In 1785 a twenty-six-year-old member of Parliament named William Wilberforce went through a deep conversion, and almost immediately concluded that he should leave politics. Serious Christians, he assumed, went into the ministry. He went to talk it over with John Newton, the former slave-ship captain turned pastor who had written “Amazing Grace.” Newton told him to stay where he was. God, Newton believed, could use him in Parliament.
Wilberforce stayed. Two years later he wrote in his diary, “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.” The first of those objects took twenty years. Parliament abolished the British slave trade in 1807, and in July 1833, three days before he died, Wilberforce learned that slavery itself would be abolished across the British Empire.
He almost left the arena he was built for, because he assumed God’s work happened somewhere else.
So the question is:
Where has God already had you serve, and which arena of the world is He drawing you into next?
Opening Prayer (Say this aloud!)
Father, the whole earth is Yours: the church and the marketplace, the classroom and the courtroom, the studio and the kitchen table. Show me where You’ve already had me serve, and what I learned there. Show me the arena You’re drawing my heart toward. Keep me from assuming Your work only happens in one building. In Jesus’ name, amen.
The ministries you’ve been drawn to, and the ones you’ve stayed with, are evidence of how God shaped your heart. They’re a record of your affinity in action, and they often show a trajectory you couldn’t see while you were in it.
Paul gives every believer the same basic assignment: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13). Serve one another is universal. Where and how you serve is where your affinity shows. The earliest church learned this in a crisis over food.
“Now in those days, when the disciples were growing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Greek-speaking Jews against the native Hebraic Jews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution (διακονίᾳ) of food. So the twelve called the whole group of the disciples together and said, ‘It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to wait on tables… But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.’”
Word Study
διακονία diakonia G1248
“distribution” · Acts 6:1
Range. Service or ministry of any kind: especially the service of those who carry out another’s commands, the practical care of the poor, and the office and work of ministry. It occurs thirty-four times in the New Testament.
The sense here. In Acts 6:1 it means the practical service of distributing food to widows; Thayer glosses it as “the supplying or distributing of charities.” Three verses later, in 6:4, the apostles use the same word for their own work: “the ministry of the word.” The verb in between, “to wait on tables” (6:2), comes from the same root.
Why it carries the argument. Luke uses one word for serving meals and for preaching Scripture. The apostles weren’t saying food distribution was beneath them. They were saying it was a different diakonia, and it needed different people. That’s the point of Step 9: the church doesn’t have first-class ministries and second-class ones. It has different kinds of service, and your history shows which kind your heart keeps choosing.
Source. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament; Strong’s Concordance via Bible Hub.
Illustration
One of the seven men chosen to handle the food distribution was named Philip (Acts 6:5). He started as a table-server. Two chapters later, when persecution scattered the church, “Philip went down to the main city of Samaria and began proclaiming the Christ to them” (Acts 8:5), and crowds listened. God sent him down a desert road to explain Isaiah to an Ethiopian official (Acts 8:26–38), and afterward he preached “to all the towns until he came to Caesarea” (Acts 8:40). Twenty years later, when Paul’s ship put in at Caesarea, Luke describes the house they stayed in: “the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven” (Acts 21:8).
Philip didn’t abandon his first assignment for a better one. He served where he was put, and his faithfulness there became a path. By the end of his story he had a title, evangelist, but Luke never lets us forget where he started: “one of the seven.” Your list of past ministries may show you the same kind of path.
Your list will probably hold two kinds of service, and it’s worth telling them apart. One woman in an actual group that worked through these steps put the difference precisely. She had served in children’s ministry at various times, she wrote, “based on need of the church,” and she had learned a great deal there about relating to kids and managing volunteers. Then: “My heart really is drawn to freedom and prayer ministries. I love to see people break free and realize their true identity.” Both kinds of service were faithful. Only the second was evidence of her affinity.
Sometimes the list corrects an assumption you’ve carried for years. A man in the same group wrote that when he was younger he thought he was called to be a pulpit minister. “But I discovered that the ministry I am called for isn’t behind the pulpit but rather the streets where I have spent the largest part of my life.”
A word of caution about what you’ll leave off your list. An earlier version of this material recommended omitting ministry experiences that were negative or emotionally draining, because “those are outside your purpose.” That’s worth refining. Sometimes a hard ministry was simply the wrong fit, and that’s useful to know. But sometimes it was the right ministry in a hard season, or a good ministry led badly. Session 5 made the case that a calling can exhaust you.
Pause & Reflect
Looking back over every place you’ve served, is there a thread? What kind of diakonia do you keep choosing?
Your arena may not be inside the church at all. Scripture treats faithful work in the wider world as service to God, and some of the most important Kingdom work in history was done by people who never held a church office.
