Culture is such that we live in many times at once. There are people who read newspapers very day. There are people who listen to news radio every day; people who watch news TV all the time. There are people who read the news on eBooks and websites and PDA’s; people who take in news in every form. There are people who never take in news in any form.
And then in moments when culture collides with history, people who read the news and people who don’t read the news make news. Drawn together and emboldened by numbers, they challenge entrenched power through every outlet available _social media, cable news stations, major media stations, newspapers, web, radio, text, voice, and home-made video_ to create force and energy, and without a single bullet, change the course of history forever (a la Arab Spring). On these amazing occasions we see 19th, 20th and 21st century cultures and technologies jammed up together and pouring forth with fury.
This mélange of cultures and histories is the make-up of Christendom today. Except instead of three, the church is an institution of twenty-one centuries, all at work today. Yet with all the outlets available and the power of the Gospel message, the so-called mainline church struggles to transmit ancient traditions to today’s generations. As if stuck in all of its yesterdays, the church has not yet figured out how to use new forms and methods to teach very, very old things.
The church must find new ways of being. Christian leaders must decipher the new religion of economics which commands the hegemony today that spiritual things did in ancient times. It is not a matter of getting rid of the old and replacing it with new. Rather, it is living out that phrase in the Lord's Prayer: your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. The church must find ways to jam up twenty-one centuries together, so that God will send the Holy Spirit, pouring forth with the fullness of life as God lives it, the life of abundance that is God's plan for humanity and all creation.
The church must find new ways of being. Christian leaders must decipher the new religion of economics which commands the hegemony today that spiritual things did in ancient times. It is not a matter of getting rid of the old and replacing it with new. Rather, it is living out that phrase in the Lord's Prayer: your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. The church must find ways to jam up twenty-one centuries together, so that God will send the Holy Spirit, pouring forth with the fullness of life as God lives it, the life of abundance that is God's plan for humanity and all creation.
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