LINCOLN - Speaking at a leadership conference, Eastview Christian Church Senior Minister Mike Baker recounted two profound experiences - neither of which occurred at his church in Normal.

• He participated in a comedy event for charity at a bar. He's funny, but taverns are foreign places to conservative Eastview members and staff, by and large. He described it as a "spiritual experience" as he tried to shine in a secular hangout, praying beforehand not necessarily to be hilarious but to represent the faith well.

• He coaches youth football as a way to be involved in the community. He told an audience of some 600 people, at the church leadership conference at Lincoln Christian College and Seminary, that seven of the football parents have been baptized into the faith.

He noted that for Christian conservatives, there is a temptation to stay in the safe places, spiritually and socially - to separate from "the world," which in this context means a sinful, fallen planet.

The question becomes how to be "in the world," evangelizing and engaging nonbelievers where they stand, without being "of the world," or compromised by non-Christian elements of the culture.

Lincoln Christian College and Seminary is calling for church leaders to be engaged in the world while maintaining the Bible as Truth and Christianity as the route to which people attain entry to heaven.

It used its annual leadership conference, on Feb. 23, to formally start the Bible & Worldview Institute, which will bring conferences on "Christian worldview" to churches within a 300-mile radius.

The definition of Christian worldview, in short, is to have a permeating faith that doesn't get sidetracked after morning devotionals but has literacy of modern culture.

Which brings Baker to his bar story.

He used it as a modern-day parallel to the ministry of the Apostle Paul as Paul engaged Athenians (Acts Chapter 17 in the Bible). Paul used a local landmark in Athens, an altar devoted "to the unknown God," as an opener into teaching about the God and Christ he did know.

Quoting another preacher, Baker said Paul was a Christian who dared to go places where people sometimes rioted over his preaching, while today's Christians go to places where tea is served.

Then Baker posed these questions to the gathered church leaders in Lincoln:

"When was the last time you sat in a bar? I'm not talking about when you were visiting out of town and didn't want anyone to know. When was the last time you sat in a bar, talked to people there, had a conversation with a drunk man? When's the last time you had a cookout with your unbelieving neighbors? Invited them over for Fourth of July instead of your small group from church? When's the last time you went to a party? I'm talking about a real party, not some lame Christian party. I'm talking about a party.

"When's the last time you hung out with a street person? Have you ever talked to a prostitute? When was the last time you sat in a jail cell? When's the last time you went to a rock concert? When's the last time you watched something on MTV? When's the last time you asked teenagers for their opinion?"

Alongside cultural illiteracy, the conference and the Bible & Worldview Institute confronts what its organizers perceive as a chronic problem: The altering of the faith to fit the culture.

The comedian Stephen Colbert invented the word "truthiness" to describe accepting gut feelings as fact, and North Carolina mega-church leader James Emery White noted it is such a spot-on illumination that the Merriam-Webster dictionary named it the 2006 Word of the Year.

Applied to faith, truthiness becomes the feel-happy, just-be-nice Christianity that deviates from the Truth, contained in the Bible, he said.

This Post-Modern age sees a cultural shift into emphasis on spiritual matters, he said. The problem, White added, is that not only are competing faiths winning converts, but Christianity is deviating from its truth.

Rich Knopp teaches at LCCS and works on its Bible & Worldview Institute project.

"It's helping church people see the importance of culture and the relevance of culture to the faith," he said during an interlude at the conference. "It will help Christian people break out of their isolation."

The precepts of faith are unaltered.

Bob Kurka, another LCCS professor, gave the Lincoln conference one of several previews of Bible & Worldview Institute sessions that will be taken to churches.

In his talk, he warned of the influences of cultural phenomena: John Dominic Crossan, the writer and lecturer who discounts miracles in his studies of the Historical Jesus; the fictional work "The Da Vinci Code," which proposes that Jesus fathered a child through Mary Magdalene; and last year's "Lost Tomb of Jesus," a Discovery Channel program that presented an unearthed family burial site purported to be that of Jesus and his family.

Kurka put forward another invented word, one he attributed to writers from Dallas Theological Seminary, to describe a Post-Modern study of a Jesus without the attributes of Savior: "Jesus-anity."

Bringing true Christianity into culture involves intense development of the mind and study of the faith, said White. It was Jesus, he said, who added to ancient Scripture the command that God should be loved with all the believer's "mind."

He said the non-believer needs to sense something when encountering believers, as the Christ-follower's mind is "transformed" and "renewed," as the Apostle Paul wrote.

Said White: "Somehow, somewhere, some way, some time they (non-Christians) can at least smell something that is not of this world."

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A definition and a project

What it is

The Bible & Worldview Institute is a program ministry created by Lincoln Christian College and Seminary and another of the college's ministries, an 8-year-old youth-oriented program called WorldViewEyes. The Bible & Worldview Institute encourages evangelical Christians to be engaged in modern society without being swayed away from their faith and beliefs by society. The institute declares that someone who has a Christian worldview:

• "Loves God with heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). "

• "Has beliefs that are adequately informed by God's revelation (2 Timothy 3:16-17). "

• "Is not taken captive by deceptive philosophies (Colossians 2:8)."

• "Takes every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5)."

• "Applies the implications and the obligations of Christian thought to ALL of life. "

What it does

The Bible & Worldview Institute will bring scholars and teachers to churches within a 300-mile radius of Lincoln to present one-day seminars at local churches. Churches must be able to facilitate and market for a crowd of 150 or more participants. A church must do promotions, registration and other preparation and set the cost of attending. The college suggests a charge of $30 to $40 per person.

Web site

www.worldvieweyes.org/wv-institute-sessions.htm