All Posts By

Glen Schultz

Engaging In Today’s Culture War

By | Public Blog, Uncategorized

It has been said repeatedly that life in America changed forever on Sept. 11, 2001. No one in the United States will ever forget that fateful day when 19 terrorists attacked our country using commercial airplanes. Since that day our lives have been consumed with the reality of war. We read or hear about the war on terror, the Afghanistan conflict, or the War in Iraq in every newspaper, magazine, and radio and television station on a daily basis.

Even though the war on terror is very real and extremely important, there is another war that has been raging across our land that gets very little of our every day attention. This war is far more devastating to each of us than those we hear about in the news. This war is a culture war and the results from this war will have a major impact on not only our lives but the lives of all future generations that will follow us.

The reason why there is this ongoing culture war is due to a far greater terrorist attack than the one that occurred on 9/11. It can be accurately stated that because of this earlier terrorist attack, life in God’s creation changed for all time. Of course, I am referring to that day in the Garden when Satan attacked the crown jewel of God’s creation — MAN. When the attack was over, sin had entered the world and God’s creation has never been the same.

Since that day every society and every generation has been engaged in an extremely intense culture war. All culture wars have been and always will be wars over the concepts of reality and truth. Today we are fighting our culture war and the current state of war is very much like the one fought during the time of the prophet Hosea. This prophet wrote about the culture war of his day and described its state by declaring that:

· There was no acknowledgement of God in the land
· God’s people were being destroyed from a lack of knowledge (truth)
· His law was being ignored

Because the culture war had gotten to this point and God’s law was being ignored, God said that He would ignore their children.

My mind goes to the prophetic words of James Dobson more than a dozen years ago when he described the culture war of our time in his book Children At Risk. Dobson accurately saw this war as:

· A war of ideas
· A war aimed at our children and youth
· A war that would be fought in a major way on educational turf

Over the past several decades, the intensity of our culture war has grown greatly — especially on educational turf. I recently heard Josh McDowell state that we now live in an anti-Judeo Christian culture where society opposes and attacks the reality of God and the truth of His Word at every point of battle.

Not long ago I was given this cartoon from the Sept. 1, 2003 issue of The New Yorker. This cartoon is titled “Moral Compass 2003”. The options on this compass for making moral choices are dangerous to say the least. However, this cartoon accurately depicts the postmodern culture in which we live that boldly proclaims there are no moral absolutes.

Moral Compass 2003

I once received an e-mail update from Barna Research, which reported that only 4% of adults in the United States have a biblical worldview. The research discovered that only 9% of born again Christians have such a perspective on life. From every indication, we are losing the culture war.

In a recent address to a large group of Christian educators, I suggested several strategies to which we must devote ourselves if we are going to turn the battle around. These strategies have specific implications on how Christians are to educate their children.

1. We must honor and preserve truth
2. We must know, understand and commit ourselves to a biblical philosophy of education
3. We must teach to biblically impact the next generations’ beliefs, values and actions
4. We must understand that formal education is one of the greatest influences on the development of beliefs/worldviews of individuals and societies
5. We must unite home, church and school into a unified whole that will equip our children to think and act from a biblical worldview.

Here at Kingdom Education Ministries, we are dedicating ourselves to engage in today’s culture war and are committed to fulfilling these strategies. I believe that by following these strategies we can successfully engage in today’s culture war and raise a generation of young people who will think and act from a biblical worldview.

The Right Motivation Unleashes God’s Power

By | Public Blog, Uncategorized

Have you ever wondered what will it take to unleash God’s power in your life or ministry? We have all read the accounts in the Bible where God unleashed His power and allowed men to accomplish great things through their lives and ministries. You may have also read or heard about God doing similar things in the ministries of men and women in more recent times.

It is easy to dismiss these accounts and feel that the men and women that God did mighty things through were special and unique. It could never happen with you. We might say to ourselves, yes Elijah did great miracles but I’m just an ordinary person and it could never happen with me. I have been there on many occasions myself.

