BreakPoint's Centurions, Agents of Change

“There was a time when the church was very powerful,” Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in his famous 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail. “In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

In contrast, Dr. King chastised, the contemporary Church was a “weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound . . . the arch supporter of the status quo.” While the early Christians shook up the power structures of their day and brought an end to such evils as infanticide and bloody gladiator combat, the modern Church generated little disturbance with its silence or acculturation to “things as they are.” One of those “things” in 1963 was the prevailing injustice of racism.

Chuck Colson made similar admonishments in his 1992 book The Body, where he argued that “the church must be the church,” which includes “a commitment to be agents of God’s justice in society at large and to see His whole world from the perspective of His truth.” If God’s people reclaimed their calling to be salt and light, Colson wrote, they could once again—as did their first-century predecessors—turn the world upside-down.

In 2004, Colson set out to equip Christians to do just that when he and his BreakPoint team established the Centurions Program. This intense distance-learning venture prepares Christians to live out their faith authentically and powerfully in the world. It unites them in a continuing network as agents of change from the inside out. That is, as believers apply biblical truth to every aspect of their lives—becoming more like Christ in how they think and act—they will in turn shine the light of biblical truth into the community and culture around them; no longer conforming to the world, but transforming it.

To date, more than 400 men and women have completed their first year of Centurions training. They have been commissioned to carry on the teaching and application of biblical worldview. They are particularly challenged to engage others within their existing spheres of influence and branch out from there.

In this and next month’s issues of BreakPoint WorldView, we will tell the stories of four Centurions. In their time after receiving Centurions certification, they have walked into the unknown and made an impact on their communities. And they have taken their learning and transformed it into practical application to renew the world around them.

First, we will introduce you to Robert Mayes and Bill Peel.

LEAVING THE COMFORT ZONE
That sense of mission, to transform the culture, now drives Robert Mayes, 50, who went through the Centurions training in 2006. The CEO of a money management company in Huntsville, Alabama, Mayes says that the program propelled him out of his comfort zone to live a life of vulnerable dependence on God.

Mayes notes the line in the Lord’s prayer about asking God to give us our daily bread. “I spent the majority of my years building a structure of financial protection around my firm and my family—making sure there was plenty of bread in the pantry,” he says. “So when I prayed that part of the prayer, it didn’t have that much intensity to it. ‘If you miss me, God, I’m covered.’ But when I personally stepped out of my comfort zone, outside the areas I knew I couldn’t control, that’s when I began to experience what it means to live a life of obedience and total dependence on God.”

For many Christians, the thought of actively engaging America’s “marketplace of ideas” catapults them into a discomfort zone. So the Centurions Program focuses not only on how to think and live from a biblical perspective, but also on how to talk about it among those outside the Christian community—with clarity and winsomeness, in the context of caring relationships.

Winsomeness is a key concept in the Centurions Program, for as the book unChristian documents, many nonbelievers consider Christians judgmental, or as one critic stated, “more concerned with being right than righteous.”

On the other hand, says T. M. Moore, Dean of the Centurions Program, “winsomeness conjures up a raft of adjectives in my mind: approachable, affable, interested, open and not defensive, good-humored, relational, caring. Ask yourself: What kind of person does it take to ‘win some’ folks as friends and conversational companions?”

Every month, Mayes gathers with a group of friends and conversational companions when he helps lead a “Pigfest” (a name linking indulgence in good food with indulgence in animated conversation). About 15 to 20 people gather for dinner and discussion of their worldviews on various topics.

“By design,” Mayes says, only about a third of the participants are Christians. The debate is structured: A participant’s “ticket for admission,” he explains, is bringing a “truth statement” in one of six categories: philosophy, theology, politics, economics, culture, and history. Mayes collects them all and chooses five statements that will then be read and discussed by the whole group. Each topic is given 15 minutes. “Bantering is okay, but never any personal attacks.”

At the conclusion, Mayes summarizes the conversation—which includes both biblical and nonbiblical perspectives—and seeks to “drop one little pebble of truth in their shoe that they will have to walk on for the next month,” he says.