When Judah was carried into exile in Babylon, the false prophets told the exiles to keep their bags packed. Jeremiah sent them a very different message from God:
“Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what they produce… Work to see that the city where I sent you as exiles enjoys peace and prosperity (שְׁלוֹם). Pray to the Lord for it. For as it prospers you will prosper.”
Word Study
שָׁלוֹם šālôm H7965
“peace and prosperity” · Jeremiah 29:7
Range. Completeness; soundness and safety; welfare, health and prosperity; peace and quiet. Brown-Driver-Briggs lists all four senses. It occurs more than two hundred times in the Hebrew Bible.
The sense here. The welfare of a whole city: its safety, its flourishing, its common good. The NET needs two English words, “peace and prosperity,” to carry it. The Hebrew of verse 7 uses šālôm three times: seek the city’s šālôm, for in its šālôm you will have šālôm.
Why it carries the argument. God didn’t tell the exiles to withdraw from Babylon, and He didn’t tell them to take it over. He told them to seek its šālôm: to work and pray for the flourishing of a pagan city from inside it. That’s the model for every believer whose arena is outside the church. Daniel lived it: he rose to “authority over the entire province of Babylon” (Daniel 2:48) without ever compromising his faith. Your work in business, education, government, medicine or the arts can be exactly this: seeking the šālôm of the place God has put you.
Source. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon; Strong’s Concordance via Bible Hub.
Paul says the same thing to slaves in Colossae, people with no say over where they worked: “Whatever you are doing, work at it with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not for people, because you know that you will receive your inheritance from the Lord as the reward. Serve the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23–24). If a slave’s work could be service to Christ, so can yours. And Jesus described every one of His followers, not only the ordained ones, as “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world,” placed so that people “can see your good deeds and give honor to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:13–16). Salt only works where it’s rubbed in. Light only works where it’s dark.
In the same group, some of the clearest answers to Step 9 came from people who counted work outside the church. One woman described fifteen years of helping families navigate a complicated legal system, and called it ministry. A retired pastor wrote that the job he may have loved most wasn’t a pastorate but managing a loan center, where he could lead his staff “with the heart of Jesus.” A newer believer with little church ministry to list looked at her work instead. Consulting at a psychiatric hospital, and helping families learn to manage their finances, pointed her toward people struggling with mental illness and with money. And when one woman wondered which church ministry would finally feel like home, her coach told her to keep trying things, then added: “But keep in mind your purpose most likely isn’t found in church, but rather outside the church.”
Pause & Reflect
Where do you spend most of your waking hours? Have you ever thought of that place as your arena of service rather than a distraction from it?
To help believers see the whole range of arenas God works in, a widely used framework names seven spheres that shape every society, often called the seven mountains of influence. Step 10 asks which of them you’re drawn to.
The framework’s origin story is well known. In 1975 two of the most influential evangelical leaders of the twentieth century, Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission, and Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, met in Colorado. As Cunningham told it for decades afterward, each of them had independently sensed God giving him the same list: seven areas of society that shape how people think and live, where Christians should go with the gospel. Cunningham treated the list as a strategy for the Great Commission. Jesus commanded His followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), and a nation, Cunningham reasoned, is shaped by more than its churches.
The seven are usually named this way:
| Mountain | What it shapes | A few of the people who serve there |
|---|---|---|
| Family | How people are raised, loved and formed | Parents, grandparents, foster and adoptive families, marriage mentors |
| Religion (the church) | How people understand God and worship Him | Pastors, missionaries, volunteers, church staff, disciplers |
| Education | What people learn and how they think | Teachers, professors, tutors, administrators, homeschooling parents |
| Government | Laws, justice and the common order | Public servants, lawmakers, judges, police, military, voters who engage |
| Media | What people hear and believe about the world | Journalists, writers, producers, podcasters |
| Arts & Entertainment | What people imagine, love and celebrate | Artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, athletes |
| Business (the economy) | Provision, work and wealth | Owners, managers, employees, investors, entrepreneurs |
In recent years Johnny Enlow has developed the framework further, most recently in Kingdom Come (2024). He argues that God’s Kingdom was always meant to fill every sphere of life, and that believers are God’s agents for bringing His rule and character into each one. Seven-mountains advocates read Daniel 2:44 the same way: the “kingdoms” God’s everlasting kingdom will outlast are not merely nations but the foundations of power and influence in every nation. Most commentators read the kingdoms of Daniel 2 as the four empires of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, and the seven-spheres framework doesn’t depend on that verse. It rests on a simpler conviction: that Jesus’ authority extends over “all nations” (Matthew 28:19), and so over every part of their life.
