Over the centuries, God has brought mankind to crucibles in time, a time of great testing to see which way a people would choose to go.  The choice they made for themselves during these crucibles in time would determine their future for years to come.  The Bible calls these moments by the Greek word kairos which means a time when a specific opportunity is available that is not usually available.  Certainly Israel faced such a crucible in time when they cried out “Away with this Man, and release to us Barabbas” (Luke 23:18 NKJV).  Again, such a time was upon them when they stood at the threshold of the Promised Land but chose to listen to the voice of fear instead of the voice of faith (Numbers 13, 14).  In both cases, their choice cost them, as well as the generations that followed them, their blessing, their destiny, and their very lives.  It would be wonderful, when these times come upon man, if someone were standing at the crossroads and would cry out, “Stop!  Do not make that choice.  Do not go down that path!”  Quite often, it is the little choices in life, those that at the time do not seem all that important, that can hold such a profound impact upon our future.

America came to such a crucible in time 40 years ago.  It was the summer of 1967.  Israel had just taken Jerusalem on June 6, 1967 in what history would later call The Six Day War.  Ten days later on Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco, many of America’s young people came together for an event called “The Summer of Love.”  Originally scheduled as a three day event for June 16th - 18th, The Summer of Love lasted into the fall of 1967.  This event, hallmarked by drug experimentation and illicit sexual perversions, set America on a course that would alter the future of the entire nation.  John Phillips, lead singer of the hippie folk rock group The Mamas & The Papas, penned the words to the song San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) in twenty minutes.  This song, recorded by Scott McKenzie, rapidly became the anthem of the hippie Counterculture Revolution.  Little did they know that they were birthing a spirit of rebellion into the soul of a nation – a spirit that would sow seeds of destruction so great that 40 years later every single American would have been touched in some way by what they started.

It is interesting that they called themselves The Mamas & The Papas.  They came up with the group’s name while watching a daytime TV interview of a member of Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang.  The Hell’s Angels member said that in the gang they called their women members “Mamas.”  Cass Elliot, one of the female singers, stood up and proclaimed, “I want to be a Mama!”  John Phillips looked over at Denny Doherty, the other male member of the four person singing group and said, “Papas?”  So the group got their name and truly they would be some of the parents responsible for birthing so much tragedy that would inevitably follow.

The Mamas & The Papas, along with many other rock groups like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, assembled together during the summer of 1967.  Young people from all across the nation came to partake of what was being poured out during this time in San Francisco.  It was not the music as much as it was the message it preached that penetrated the hearts and souls of America’s youth.  Once The Summer of Love was finally over, an untold number of young people went home carrying this spirit of rebellion in their hearts and an addiction to the newest drugs on the street in their flesh.  Plus, a large number of young American women went home carrying an unborn child in their womb, many of which would grow up never knowing their fathers.   Thus a fatherless generation began.

Just a few months prior, in February 1967 during a retreat held by students and faculty from Duquesne (Doo’ kain) University near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, the Holy Spirit had begun to be poured out touching the lives of many Christians in a move of God that later came to be known as the Charismatic Renewal.  From this outpouring of God’s Spirit that began in 1967, a new evangelistic fire began to spread across America and would eventually spread throughout much of the world.  The stage now was set for America to make her choice – a choice quite similar to the one spoken of in Ezekiel 21:18-23 – a choice to move with God into new spiritual territory or to go down the devil’s path of self-centeredness.  America was in a crucible in time – a fork in the road and had to choose a path that would determine her future for years to come!  Unfortunately, few Americans understood that an entire generation of Americans was at stake.  Only a small handful of individual ministers would herald a cry for societal change.  Although many mocked the Counterculture Revolution and its long-haired “hippie” members, most Christians thought it would go away if they simply ignored its presence.  They were wrong!  Evil never goes away by ignoring it!

