How to Change the World: Start With Your Family
When I was young, I thought I knew how to change the world. You went where the important decisions were being made. You went to Washington.
I had been interested in politics from a surprisingly young age. I turned 16 in 1977, during the Jimmy Carter administration. By then, I had already spent the previous summer working and saved enough money to buy my first car. I got my driver’s license the day I turned 16, and just a few hours later, I got my first job.
Politics was something I followed, but before long, decisions made hundreds of miles away started affecting my everyday life.
In 1979, the Iranian Revolution disrupted oil production and contributed to another major energy crisis in the United States. Suddenly, I was getting up early and waiting in long lines to put gasoline in the car I had worked so hard to buy. Depending on where you lived, rules sometimes determined when you could buy gas based on your license plate.
Gasoline that had seemed relatively cheap only a few years earlier became considerably more expensive. And my memory apparently gave teenage me a raise over the years. The federal minimum wage wasn’t $3.25 an hour when I was 16. It was just $2.30.
When you’re making that kind of money, filling up your car gets your attention.
A few years later, politics became even more personal. In 1980, President Carter reinstated registration with the Selective Service System. The military draft itself was not reinstated, but young men once again had to register in case a draft became necessary. I registered, as required, while some of my friends talked seriously about going to Canada if the draft ever returned.
Washington wasn’t just something I watched on the evening news anymore. Decisions being made there could affect my paycheck, my freedom, and potentially my future.
I Wanted to Go to Washington
Strangely enough, those experiences didn’t make me less interested in politics. They made me want to get involved.
Even then, I was looking for ways to make a difference. I saw problems in the country and wanted to help solve them. At the time, my thinking seemed perfectly logical: big problems required big solutions, big solutions required government, and government meant Washington.
So I planned to go to college, major in political science, and eventually make my way to Washington. I wanted to be involved in creating solutions to some of the nation’s biggest challenges.
God had a different plan.
I didn’t receive the scholarship money I needed, and there wasn’t money waiting at home to send me to college. Meanwhile, I had taken an elective in high school called Computer Math and caught what we used to call the “computer bug.” One of my teachers told me about an entry-level computer operator position and encouraged me to apply.
I interviewed and got the job.
On Friday night, I graduated from high school. Monday was Memorial Day. On Tuesday morning, instead of heading toward a political science degree and eventually Washington, I walked into my first job in information technology.
That Tuesday began a 43-year career I never could have planned for myself.
I Was Looking for Change in the Wrong Place
My career changed, but my interest in politics didn’t. I have followed politics throughout my adult life, and I still pay close attention to what our government is doing.
What changed was my understanding of what government can actually accomplish.
As I grew older—and more importantly, as I grew in my relationship with Christ—I began to understand something I couldn’t see as a teenager. Many of the problems we expect Washington to solve cannot ultimately be solved by government because their roots aren’t political.
They’re spiritual.
Government can pass a law, but it cannot change a heart. Congress can create a program, but it cannot create a godly father. A president can sign an executive order, but he cannot make someone love his neighbor, remain faithful to his spouse, raise his children to know God, or surrender his life to Jesus Christ.
That doesn’t mean government doesn’t matter. Throughout this series, we’ve seen that government is one of the institutions God established and that it has legitimate responsibilities. Christians should be informed citizens. We should vote, participate in our communities, advocate for biblical principles, and serve in public office when God calls us to do so.
But we shouldn’t ask government to do something God never designed it to do.
I spent years thinking that if I really wanted to make a difference, I needed to somehow influence what happened at the top. Over time, God changed my thinking.
Real change starts much closer to home.
How to Change the World Starts at Home
Near the end of his life, Joshua gathered the people of Israel and challenged them to decide whom they would serve. His declaration is one of the most familiar statements in Scripture:
“But as for me and my family, we will worship the LORD.” — Joshua 24:15 (CSB)
Notice where Joshua begins.
He doesn’t say, “I’m going to fix everybody else’s family.” He doesn’t announce a government program that will force Israel to follow God. Joshua draws a line around the people for whom he bears responsibility.
As for me and my family.
There is something enormously freeing about that.
We can spend our lives frustrated because we cannot control Washington, Harrisburg, our county government, our schools, our culture, or even our church. Social media makes it even easier to spend hours arguing about what everybody else should be doing.
Meanwhile, God has placed people directly in front of us.
For me, understanding how to change the world eventually meant understanding that I needed to start with the people God had actually given me an opportunity to influence. It meant recognizing that lasting change happens when individual lives are changed by Jesus Christ, those individuals influence their families, healthy families strengthen churches, and healthy churches influence communities.
That’s very different from waiting for the right person to win the next election.
Start With What God Put in Front of You
Paul described his own ministry using a simple picture:
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6–7 (CSB)
That’s our job.
We plant. We water. God gives the growth.
Maybe changing the world doesn’t mean you will influence millions of people. Perhaps you will never write a bestselling book, hold public office, build a huge ministry, or have thousands of people know your name.
You don’t have to.
- You can teach your children or grandchildren what it means to follow Christ
- You can open the Bible around your kitchen table.
- You can pray with your spouse and you can disciple one younger believer.
- You can help a neighbor.
- You can serve faithfully in your local church.
Most importantly, you can live in such a way that the people closest to you can see what following Jesus actually looks like.
Those things may seem small compared with changing a nation, but Scripture repeatedly reminds us not to despise small beginnings. God’s kingdom has always advanced through ordinary people faithfully doing what God placed in front of them.
The First Person Who Needs to Change
At 18, I thought changing the world meant somehow getting to Washington.
More than four decades later, I see it differently.
If I want my country to change, communities have to change. If communities are going to change, churches and families have to change. And if our churches and families are going to change, individual people must first be transformed by Jesus Christ.
That means the first person I need to worry about isn’t sitting in the White House.
He’s sitting in my chair.
The prescription for a broken society doesn’t begin with figuring out how to fix everybody else. It begins by asking what God wants to change in me.
So before we talk about changing our families, strengthening our churches, or restoring our communities, that’s where we’re going next.
Is God simply one important part of your life?
Or is He actually at the center of it?
Keep Going: Start at Home
Changing our culture can feel overwhelming, but you don’t have to change everything at once. Start with what God has placed in front of you—and keep taking the next faithful step.
Continue the Start at Home series. This post is part of Start at Home: Why Your Kitchen Table Matters More Than Washington Ever Will. If you’re joining us in the middle, you can start at the beginning and read the entire series.
Listen to the Disciple Blueprint Podcast. We dig deeper into the biblical principles behind the Start at Home series and talk about how they apply to everyday Christian life. Look for the Disciple Blueprint Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or listen at https://www.discipleblueprint.com/podcast
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The world doesn’t change all at once. It changes one life, one family, and one home at a time.
Start at home.
