Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stomstreet.

In many churches, Christianity is reduced, not necessarily to something false or heretical,

but to something just smaller than what it really is.

Often, even our understanding of the church's mission to exalt Christ,

to edify believers, to evangelize the lost, are all understood in ways that can find Christianity.

Worship only happens on Sunday mornings. Discipleship is the acquisition of biblical knowledge

or the process of becoming more moral. Evangelism is about securing decisions for Christ.

Of course, they're all good things, but just not the whole story. That's why Christianity

is often highly visible inside the church and largely absent from where people spend most of

their lives. When faith is separated from work, when worship is disconnected from vocation,

when discipleship

becomes unrelated to the culture, and salvation irrelevant to the wider world, Christianity

has been privatized.

Now this would have puzzled the earliest Christians.

The New Testament authors are constantly presenting Christ, not only as the Savior of souls,

but as the Lord of heaven and earth.

The Apostle Paul declared that all things were created through him and for him, and in him,

all things hold together. In other words, Christ's reign extends over every single square inch of

reality. And if that's true, then worship could never be confined to just a sanctuary. Worship would be how we

conduct all of our business, raise our children, care for our neighbors, create art, pursue

justice, engage politics, steward, any and every part of creation. To exalt Christ is to live

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