Christ for Kentucky, Part 1: Our Name
The meaning behind the name "Christ for Kentucky".
"Heaven must be a Kentucky kind of place."
Legend says these were the words of explorer Daniel Boone when he laid eyes on Kentucky's indelible beauty. Makes for a great story, but unfortunately, it isn’t true.
The quote originates from an obscure 1928 revival sermon preached in Paint Lick, Kentucky. The country preacher, seeking to stir his congregation's longings for heaven, promised heaven would be like the Kentucky home they loved. There is a reason why the quote resonates with Kentuckians to this day. It evokes nostalgia for the state we cherish. But is our nostalgia embellished? Though we love to speak of our Commonwealth as heaven on earth, we must also face the countless ways it is not. Yes, Kentucky is beautiful, but Kentucky remains profoundly broken. Not irreparably, however. There is hope, and Christ for Kentucky exists to champion that hope.
Christ for Kentucky
Those three words convey much about our organization. Two are obvious: Christ, and Kentucky. We are a Christian ministry unapologetically focused on Kentucky. We will explore the significance of this localized emphasis in a subsequent blog post, but for now, the name of our ministry communicates our two great loves: Jesus Christ and the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
But it's that preposition in the middle that truly speaks to the heart of our ministry. Christ for Kentucky. That little word "for" says a lot about what we believe. Specifically, it speaks to the posture and promise of our organization.
Posture
Posture refers to the ethos of our ministry. Ethos is less about our beliefs and practices and more about the way in which we enact those beliefs and practices; less about the content of our religion and more about the "feel" of our religion. And I have often argued that American evangelicalism is suffering from an ethos crisis.
When we present Christ to the world around us, what is the posture of that witness? Is it that Christ is for Kentucky? My concern is that through an adversarial culture-war posture, we present a Christ who is against Kentucky. Perhaps through a posture of retreat into Christian subcultures, we present a Christ removed from Kentucky. Or through a posture of apathy, we often present a Christ indifferent to Kentucky. But only one posture is fitting the followers of a Savior given as God's gift to the world. We are a people who exist for the good of our neighbors, and Kentuckians are our neighbors. Therefore, in the very name of our organization, we are attempting to reclaim a Christlike posture toward the world around us—Christ for Kentucky.
But what exactly do we mean when we say Christ is for Kentucky? This leads to the promise of Christ. Christ for Kentucky is not just articulating a posture, it's holding forth a promise.
Promise
Implied in our name is the conviction that not only is Jesus Christ for Kentucky, He actually has something to offer Kentucky. Stated more forcefully, we believe Kentucky needs Jesus. Indeed, He is the answer to the ills of our state. How so?
First and foremost, we mean the salvation he offers to the citizens of Kentucky. We are not merely forming another generic philanthropy. We are unashamedly a gospel-centered, evangelistic ministry. Much of the content we produce and projects we lead will focus on reaching our rapidly changing culture full of skeptics, unchurched, de-churched, and those who have lost their faith or are going through a faith deconstruction. Simply put, we are not disregarding or even deemphasizing the greatest need Kentucky has for Jesus, which is the salvation of Jesus.
That said, when we say Kentucky needs Jesus Christ, we are not simply saying the salvation that Christ offers the citizens of Kentucky but also the redemption Christ promises to the state of Kentucky. This too is something I will flesh out in a forthcoming blog post because it is central to the mission of our organization, but Christ for Kentucky strongly rejects the truncated view of Christ's gospel as only evangelism without any social implications. The gospel is the good news of both individual and societal redemption, and when we emphasize the former at the exclusion of the latter (as evangelicals tend to do), we belittle the fullness of gospel promise.
Jesus taught his followers to pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." That is not an empty request. It has been prayed countless times, and it will be answered. When the fullness of Christ's promise finally comes to bear, our world will be as it is in heaven. Injustice will give way to justice; evil will give way to goodness; oppression will give way to freedom; shame will give way to glory; obscenity will give way to beauty; trauma will give way to healing; sin will give way to righteousness; indeed, every wrong will be right.
But we are not there yet. What is the Christian to do in the in-between? We are to labor with every breath the good Lord grants us to get our state closer to its destiny. When Jesus asked us to pray for His kingdom to come and will to be done, He did not intend us to be passive prayers. He commissions us to be active participants in the answer to our own prayers. Jesus is fixing the world, and he is fixing it through the lives of his followers.
Christ for Kentucky exists to offer local leadership in that redemption project. We do not have national ambitions and certainly not global ambitions. We are unashamedly focused on Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, in Kentucky as it is in heaven. But not with a Messianic complex of inflated expectations. We are simply focused on leaving Kentucky better than we found it. In our generation, in this small moment of a grand redemptive story, we seek to make Kentucky look a little more like its heavenly destiny.
Make no mistake, when the story of Christ's global redemption is complete, what that Paint Lick preacher once promised will come to pass. Heaven, indeed, will be a Kentucky kind of place. That's our prayer, and Lord hasten His answer. But while we wait, we work. That redemptive work is why Christ for Kentucky exists, and in the next blog post, I will explain the details of our work.
For Christ and Kentucky,
Robert
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