Seven Mountains

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Recently, author and speaker Lance Wallnau said something that really challenged me. I quote, “Wall Street does not control the US economy. Small business controls the economy. There are thirty million small businesses in America employing one hundred and fifty million people.”  That is more than half of the adult population in our country.

He continued, “One third of these businesses are owned by Christians with an average of five employees each. That means that fifty million people work under the influence of Christians.” Not sure where Lance gets his stats, but let’s assume that he is close to being right. Or, just cut the number in half. That means that 10% – 20% of the adults in our country work for Christian-owned small businesses. This might be one of the most powerful, yet possibly, one of the most ineffective forces in our country. Why ineffective? I think it has to do with dualism…the way we separate the sacred from the secular. But if we look at our work and business as a calling that is just as important as any other calling from God, what could happen in His kingdom.

Here is something that Jesus said, “ Go and make disciples of all the nations…” Notice that He did not say, “Go and make disciples of all the people.”  His plan is much bigger, but we have reduced it to the church reaching souls. I believe the mandate is bigger than that.

In 1975, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade, and Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), developed a strategy to change a nation by reaching its seven mountains of societal influence. The seven mountains are religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment, and business.

Business is listed as the last mountain, but honestly, nothing happens without business! When you see what needs to be done to change a nation, you quickly realize that it takes money…lots of money!

Here is an example of what happens when we live by the theory of dualism…when we separate the church from the mountain range. Let’s take the LGBTQ movement. How did 3% of our population create a movement that has overtaken our nation? Here is how it worked…

  • Education wrote a white paper on the subject, funded by…
  • Business. Then the white paper went to the…
  • Media. The media got the educators to comment on the subject. Then people in the…
  • Arts and Entertainment mountain began to sing about it. Playwrights were engaged. Then…
  • Government (politicians) thought there was enough groundswell to make it a voting initiative based on consensus and popularity – since everyone was singing and writing and talking about it on TV. At that point, activists were showing up at protests, and the rest is history.

Notice that the two missing mountains, the two most important mountains, religion and family were absent from the list. Where were we? Three percent of our population just dictated culture to the thirty percent of nominal Christians in our country.

It’s time we showed up. It’s time the Christian business community sees itself as a mountain climber, not simply a witness in the marketplace.

Thoughts?