One of the greatest voices that the Lord had raised up during this crucible in time was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Dr. King promoted an idea that the church should move beyond the steeple and walls to affect non-violent change in society as a whole.  Dr. King believed that the church was God’s instrument of change for society as well as individuals.  However, Dr. King was murdered on April 4, 1968 by hatred and stubbornness towards change.  Following King’s death, God’s people, and the revival they led, turned inward and stayed, for the most part, within the church leaving society to its own delusions.  Furthermore, as the years of revival progressed onward, Christian America ignorantly began resisting God’s Spirit.  The church resisted in many ways: by holding onto religious dogmas and tradition; through pastors fearful of the unknown and unwilling to allow their congregations to experience what God was currently doing because it did not line-up with their present doctrine; and just a general sense of apathy within the church itself.  Because of this, the Charismatic Renewal, although touching many individual lives, failed to bring about any significant change in American culture or society as a whole.

By 1969, America saw the release of the movie Easy Rider starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.  This movie justified the Counterculture Revolution by depicting the ideology of the hippie lifestyle to be one that should be sought after at any cost, even in the face of persecution from the “establishment” and that this lifestyle was the “true” path of freedom.  It embraced the growing idea that society should discover this new “freedom” for itself by casting off the old God-centered mindsets held by the former generation.  Another significant event that further helped set America’s moral and cultural slide into darkness occurred on August 15 – 18, 1969 on Max Yasgur’s 600 acre dairy farm just outside Bethel, New York.  Again, the Counterculture leaders assembled along with young people from across America in an event called Woodstock.  Woodstock, like The Summer of Love event two years earlier, was a rock music event marked by drugs and sexual perversion.  Spiritually, Woodstock was a declaration from our nation that “We will not turn around or change our ways!”  It is interesting that this event occurred at “Bethel”, a Hebrew name that literally means “House of God.”  It was as if the nation itself were shouting out, “Leave us alone, God.  We want to live our lives without You!”

With the Vietnam War still raging, many Americans were tired of the turmoil and death that war always brings to any society.  But, this war was different from the Korean War and WWII.  The Vietnam War, in the minds of many Americans, lacked a clear and present danger.  Vietnam was not attacking us or seeking to destroy our national sovereignty.  The reason for our involvement in this war had failed to be clearly defined by our national leaders.  With only a continual reference to fighting off the spread of global communism as its basis, the Vietnam War further broadened America’s discouragement in and lack of trust towards governmental authority.  This distrust broadened beyond just the hippie movement as many people in many levels of society began to ask themselves what we were about as a nation.  Our national sense of purpose was being lost and when a nation loses sight of why it was originally established, its people are then open for deceptive alternatives to take its place.  When any society is robbed of the values and virtues that it was originally founded upon, that society is open to the whims of whoever is willing to set a new direction for that society!  In a period of just two years, America’s national course was re-directed onto a path away from God and into a miry pit that would cause unimaginable death and destruction for its citizens. 

From the Greek and the Roman empires before us, we should have learned from them a most serious lesson.  Any society, regardless of how great, how wealthy, how productive, or how intelligent it might become, can fall in a very short period of time if it loses it national purpose and national focus on value and virtue.  Forty years ago, the things that used to embarrass us now entertain us.  Forty years ago we watched The Andy Griffith Show, today we watch The Osbournes.  Forty years ago, we cringed when Clark Gable said, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”  Today we are not moved by Hollywood’s continuous bombardment of vulgar language accepting it as the norm.  Forty years ago, sexual purity was a most desirable virtue, but today being sexually experienced through numerous love affairs is the standard.  Words and remarks that would not have been tolerated forty years ago today constitute everyday language.

What has happened?  Some people will tell you that our society has grown up, that we have matured by overcoming our own inhibitions and out-dated sense of morality and decency.  This way of thinking comes directly from The Counter-Culture Revolution and it is wrong.  This mindset was a thief that stole the virtue and values of our nation replacing them with a “Whatever Feels Good” self-centered way of thinking.  And the really scary thing about all of this is we lost it all in one 40 year generation!

