I like what Colson says. His message carries the announcement that he has developed a new website to help develop Christian worldview thinking -- ColsonCenter.org
Read the whole article [my emphases]:
What is the vision of the Church? That was the sermon topic one Sunday a dozen years ago or so when I visited a friend’s church. But as I listened, I found my mind wandering. I had just signed a contract to write a book on Christian worldview, and I was experiencing writer’s remorse. Did this book really need to be written?
Suddenly the pastor’s words caught my attention. The mission of the Church, he said, is to prepare for Christ’s return in five ways: prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and evangelism. In that instant, all doubts about writing the book vanished. Of course, these five spiritual exercises are central to the Church’s life, but we can never overlook our responsibility to redeem all of culture as well. Though well-intentioned, the pastor’s words were a prescription for the continued marginalization of the Church.
Just like this pastor, many evangelicals define faith strictly in terms of personal salvation. Yet soul-winning is not an end in itself. We are not only saved from sin, we are also saved to something—to the task of cultivating God’s creation. Genesis teaches that on the first five days, God did the work of creating. But on the sixth day, He made human beings in His image to carry on His work—to develop the raw materials of the world He had created.
This is called the “cultural commission,” just as binding as the “Great Commission.” It means our faith is intended to encompass every part of life, every sphere of work, every aspect of the world.
In short, our faith must be a complete worldview, the basic set of beliefs that function as a set of glasses helping us to see all of reality through God’s eyes. If God is creator and sovereign over everything, as we confess He is, then everything finds its identity and meaning in relationship to Him—not only our spiritual life but also our work, politics, science, education, the arts, etc.
Developing a Christian worldview is not some ivory-tower exercise. It is crucial for every believer—affecting every choice we make. The doctrine of creation tells us that God made the world with a moral and physical order—that there are God-given norms for every aspect of creation.
This is why I’m so excited to announce that we have launched the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. This online Center is the culmination of years of work to help believers understand, articulate, and live out an authentically biblical worldview. I believe in this effort so deeply, that I will be devoting my remaining years of ministry to it.
When you visit ColsonCenter.org, you will be able to search for all kinds of articles, speeches, and videos by me and many of the leading Christian worldview thinkers today. We’ll also be providing online courses and opportunities to network with Christians who are passionate about renewing the Church and transforming the culture.
Visit us at ColsonCenter.org—and come back often.
If we don’t know the norms God as ordained for every area of life, then we will drift with the tide of this postmodern age, and, instead of transforming the culture, as we’re supposed to, we will transformed by it.
The mission of the Church is indeed prayer and evangelism, just as that pastor said that Sunday. But to be effective, we must also develop a comprehensive worldview. And that, too, is the urgent mission of the Church in a post-Christian world.
Update 9/9/09 - In his follow-up article, "Of Crime and Worldview," Colson justifies his concern for worldview emphasis and mentions two books that taught him that criminals lacked moral training. He writes:
[..] It was not until I read the landmark 1977 study called The Criminal Personality that I was able to begin to fully appreciate what was going on. The study’s authors, psychologist Stanton Samenow and psychiatrist Samuel Yochelson, rebutted the conventional wisdom that crime was caused by environment—things like poverty and racism.
It was caused, they wrote (and both writing as Jews), by individuals making wrong moral choices. So the solution to crime, they said, was “the conversion of the wrongdoer to a more responsible lifestyle.”
I later read another seminal work, "Crime and Human Nature," by Richard J. Herrnstein and James Q. Wilson, then at Harvard. They determined that crime is caused by the lack of moral training in the morally formative years.
It all came together for me suddenly: The surging moral relativism in our culture was eroding our value system. The family was breaking down. Sleazy television, movies, and music poisoned the minds of young people, dulling their consciences.
And the schools no longer taught right from wrong—only tolerance. Young people had no moral compass, and many of them followed their parents’ footsteps into prison. Samenow and Yochelson were right. Poverty and racism don’t lead people to prison, bad moral choices do.
I realized that if we were going to do anything about prisons bursting with ever-younger inmates, we would have to begin by changing the way people thought about life and moral values in the first place. We would have to help people begin to see the world through God’s eyes, to see Christian truth in all of life. . . .
Update 9/15/09 - Colson offers more information.