Recent polls have “split” as the most used term to describe our cultural moments. But if you dig deeper, you will find confusion, confusion, disappointment, shame, depression, confusion. Only 20% expressed curiosity through words such as “opportunity” or “good.”
This negative bias is realistic. Psychologists say 80% of our thoughts are negative and the news is going well. Negative thoughts stick like velcro in seconds, while positive thoughts require 10-15 seconds to put roots into the prefrontal cortex.
Behind all this frustration is sacred longing.
But behind all this frustration is sacred longing.
We are at a cultural inflection point, and many people are experiencing soulful changes. I’m hungry for something more humane, vast and light-filled.
Back up this. Pew’s study found that over 30 million evangelical Jesus followers no longer identify with current Christian witnesses of culture and politics (along with our liberal or conservative Jesus). They are either completely or quietly involved, but are either privately disconnected, looking for a community to leave and ask deeper questions.
Take this into consideration. A study of America’s most Christian cities revealed some of the highest percentages of poverty, income inequality, racism, and limited access to health care. This makes me wonder what kind of gospel produces such outcomes.
The weary debate between society and the gospel of the Declaration misses the point. Jesus’ life and teaching suggest that it is both. The ancient world did not distinguish the way we do it now (and most traditional cultures have not yet). Everything was spiritual.
Some of the things that happen in the church feel like scratching where there is no itching.
For those who long for deeper meaning, some of the things that happen in the church feel like they’re scratching in places that are not itchy. And while some may be seduced to be sarcasm or snipers, the truth is that we are meant to accumulate, not to demolish the body of Christ. She is a beautiful bride. But we must try to maintain peace beyond the ideological binary or of a thin kind. In doing so we lose our prophetic edge.
Walter Brugemann wrote:
The gospel is a widely held truth, but the truth has been greatly reduced. It is a flattened, trivial, and neglected truth. Below is a reduction in the story of God we tell. Talking a reduced story takes away Jesus’ ever-impressive and authoritative narrative, sucking up its transformative power, eliminating its resilience effects, or drying it until it becomes life, or simply sucking it.
These reductions make us unprepared for this cultural moment. And how we appear in the world as Western Christians is no longer suitable for purpose.
In the West, people are eager to participate meaningfully in our neighborhoods, cities, workplaces, and around the world. However, many doubling the traditional evangelism and mission paradigm. Send more missionaries, plant more churches, and export thin gospels. Meanwhile, others, overwhelmed by the harm that caused or was convinced of how we should appear in the world, are paralyzed and released.
I believe there is another way to spread it. The third method.
The gospel of Jesus invites us to something much greater.
The Gospel of Jesus invites us to something much greater as a spiritual reality, liberation from sin, economic, physical and social prosperity. My friend, Dr. Kurt Thompson, likes to say, “Even now, eternal quality of life.”
Calls for reform, renewal, renaissance and revival echo everywhere. But these “re-” words often feel beauty like facelift. Changing vocabulary, shifting strategies, rebranding and thrilling people to rethink. Meanwhile, courage remains the same.
Not only will new strategies be designed, but there will be a paradigm shift. The early churches practiced kingdom life as oikos (home). It is a kingdom economy that challenges ways to understand human prosperity by giving, sharing and receiving social, physical and economic needs. It’s all “on earth, like heaven.”
As NT Wright puts it, the early churches were “Heaven Show on Earth.” It looks like when life in heaven was born on Earth. However, today’s churches often assume that when God’s primary activities are in the world, God’s primary activities occur in the church.
We need an incubator from the kingdom that shapes who we are, the gospel we practice, and how we appear. We cannot reduce our participation in the world. We have to rethink that. The world has changed. Surgery is required, not cosmetic touch-ups.
In Scatter, I am interested in webbing through stubborn, faithful relationships. This is linked by a living network that promises to practice the path of Jesus from the goodness of the world to the rebirth.
In other words, to be a creative minority, including exiles, dissidents, edge residents, risk takers, builders and makers, we avoid binaries like people living with prophetic imagination, ideological nods and progressive vs. conservatives.
We have to choose to live in the wonders of difficult challenges with bias, creation and imagination from Shalom, those seeking prosperity.
As St. Expery wrote:
If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare materials, or organize labor. Rather, let people know that they long for the deep, wide ocean.
Keep taking risks, leave the pool of children and come across the sea of God’s love.
Originally published by Scatter. It was reissued with permission.
David Schmidgall loves to create multilingual, multicultural, spiritually integrated spaces and people through his role as an executive director, pastor, spiritual director, trauma therapist, teacher and artist. David has completed his master’s degree in international policy and completed a psychotherapy residence. As a spiritually trained artist, he is passionate about thinking big about cultural transformation, solving unruly problems and fostering an environment of human prosperity.
Spreading is often seen in the world and is committed to helping others do the same thing. They exist to stimulate fresh thoughts about God’s inherent intentions to be alive and in the world. They believe that all Jesus’ followers have a role to play in God’s plan for the world–All cities, countries and sectors–Accepting that missions, missions, and even business paradigms are too long, implicitly biasing the West as excelling in theology, knowledge, means and expertise in solving difficult problems. It scatters and encourages practices that permeate yourself as heroes in the world’s divine stories.