I remember my father telling me of times back in the 1940’s that he would ride the school bus to school during hunting season and carry his rifle with him on the school bus.  It was no problem for our society then because people were taught to be responsible and placed value on themselves and on others.  We were taught that we were created in the image of God, a higher Life-form; and therefore, we carried within ourselves a strong motivation to live up to our Creator’s standards.  But in the last forty years, we have been taught that we come from lower life-forms; and therefore, we live down to the image of animals.  So today we have metal detectors in our schools in a failing attempt to keep guns out of schools.  The problem is not guns.  The problem we face will still exist if there had never been any guns.  We are experiencing the value-void of a fatherless generation, a generation that has lost its sense of purpose, its connections to its original values and virtues that made us who we are as a nation.

From The Counter-Culture Revolution, today we have Roe vs. Wade through which 45 million unborn Americans were destroyed at the altar of self-centeredness.  Today we face issues like euthanasia that present to some a moral dilemma that they are not equipped to answer.  From The Counter-Culture Revolution and its free love message, today we have a generation confused about God's purpose for human sexuality.  Some preach an absurd message that God or “natural processes” created them as homosexuals and lesbians – that they were “born that way.”  The homosexual agenda is a growing political force and our national leaders seem to come up with all the wrong answers to this assault on family life.

But America’s problem is even deeper and more desperate than this.  Not only did the nation move away from God’s word as the final authority over American life, but the church moved out of its place of authority in establishing what was considered proper within our society.  In my father’s day, every American understood and respected the fact that the pulpit directed moral standards for America.  Today, what is deemed moral and acceptable for our culture is established by Hollywood instead of the home or the church.  Our children learn their values through violent video games, sexually saturated TV, and movies with perverted plots.  The Barna Group, a Christian research and static organization, tells us that today in the USA only 6% of children ages 4-16 attend church regularly.  Their research also shows that only one in eight Americans receive Christ as Savior after the age of 20 years old.  America is raising a generation, the grand-children of the Woodstock generation, that has no appreciation of God and Christian values.  This generation will be our nation’s leaders in less than twenty years from right now! 

While America was going through this cultural upheaval, the American church was also going through some dramatic changes itself.  After the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968, it seemed as though the church withdrew from its aggressive stand to be an instrument of change for the nation.  Although a major move of God’s Spirit was occurring simultaneously with The Counter-Culture Revolution, the Charismatic Renewal, as it was called, turned its attention towards building people and building churches.  This seemed most noble and sensible at the time, but its results were devastating.  While the American church built some of the biggest church buildings in human history, the society around the church rallied to The Counter-Culture movement which was still alive and strong.  The church focused upon its own growth while Satan focused upon the nation!  As a result, the church changed some people and built some churches, but those people and those churches had to live in a nation that was daily becoming more and more hostile to them and the cause of the Kingdom of God.  Jesus did not tell us to go and make disciples of people.  Notice the words of Jesus in the Great Commission speak about nations not just individual people.

Matthew 28:19
19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

God loves nations.  He sees people according to nations and respects their collective national history (Acts 17:26-27).  This is not to say that all cultures honor God.  Certainly that is not true.  But as Americans and as a nation, we are more than just our culture.  As a nation, we are defined not only by our culture, but also by our government and education, our societal order, our business and industry, and the values we collectively uphold as a people.  So in the past forty years, The Charismatic Renewal changed some people and some churches, but The Counter-Culture Revolution changed the nation.  Only people and churches were changed by the Renewal because that was what the leaders of the Renewal were focused on changing.  They were successful in the sense that they achieved their goal.  But they failed in the sense that their goal was too small.  For us today, this is really good news.  This means that if we make changing the nation itself as our goal then we can accomplish it together!  If Americans working with the wrong spirits caused the problem, then Christians working with the Holy Spirit can certainly correct the problem!

But for this to occur, it is not enough to simply make “Let’s Change Our Nation” our goal.  Quite honestly, many Christian leaders have made it their goal in different movements that have come and gone over the past forty years.  They have all failed.  The reason they failed had nothing to do with a failure in basic Christian principles like prayer or evangelism.  The reason they failed was because they were still using a “Church-centered” mindset model to work from instead of the “Kingdom-centered” mindset model that Jesus used.  Jesus preached the Kingdom of God.  He did not preach the church of God.  The Kingdom and the church are NOT synonymous terms.  The Kingdom is in us, but the church is around us (Luke 17:21).  Yet, if we will only examine so much of our ministry efforts today, it would appear that we believe the church and the Kingdom of God to be synonymous terms. 

