Whatever you think about the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS), it’s instructive to take a look at the strategy. Today, anyone who needs to engage the larger culture to share an important message needs to think seriously about issues like perception, platforms, competition, timing, passion and more. That’s why churches, ministries and nonprofit organizations could learn from what’s working and not working with Occupy Wall Street.

At our company, Cooke Pictures, our first job is to help our clients get noticed in a crowded, cluttered marketplace of ideas. Then, it’s to get that target audience to embrace or act on those ideas. From that perspective, here’s a few strategy related thoughts about Occupy Wall Street:

1. Having no clear leader undercuts their message. Grass-roots movements can be powerful, but in a media-driven culture someone needs to speak for the tribe. Preferably someone articulate and admirable, who can express the goals and mission of the movement. (Think Nelson Mandela.) That leader also needs to take responsibility and absorb the hits if things go wrong. People want to know where the buck stops.

2. Protest is not enough. A few years ago the Tea Party marched on Washington, D.C., with a clear list of demands: Stop raising taxes, reduce the size of government, cut spending. Across the movement people voiced the same vision. But OWS? Everyone you ask has a different demand, and as a result, the crazies get as much press coverage as those with serious concerns. Protest is a good start, but that alone simply annoys the general public.

3. Solutions matter. If all you do is complain, you’ll get tagged as “the people who are against everything.” Many Christians are guilty of that in their over-eager boycotts of Hollywood, the gay community or companies who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Complain long enough without providing an alternative solution and people begin to tune you out.

4. Be Careful What You Leave Behind. After the Tea Party marched on Washington, network news organizations showed arial photographs after the march. The main mall was as clean as a dining room table. But when OWS at Zuccotti Park was finally cleared recently, there was human excrement left in piles, garbage everywhere and hypodermic needles that had to be cleaned up. Plus, the scattered robberies, assaults and rapes that happened in some of the camps didn’t help the public’s perception.

5. The worst calamity is when the other side co-opts your cause. While OWS has a legitimate critique of the growing income gap in America, its lack of an articulate solution gives free-enterprise advocates the chance to make a more persuasive argument on behalf of their cause.

For instance, they’ve shown real statistics that while the top 1 percent earns about 20 percent of the income today, they also pay 37 percent of federal income tax. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that wealth inequality is roughly unchanged from as long as 20, 40, even 80 years ago. Those facts are adding up in the mind of the public. Your inability to state a convincing argument leaves the other side open to make it their own.

Keep in mind that it’s not just a matter of whether the initial public agrees or disagrees with a protest movement. Many Americans initially fought against the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60s, but Martin Luther King Jr.’s clear vision and articulate strategy of nonviolence made the public realize the rightness and inevitability of the cause.

Last week, USA Today reported its Gallup poll that revealed six out of 10 Americans have become indifferent to Occupy Wall Street. It also pointed out that the number of Americans who outright disagree with the movement is rising as well. Occupy Wall Street is losing ground, and losing it quickly.

Whatever your cause, a movement will fail if it can’t clearly articulate it’s ideals. Particularly in today’s media-driven culture, strategy matters.

Phil Cooke, Ph.D. is a filmmaker, media consultant and author of Jolt! Get the Jump on a World That’s Constantly Changing. You can visit his website at philcooke.com.

John Hagee is getting ready to release more prophetic revelation to the body of Christ.

Worthy Publishing has signed the New York Times best-selling author to pen a book called The Power of the Prophetic Blessing: An Astonishing Revelation for the Next Generation. The book will hit store shelves in August 2012.

The new book “will offer a much needed prophetic word of encouragement and blessing for today’s readers and the generations to come,” says Byron Williamson, president of Worthy Publishing.

Hagee’s previous book Jerusalem Countdown (FrontLine/Charisma House) sold more than 1 million copies, and Can America Survive? (Howard Books/Simon & Schuster) was a New York Times best-seller.

A broadcaster and author of more than 20 books, Hagee is senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, a church of more than 19,000 members.

In conjunction with the book, Hagee will launch a 12-week television message expected to reach 10 million viewers; a national radio campaign; consumer advertising in major magazines; and a multi-city tour.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they reap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. —2 Timothy 4:3

Turn your back on deception and stop taking the word of the world over the Word of God. Even more, stop taking anyone’s word over the Word of God! Whether they are preachers, teachers, gurus, politicians, or entertainers, their words can never stand up to the inspired Word of God!

Stop listening to the intellectuals, the compromisers, the world-appeasers. You have the holy Word of God Himself! Let us reject those who twist the truth and alter the Bible to justify their self-serving agendas.

God, forgive us for the idolatrous sin of presumption—for trying to mold you into a god who fits our conceptions, rather than the God who created the universe. Put our hearts back into a reverence for your Word and a deep appreciation that we must seek out our salvation before You.

Lord, let Your Word dwell in my heart richly,
illuminated by the power of
Your Holy Spirit. Amen.

We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. —James 3:2

Enjoying a measure of success in controlling the tongue on occasion does not mean you are perfect! I can assure you that you have not “arrived”—even if you go three days without an unguarded comment—or that the problem of controlling the tongue is now behind you. Tongue control is only a temporary grace—given one day at a time, and hour by hour when you are having a good day.