In the language of the picture you’ve been drawing since Session 1, your arena is where the deepest colors of your picture meet the world around you: the part of the canvas where your design and your heart are put to work.
When an actual group that worked through these steps answered Step 10, two mountains led by a wide margin: Family and the church, each named by eleven of twenty people. That’s no surprise. They’re the two mountains every believer already stands on. For some people one of them really is the arena. For many, though, they’re where everyone stands, and the arena lies beyond them. The answers that told the most went further and gave a reason. One woman named family first, then business, “because of what I have seen… and how I want to have a business that’s complete opposite of what I’ve seen.” Another weighed media, because “it bothers me all the misinformation and lies that are spread,” and chose business instead, where she already leads teams. Half the group named three mountains or more. The mountains you admire and the one you’re sent to aren’t always the same, and Step 10 asks you to tell them apart.
That’s the purpose of Step 10. You’re not choosing a mountain to conquer. You’re recognizing the arena where your design and your heart are most likely to seek someone’s šālôm.
This criticism is common, serious and made by thoughtful people, including many evangelicals. At full strength it goes like this. Whatever its origins, the “Seven Mountain Mandate” has become a movement about power. Later leaders reframed Cunningham’s evangelistic map as a call to take control of society’s institutions: C. Peter Wagner’s Dominion! (2008) urged Christians to seize authoritative control of the culture, and Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson’s Invading Babylon (2013) framed it as a campaign to conquer. Journalists and scholars of religion have linked the movement to the New Apostolic Reformation and to Christian nationalism, and some advocates describe political opponents as being under demonic influence. That isn’t Jeremiah 29. It’s closer to what Jesus refused when Satan offered Him the kingdoms of the world.
Much of that should be acknowledged plainly. The drift from influence to dominion is real, and it’s documented. Some of the language used by later advocates, of seizing, conquering and taking the mountains, goes well beyond what Cunningham described. Cunningham himself stayed out of politics and saw the seven spheres as a framework for evangelism and discipleship. That’s the sense in which this course uses them.
Here is where I land, and why. My own conviction is that Scripture calls believers to carry God’s character into every sphere of life, and that His Kingdom is advancing, not retreating (Kingdom Essentials Session 8). But the method Scripture gives is the method of salt, light and šālôm: “good deeds” that lead people to “give honor to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16), work done “as to the Lord” (Colossians 3:23), and service that seeks the flourishing of the city (Jeremiah 29:7). Joseph and Daniel rose to the top of pagan governments, and both did it by serving the kings over them with excellence and integrity, never by coercion. Influence that comes from serving well is the kind this course is asking you to pursue.
Where this stays unresolved. Christians who share a high view of Scripture disagree about how much transformation of society to expect before Christ returns, and so about how to think of cultural influence at all. Those differences run through eschatology, and Kingdom Essentials takes up that question separately. Scripture doesn’t give a strategy for “taking” any cultural sphere. It gives a way of living inside each one. Step 10 asks only which sphere you’re drawn to; the How belongs to the rest of the course.
Everything above has been explanation. The ministries you’ve been drawn to show how your heart has already served, and faithfulness in one place, like Philip’s, often becomes a path to the next. Your arena may lie far outside the church, where believers are sent to seek the šālôm of the places God puts them. And the seven mountains are a map of those places, used here the way they were first given: as a guide to where you’re sent to serve, not a list of territory to take.
Now you draw your own map. First, where you’ve been. Then, where you’re being drawn.
Take a typical week and roughly sort your waking hours into the seven mountains: family, religion (church), education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. Count work, volunteering, caregiving and even the hours you spend consuming media. Write the approximate hours beside each.
Then answer three questions in your journal. Which mountain gets most of your hours? Which one gets most of your heart? (Look back at your Step 7 passions and see which mountains they live in.) And if those two answers are different, what does that tell you?
Discovery Steps · Steps 9 and 10
Use the Listening Rhythm for each step: ask to be searched; do the work; sit with it; test it with the witnesses; sleep on it.
Step 9 · My Ministries
The prompt. What ministries have you been part of? What types of ministries do you gravitate toward?
What to do. List every place you’ve served, inside the church and outside it: formal roles and informal ones, long and short, including serving in your home, neighborhood or workplace. Beside each, write three quick notes: energized or drained?, fruit I saw, and would I do it again? For anything that drained you, add one word for why: role, season, leadership or fit. Mark which roles you took because the church needed someone and which you took because your heart pulled you there. If you haven’t served much in a church yet, don’t stop: list your work, your volunteering and the needs you’ve met at home, and read those for the pattern instead.
What to produce. Your full list, then the two or three kinds of ministry you gravitate toward, each with one sentence saying why. Add one ministry you left, and what it taught you.
Surface answer: “Homeless ministry and prayer ministry.” (A real answer, and both entries turned out to matter: his later steps were built around a shelter for the homeless. But two names with no story, no fruit and no “why” leave the pattern for someone else to find.)
Deep answer: “I gravitate toward helping people take a first step: I’ve been a greeter, led newcomers’ lunches and sponsored new believers at baptism, and each time I came home energized. I left the finance committee after two years. The role was fine, but it was all spreadsheets and no people, and I dreaded every meeting.”
Worked examples.
You’re done when …
Time: at least one day; two if your history is long.
Step 10 · My Mountains
The prompt. Which of the seven mountains of influence do you feel drawn to? They are Family, Religion (the church), Education, Government, Media, Arts & Entertainment, and Business (the economy).
What to do. Start with The Experience: where your hours go and where your heart goes. Look at your Step 7 passions and note which mountain each lives in. Then ask yourself: If money and time were no object, which of these arenas would I walk into tomorrow? Ask your witness which mountain they’d put you on.
What to produce. Your primary mountain, and a secondary one if two are genuinely close, each with one sentence saying why. Add one sentence describing where you already stand on that mountain today.
Surface answer: “Family and the church.” (A real answer, and the most common one in an actual group that worked through these steps. Every believer stands on both mountains. Without a reason, the answer can’t show whether either one is the arena you’re sent into.)
Deep answer: “Education. My passions are all about kids who fall through the cracks, my best volunteer years were tutoring, and when I read the news, the school stories are the ones I can’t let go. Today I’m on it as a parent and a Sunday school teacher. I wonder whether God wants more.”
Worked examples.
You’re done when …
Time: at least one day.
Big Ideas
Kingdom Principle
Every arena belongs to God, and He sends His people into all of them to seek their good.
Closing Prayer (Say this aloud!)
Father, thank You for every place You’ve already let me serve, the ones that filled me and the ones that taught me. Show me the thread running through them. Show me the arena You’re drawing my heart toward, whether it’s inside the church or far outside it. Wherever You send me, make me salt and light. Let me seek the good of that place, the way You told Your people to seek the good of Babylon. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Go Deeper
Accessible
Loren Cunningham with Janice Rogers, Is That Really You, God? Hearing the Voice of God (1984; rev. ed. 2001). The founder of YWAM on learning to hear God’s voice, from one of the two men at the 1975 meeting.
Substantial
Johnny Enlow, Kingdom Come: Understanding the Reign of God on Earth (2024). The fullest recent statement of the seven-mountains view from one of its leading advocates, and the book this course’s research draws on.
Academic
James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (2010). A sociologist’s sympathetic but searching critique of Christian strategies for changing culture, proposing “faithful presence” instead. Read it alongside Enlow to hear both sides of this session’s What About.
Leading This Session
This is a practice session, but the What About may generate more heat than any other in the course so far, because “Seven Mountains” has become politically charged. Name that openly, read the What I Am Not Saying aloud, and keep the group on Step 10’s actual question: where are you sent to serve? Don’t let it become a debate about elections. The most productive exercise is The Experience: have people share where their hours go and where their heart goes, and listen for the gap. Group questions: What thread runs through the places you’ve served? and Which mountain would you walk into tomorrow if nothing stood in the way? Three predictable misses from an actual group that worked through these steps: at Step 9, a bare list of ministry names with no “why”; at Step 9 again, newer believers who think they have nothing to list (point them to their work and home); and at Step 10, naming three or four mountains, most often including Family and the church, with no reason for any of them. Ask each person: If you could only climb one, which, and why? Watch for anyone who reads “Family” as “the people I love most”; the mountain is the arena of how families are formed, not a ranking of affections.
If you have questions or comments about this content, or about your personal situation, email us at feedback@thedisciplespath.com.
Next: Session 7, Your Vision, asks the biggest question in the Affinity section, if you had unlimited time and resources, what would you dream of accomplishing for the Kingdom?, and then asks you to write your Affinity statement.
Session 6 · Kingdom Purpose
Your Arena
Where has God had you serve, and where is He drawing you next?
Where You’ve Served
Serving tables and preaching are both diakonia. Your history shows which kind of service your heart keeps choosing.
Beyond the Church Walls
God sends His people to seek the šālôm of the places He puts them.
The Seven Mountains
A map of where you’re sent to serve, not territory to take.
So · Now
Every arena belongs to God, and He sends His people into all of them to seek their good.
Map where your week goes, then complete Step 9 (your ministries) and Step 10 (your mountain).
Discovery Steps · Steps 9 and 10
Kingdom Principle
Every arena belongs to God, and He sends His people into all of them to seek their good.