Church has always been a precious part of my life.  God does not want to destroy the great foundations that the church, over the years, has already laid; but, He wants to add a deeper spiritual dimension to those foundations than we have walked in before this point in time.  When Christians focus upon church, they work to build the church and bring other people into their constructed world.  Certainly their constructed world puts forth Jesus for all that enter to see.  But it is still their construct.  Jesus built and established the Kingdom.  He preached the Kingdom.  He instructed us to seek after the Kingdom and its righteousness.  When the Kingdom is the focus of God’s people and not just the local church, we begin to see that the Kingdom is God’s alternative to the world around us. 

While traveling through Port-Au-Prince Haiti with some pastors, we passed by the US Embassy.  It was surrounded by a large wall and iron fence.  While the surrounding area was harsh and dirty like Haiti, inside that fence the grounds were lush, green, and beautiful.  The buildings were clean and the grounds were orderly.  The moment one steps through that fence, they step out of Haiti and into the USA with all of its benefits, culture and privileges.  I pointed this out and told those pastors that was how the Kingdom of God is to this world.  The world is a dirty place, but inside the Kingdom things are lush, green, and beautiful.  And Hallelujah, the Kingdom of God is at hand, right now, for all to step into!  

Therefore, a shift in how we do church must take place and it must happen quickly.  Remember that statistics show us we only have a matter of 4 to 6 years to make a difference for this present generation and only a few more years to work with them before they become the national leaders of business, government, education, and the church.  This shift must involve several areas of effective change within the mindset of every believer.  These areas of change are:

This principle maximizes the church’s potential by activating every willing believer into his or her ministry function.  The Lord showed me a picture of this change through another pastor as we spoke together.  I saw a surgeon and his surgery team performing great heart operations.  But when they had finished, I saw a janitor come in and clean up afterwards.  But when asked what he was about, this janitor responded that he was a significant part of a heart surgery team.  His job was to sterilize the operating environment to prevent the patient from dying.  What if each member of your church had this concept about his or her part in promoting the Kingdom of God through everything done in church?  There would suddenly be no more struggling to get people into child care or nursery functions.

This principle develops believers to receive Generational Anointings.  Every believer is anointed for some purpose, but only sons can carry Generational Anointings.  Many people with generational curses are still bound because God needs a minister with a Generational Anointing to break a generational curse.  More than anything else, the apostolic principle can be seen in a person’s life by whether they have reproduced themselves through spiritual sons.  The spiritual father’s ceiling now becomes the spiritual son’s floor.  Through this principle, God reproduces and multiplies His power to do more through ministries than previously possible through individual believers.

This principle focuses upon changing Christian thinking from being Church-centered into being Kingdom-minded.  Christians must take dominion again in the seven major arenas of life: business/economic, government/political, education, arts/entertainment, media, sports, and of course spiritual/social.  After Dr. King’s death, the church let go of six of these arenas and just focused on the spiritual/social arenas of life.  By doing this, the Kingdom of God lost ground and we lost our nation.  The church must reemerge from our buildings and began to infiltrate society again at every level.  The lost are not coming to our churches so we must take Jesus to them in a way that they can see the goodness of God and the advantages of Christianity.

America can be changed!  Let us break free of the prison of the pews and take the Gospel into our nation’s heartland again.  It’s not too late for America if we all join together in prayer and in making this CHURCHSHIFT.  If you are a pastor, please pray about joining with the growing number of men and women of God in the CHURCHSHIFT movement.  Also, please pray about inviting Bishop Jack Mott to your church for a speaking engagement.  He is available for a single service or for a TURNING FATHERS’ HEARTS conference.

The TURNING FATHERS’ HEARTS conference will challenge and inspire your congregation to live with a deeper sense of God’s purpose and to become spiritual fathers to this fatherless generation.  Built upon Malachi 4:5-6 and Psalms 27:10, Bishop Mott will lay a firm Biblical foundation for: