Impacting the Seven Spheres
Today, many Christian leaders believe in the concept of the seven “spheres”, “influences”, or “mountains” of society. In order to influence the entire society with the gospel, these seven spheres of society must be reached.
The first recorded reference originates with Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade & Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth with A Mission, in 1975. Both men were given a dream by God, containing the same message to be given to the other. At about that same time, Francis Schaeffer, a Christian theologian, was also given a similar message. That message was that if we are to impact any nation for Jesus Christ, then we would have to affect the seven spheres, or mountains of society. In essence, God was telling these three change agents where the battlefield was.
One of the key foundational principles to the establishment of the University of the Nations, YWAM’s training arm, is the discipling & equipping of the people of God to scale the seven mountains and influence the seven spheres. The seven spheres are:
- Family
- Religion / Church
- Education
- Government
- Media
- Celebration (Arts, Entertainment, and Sports)
- Economics (Business, Science, and Technology)
Personally, I am convicted that the family sphere is the foundation of all spheres. Let me explain.
Understanding the concept of the Love Plumb Line & Mankind’s Love Deficit
Sadly, on the day we were born into this world, we did not encounter God’s amazing, wonderful love, but instead we encountered the imperfect and conditional love of humanity. Imperfect human love or especially our parents’ emotional wounds, can leave very deep scars in our hearts, for their love is the first love we encountered at birth. This love shortfall or deficit is shown in the love plumb line diagram below. The love plumb line is a yardstick to show us how far we have fallen short of God’s love.
Rejection
Love deficit (gap)
Human love
God’s love
Our love deficit is shown as the gap between God’s love which we yearn for, and the human love we receive. This love deficit leads to rejection, its mirror image, which is shown as the gap between red and green lines. Rejection produces emotions such as pain, resentment, anger and bitterness. The greater our parents or guardians nurture us away from God’s divine love plumb line, the greater the deficit created in our soul. This in turn creates a greater rejection in our spirit which then breeds darkness in our soul. We can internalize or externalize the love deficit we suffered. Unresolved conflicts in the soul of a child will leave wounds in his inner child which perpetuate all the way to adulthood, locking the adult into immature patterns of behavior. Thus, many grow up physically into adulthood but not emotionally.
Internalizing the love deficit - we internalize the abandonment & rejection we feel. Such responses result in insecurity and negative emotions like implosive anger, self-hatred (rejecting oneself after being rejected by others which often leads to self-destructive behavior), eating disorder, mental disorder, depression, intellectual suicide (refusing to learn and grow) and eventually suicide. Love deficit is the cause of most neurotic and character disorder behavior.
Externalizing the love deficit – we turn our rejection into explosive anger (rage) which leads to social illnesses, rebellion against authority, sexual immorality (balancing the love debit through lust credit), addiction and compulsive behavior like drugs, alcoholism, materialism, etc.
To put it simply, a love deficit creates darkness in our soul and gives the enemy ground to come into our life.
A dysfunctional marriage breeds a dysfunctional family, and a dysfunctional family breeds a dysfunctional individual which ultimately breed a dysfunctional society. If we want to scale the seven mountains and to influence them positively for Christ, then we need to intentionally strengthen and bring healing to many broken marriages. If not, we will go round in circles battling the evil vicious cycle, yet like shadow boxing, never hitting the target.
The late Mother Theresa said it well, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family”.