Never being at fault in what one says, then, means perfection. James is obviously not expecting that of any Christian. So the tongue is something you must live with, work with, get victory over—little by little—every day. But one day at a time! It is terrific when you have a good day. It is very encouraging. But if you had a good day, I lovingly caution you: wait until tomorrow!

I know what it is sometimes to preach well, to come down from the pulpit with an inner confidence and say to myself, “Well, at last I have learned how to preach.” But when I feel like that for very long, here is what happens—nearly every time: I do so poorly the next time I am in the pulpit that I leave saying, “If that is the best I can do, I should get out of the ministry.” So if you have a good day with tongue control, thank God for it, but don’t be deluded that you have mastered the art of tongue control; you just might be a miserable failure the next day.

The truth is, however, we can improve. We do get better at it. The reward is worth the effort, I promise you.

I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. —Joel 2:28

The church of Jesus Christ has withstood the deadening blows of the God-haters throughout the ages. In every generation scoffers have denied the existence of God or invented their own religions to accommodate their sin. In our own generation we are seeing the fulfillment of 2 Timothy 3.

But God promised He would preserve a remnant church of the faithful, and in the last days this remnant church would rise up in Holy Ghost power. His Bride, the church, is taking possession of the land and is becoming glorious without spot or blemish. It’s time for the church to take her position as the bride of Christ.

The church is beginning to come out from the world and be separate. A Bible-believing remnant is leaving behind the compromising, sin-infested church of man to take up the standard of Jesus Christ. Together we will call out to God and march forward to bring His glorious gospel to the ends of the earth.

Thank You, Jesus, that I can be part of Your
glorious bride. Purify and cleanse us.
Keep me pure and holy through the
cleansing of Your blood and the
washing of Your Spirit. Amen.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. —1 John 1:9

It is one thing to have this breakthrough regarding others—totally forgiving them and destroying the record of their wrongs; it is quite another to experience the greater breakthrough—total forgiveness of ourselves.

So many Christians say, “I can forgive others, but how can I ever forget what I have done? I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself.”

We may wake up each day with the awareness of past mistakes and failures—and fervently wish that we could turn the clock back and start all over. We may have feelings of guilt—or pseudo-guilt, if our sins have been placed under the blood of Christ. But the enemy, the devil, loves to move in and take advantage of our thoughts. That is why forgiving ourselves is as important as forgiving an enemy.

Forgiving yourself may bring about the breakthrough you have been looking for. It could set you free in ways you have never before experienced. This is because we have been afraid to forgive ourselves. We cling to fear as if it were a thing of value. The truth is, this kind of fear is no friend, but rather a fierce enemy. The very breath of Satan is behind the fear of forgiving ourselves.

If we feel guilty, blame ourselves, and find that we cannot function normally—even though we have confessed our sins to God—it indicates that we haven’t yet totally forgiven ourselves. It means that we are still hanging on to guilt that God has washed away; we are refusing to enjoy what God has freely given us. First John 1:9 either is true or it isn’t. If we have confessed our sins, we must take this promise with both hands and forgive ourselves—which is precisely what God wants us to do.

Excerpted from Total Forgiveness (Charisma House, 2002).

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness. … To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood … —Revelation 1:5

Have you ever driven down the highway and heard the wail of a siren behind and seen that flashing blue light in the rearview mirror? What a relief when the patrol car overtook you and sped away! It was not you the police were after.

It is almost impossible not to feel guilty about some things. Moreover, sometimes guilt can motivate us to do strange things when it comes to our relationships with others. For example, we may feel guilty because we dislike a person, and to compensate we try to be extra friendly.

But true guilt can be experienced beyond doubt through regeneration. We may try to make unconverted people feel true guilt, but we never quite succeed in making them aware they have sinned against God: it is the Holy Spirit who does that. When the Holy Spirit convicts people of sin, they see they have offended God, and they come to the place where David was when he prayed, “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4). Only a regenerate person can talk like that.

How, then, should we handle true guilt? I believe we have three options:

1. The “fatal” solution

Some people repress their guilt. God created us in His own image, and we ignore our conscience at our peril.

2. The temporary solution

I can change my life, and then I will have no reason to feel guilty. It’s so easy to make a promise, but you will break it eventually. This solution will only work for a time.

3. The biblical solution

The Bible offers a permanent solution to the problem of guilt. We need to look at Revelation 1:5 for the answer. All our guilt was placed on Jesus when He took our place on the cross. And when we accept what He did for us and turn in repentance to Him, God looks at us, and His verdict is, “Not guilty!”

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt. —Matthew 14:31

Doubt says, “I wonder if it could be.” Unbelief says, “I know that it is not.” Doubt is not nearly the obstacle that unbelief is. On the day of Pentecost, many in the crowd doubted the testimony of Peter and the disciples, but three thousand souls were added to the Church that very day. Doubt does not stop the mighty wind from heaven.

Doubt offers God the opportunity to prove Himself to you, and He will. He sent Elijah into an idolatrous land to challenge the priests of Baal to a contest. God was more than willing to prove himself to the doubters, and when the fire fell from heaven, no doubt remained (1 Kings 18).

Peter doubted when He took his eyes off Jesus. He saw the waves of misfortune and felt the wind of disaster beating against him. As he began to sink, he cried out to Jesus-.-.-.-and immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. Jesus was there to lift him up—and He’ll be there for you too.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Fill me
with trust and faith in You. Anchor me
on the Rock of Your Word. Amen.