Sometimes that pebble can be life-changing. Mayes received an e-mail from one participant after a discussion on the different implications of a world steeped in randomness or in design. The man revealed that he and his wife had just found out that their son had a serious illness. The man also told of his neighbor, who had demonstrated a profound faith in God as he and his family faced the impending death of their daughter from an inoperable tumor. “It’s hard for me to believe it’s just by chance,” he wrote, that his neighbor’s example and the timing of the Pigfest discussion had combined to give him hope in a time of trial.

LEADERS WITH REAL INFLUENCE
Bill Peel, 58, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, was already a consultant for the Christian Medical and Dental Associations—a national network of 15,000 healthcare professionals—when he participated in the first Centurions class in 2004. As a direct result of his worldview training, he initiated and helped develop an advanced course for CMDA called Completing Your Call.

“Based on the Centurions Program,” says Peel, the 18-month course is aimed at equipping medical professionals “to use their exceptional place of influence to shape the world for God’s kingdom.” A chief goal of the course is to equip the participants to articulate and defend Christian worldview and “to think through worldview issues for personal application, particularly as these issues impact healthcare.”

The course also includes leadership development and helps participants define their God-given gifts and assess how God is leading them to invest their time, talents, and resources.

Peel has transported much of the Centurions Program curricula and structure into Completing Your Call. Both include intense independent study (using many of the same books), occasional seminars, teleconferences, and an online forum that offers an avenue for lively discussion of what they are learning and how they are applying it.

“We don’t have a particular agenda for what they will do with this,” says Peel. “Some will want to focus on mentoring medical students, doing missions projects, getting involved in public policy issues. What we’re trying to do is help them discover how God wants them to address worldview issues, and we’ve developed some good tools for them.”

Peel has also focused his attention to the business community, “because in America, the workplace dominates the values of America,” he emphasizes. “And until the workplace changes, there will be no significant revival in America.”

This spring Tyndale published Peel’s new book, What God Does When Men Lead, written “to help men have a biblical worldview of what manhood is,” Peel describes. “Work is a part of that.”

It is an extremely significant part, according to Peel, since God established in the Garden of Eden that He had created men to work. “It’s also where the curse fell on the man in particular,” he says, referring to Genesis 3:1-19. “This is where we try to find our significance, so it’s not unexpected for work to dominate our lives. Work is holy, and we should do it excellently as unto the Lord. But when people take God out of the workplace, you unleash a monster, because it’s a relentless taskmaster.”

The dominance of the workplace, both as an investment of our time and as a cultural influence, also makes it an opportune area of service to God. Unfortunately, as Peel points out, many Christians create a false dichotomy between “sacred” and “secular” work—the former presumably having eternal value, the latter having only temporal, and therefore inferior, value. “The fact is that God’s work includes a whole variety of activities—spiritual, physical, and emotional,” he says. And God wants us to “meet legitimate needs in all of those areas. Whether we are building bridges or building people, God wants us to do all things for His glory.”

Christians have some of their best and most natural opportunities to effect change through their workplace, Peel continues—through the excellence of their work, the demonstration of godly character, and the relationships they forge there.

Peel encourages Christians to be wise in speaking about their Christianity, raising “faith flags” in the natural course of conversation. For example, when someone shares a problem, “you can say, ‘I don’t know if this is important to you, but could I pray for you?’ You raise the flag and sometimes people respond. And that can tell you something about what God is doing in their lives.”

FROM IDEAS TO ACTION
The work Centurions are doing involves more than talking about their faith and worldview and how they affect our lives—but also plays out in practical ways, meeting real needs of the people with which they come in contact. Next month, read about two Centurions who have connected ideas to action in their circle of influence, and have gone on to renew and transform the cities in which they live.

The Centurions Program will begin accepting applications in September for its 2009 class, which begins in January. Applications must be received by November 30, 2008. For more information, visit www.breakpoint.org/centurions. 

Becky Beane is the senior editor of PFM’s Ministry Communications Department. She has served with PFM more than 18 years.