t have those sentiments of hope now.” Even non-Catholic leaders sympathetic to the President, like evangelical pastor Rick Warren who prayed at Obama’s inauguration, have vocalized their strong disagreement with the administration.

The efforts of Obama to bridge the God Gap between 2004 and 2009 seem to have been dismantled in 2011 and 2012. Is it the result of an administration full of secularists who do not share the President’s understanding and respect for faith? Has his efforts to engage evangelicals been subverted by his own party? Or, has the President himself abandoned efforts to reach religious voters in order to shore up his agitated liberal base?

Whatever the reason, I wish President Obama would go back and read his own faith and politics speech from 2006 because the evidence is mounting that the God Gap is not insurmountable. Many evangelicals, including outspoken conservatives, are at odds with the GOP on immigration reform. And research is showing that younger evangelicals view poverty, the environment, and foreign policy as moral issues, not just abortion and marriage. These are all areas Obama could target to fracture the hold Republicans have on religious voters.

Why do I want Obama to implement greater outreach to religious voters? It’s not because I want to see the Democrats win more evangelical votes, but because I believe the concerns of Christians will carry more influence if they are not beholden to one political party. In addition, the perception that Christianity and the Republican Party are inseparable is driving many young people away from the faith. Put simply, the God Gap is bad for the church. There is still a chance for the President to challenge the God Gap in American politics–he has done it before–but with each fumble by his administration the opportunity is shrinking.

When the church presents a less than biblical understanding of how to relate to God, it leaves young people with a powerless form of Christianity predicated on fear and control. When this way of life proves ineffective, they may abandon both their faith in Christ and the church. So, our first job is to get the gospel right. Check out my talk and the brief Q&A afterward. Much of the content you see is based on my book, WITH.