Are we prepared for a changing landscape?

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future. My future, my family’s future, God’s preferred future. Our framework is constantly changing and there are few people who keep up with changing landscapes and even fewer who stay a step ahead.

A few weeks ago pastor Efrem shared with our staff a quick study on our changing world. I apologize for not having the direct reference, but he shared these 4 Words that describe the current state of our world:

lim’i·nal (lĭm’ə-nəl) adj.
The threshold of a physiological or psychological response.

a·ce·di·a (ə-sē’dē-ə)
n.  Spiritual or mental sloth, apathy.

an·he·do·ni·a (ān’hē-dō’nē-ə)
n.  The absence of pleasure or the ability to experience it.

pre·hen·sion [pri-hen-shuhn]
–noun
1. the act of seizing or grasping.
2. mental apprehension.

So, I think If we put this all together we get a world which is experiencing less joy, ambivalence toward God, grasping for comprehension of change and on the cusp of a major cultural response to our lackluster culture.

How is this affecting the landscape?

1. Church and culture are becoming one in the same.
   People are ambivalent toward God because they can’t tell the difference between God’s followers and the rest of the world. They can’t tell the difference between church culture and pop culture. The lines are being blurred and we’re standing out far less than we ever have, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. Non-Christian non-profits are having greater impact in the world than Christ’s followers in many respects. Shouldn’t we be making headlines with our love?
2. We’ve given ourselves over to the pleasure of device over the pleasure of company.
   We need more explosions, more effects, more apps, more bells and whistles to get the same level of pleasure. In the drug world, this called addiction, in the rest of the world we call it entertainment. While our world is more connected through social networks (which allows an introvert like me to bust out of my shell a bit) we’re slipping in our ability to find time in our lives for face to face relationships. As we segregate ourselves from relationships, we effectively separate ourselves from the source of true pleasure: friends, family, and time together.
3. Many people believe we’re on the edge of a dramatic change in the way we live.
   Americans have enjoyed over-consumption and industrialization in every thing we do. Our food, our homes, our entertainment. Our relationship to these things has changed. In making life more convenient, we’ve made it less fruitful. We’ll take more care of our environment because we won’t have a choice. We’ll start growing our own food again, because people will be too afraid to eat spinach from the grocery store without getting a disease that never should have been there. We’ll stop using cookie cutters, because people will believe that if everybody is a star, we’ll start to miss the squares and circles.
4. Passivity will be replaced by relentless action.
   Instead of grasping at change, we’ll grab it by the *hehem stones and make a difference in the world. People are already doing it. A former nightclub promoter starts an organization that has already provided safe drinking water for over 750,000 people. A few friends start making tiny loans to people on the other side of the world and completely change the rules of the global economy.

So, Church, what are we going to do that will actually make an impact?

Will we lead or follow?

Will we work silently to to proclaim a name for Christ through actually loving people like he asked us to?

Will we choose to be agents of change or will we be continually changed by the agents of change?

We’ve gotten so good at talking about church, that we may have failed in our efforts to be the church: a conduit for the most radical shift in culture and justice. Go make a name for Jesus by following in his footsteps.