engaging the world

Following are some excellent excerts from the linked article.

The mission of the church is paramount, and what propels the mission forward is an awakened mind; a mind ablaze with God and the things of God. This is the heart of the cultural commission within the Great Commission. The Great Commission calls us to reach out to every person with the gospel of Jesus Christ; the cultural commission calls us to lay hold of every nook and cranny of our world for the kingdom of God. They are not separate endeavors-they are the two edges of the single sword we are called to wield. Though frighteningly few Christians embrace the true dynamic and practice of the Great Commission, even fewer take hold of the cultural commission. Too often we retreat into our Christian sub-culture, with its books and magazines, radio stations and bumper stickers.

This brings us to the heart of the mind applied. It is not simply thinking Christianly, for to know is to do. Our goal is to think in such a way as to know how to live. So what does it mean for Christ to lay claim to medicine? To law? To politics? To the economy? To a child in the womb? To sexuality? Consider the words of the prophet Micah: "And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." It is not enough to simply understand the nature of justice and love from within a Christian perspective. Then "we must go on," writes Dennis Hollinger, "to think about the strategies of justice and love in issues like poverty, race relations, abortion and political life."
This is the vanguard of Christian thinking-knowing how to live, and then working to make the kingdom of God a reality for others to be able to live as well.