However, in James we find that Elijah wasn’t special and the writer of James says that he was a man with like passions. This actually means that he was a human being just like us. Yet, his life was full of one exciting event after another. Why did God do such great things through him?

As I have studied God’s Word, I found that every time God performed a mighty work through various people, there was a common motivation that each person had that seems to have unleashed God’s power. This motivation is the key to having God’s power unleashed in your life and ministry.

This motivation is all about God and not about you and me. For God’s power to be present in our lives, we must have the motivation to glorify God in everything we do. To glorify God means to increase His reputation throughout the whole world. God will do mighty acts only for His name’s sake.

One of the most well known accounts in the Bible is the story of David and Goliath. We have heard the story of how David stood up to this mighty giant and declared “the Lord will deliver you up into my hands”. Why did he have such confidence that this would happen? It was because he had the right motivation.

In 1 Samuel 17:45 it is recorded that David believed God would deliver Goliath into his hands so “that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel”. This was also the motivation of Elijah on Mount Carmel when he prayed, “today let it be known that You are God in Israel…that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God.”

Could it be that we are not seeing God unleashing His power today because we, as Christians, do not have the right motivation? Here are some Scriptures that may help.

Exodus 7:3,5, 17; 8:8; 9:14, 16; 10:2; 14:17; Judges 7:2; I Samuel 17:45; I Kings 18:30; Ezekiel 36:22-24

Kids Have Been Big Losers

By | Public Blog, Uncategorized

I entered school in the 50s. Since that time, a lot of changes have taken place in education and these changes have made a significant difference in the lives of children. Several years ago, I came across a short description of some losses kids had experienced since the 1950s. Having lived through theses decades, I knew these losses were a reality and included this list in my book Kingdom Education. Consider the following:

In the 1950s, kids lost their INNOCENCE
They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term – the generation gap.

In the 1960s, kids lost their AUTHORITY
It was the decade of protest – church, state, parents were all called into question and found wanting. Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it.

In the 1970s, kids lost their LOVE
It was the decade of me-ism, dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self: self-image, self-esteem, self-assertion. It made for a lonely world. Kids learned everything there was to know about sex but forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference.

In the 1980s, kids lost their HOPE
Stripped of innocence, authority, and love, and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future.

When I revised Kingdom Education, I realized that our kids had lost something more during the decade that we had just come through. So I wrote the following.

In the 1990s, kids lost the MEANING OF TRUTH
It was the decade when our national leaders redefined truth to be merely that which was legally accurate. Public opinion polls defined moral truth while the church sat by quietly and watched.

A couple of years ago, I received an email from someone who had just finished reading Kingdom Education. This person asked me if I thought kids had lost anything more since I wrote the book. At first I didn’t think so but I wanted to think more about it. After thinking carefully about what had taken place during from the turn of the millennium till now, I sadly had to write the following.

In the 2000s, kids lost their FAITH
Having lost the meaning of truth and the growing threat of terror attacks, this generation lost their faith in the truth of God’s Word and found their lives being driven by fear.

In the 2010s, kids are in danger of losing their FUTURE
Being driven by fear and not by faith, a growing number of this generation is frantically chasing the false claims of the American Dream. They are living only for the temporal and, therefore, are chasing after treasures on earth only to find them decaying before their very eyes. They are finding life to be full of despair and are quickly losing any sense of eternity.

Some people may see this as very discouraging. This would be true if it were not for God. The only hope for recovery from all these losses is found in Jesus Christ. Here is what I have learned from Scripture that gives me purpose for my life and, therefore, provides me hope for the future. Faith in Jesus Christ provides hope and answers to these decades of losses by:

• Breaking down any generation gap and forgiving one of his sin and restoring relationships through the shedding of His blood
• Bringing understanding of the necessity of authority and being the only One who exercises it correctly
• Defining true love – for He is love
• Restoring hope because He holds the future in His hands
• Giving one the ability to know truth because He is truth. Truth is who God is not something God decides
• Destroying fear because He is eternal and unchanging so He is totally trustworthy
• Giving meaning to the temporal as it is mere preparation for eternity