This post is from my keynote address at the Wilberforce Weekend hosted by The Chuck Colson Center in Washington DC on April 26. My actual remarks may have differed slightly from this transcript. You can read Part 1 of the talk here.

PART TWO: FROM EXILE TO INCARNATION

So what is the solution? If the Exile model, derived from Jeremiah 29:7, is a sub-Christian model of cultural engagement, what is the alternative? Just as the church shifted from the Exodus to the Exile model 40 years ago, I believe we need to shift again. But this time we need more than a new strategy. We need new eyes to see the world in a fundamentally different way. If we don't then our efforts to manifest the kingdom will remain flawed because we will still be driven by fear and control–by a vision of the world as an unsafe and dangerous place. But to see the world differently, to see with new eyes, requires a supernatural encounter with the grace of God.

In 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. was a young Baptist minister in Montgomery, ...