Imagining the Future…

Remember the Jetsons? It was a great cartoon! A typical
family, with all the typical love, the typical struggles; except that they
lived in the future, a future created out of someone’s imagination with flying
cars, robot maids and technologically created food.

I’ve always loved dreaming, imagining the future. What will
it be like? What will stay the same, what will change? How drastic will the
changes be? I love magazines like, Popular
Mechanics when there are feature articles on future cars, or tools.

Except in the church. It seems when we imagine the future in
the church, it isn’t really any different. Matter of fact, for most of the more
recent history of the church, the only thing you needed imagination for was to
dream up what color the new hymnal would be! We’ve been pretty adventurous
there! Black, to red, to green, with a little blue and purple thrown in with
the “supplemental” hymnals, and now we are back to red. Whoa! What a ride! Most
change, or what we call change, was nothing more than rearranging the furniture
– cassocks to albs, choirs in the balcony, choirs in the chancel…  That’s why the “worship wars” of the 1990’s
were so traumatic for many. Too much change! Too fast!  Some parts of the church have never changed,
or the change has been so slow, its more like evolution…

But that is going to change. The future shape of God’s
church will not be the same.  Really. We
are moving into a whole new world. Corporate, large group worship at the
center, “Come and get it” evangelism, expository teaching and preaching, will
be the rusty shells of their past, resting in the weeds alongside the road.

So what does the “new model” look like? I can’t tell you for
sure. I can’t give you an “artist rendition”, but I can share with you some “marks”,
some characteristics. It will be outward focused. It will not be asking, “How
do we get more people to come to worship?” It will not ask “How many did we get
in?” Instead, it will be asking, “How can we transform our community? How do I
walk and talk like Jesus?” Institutions and structures will be fluid and form-able
so that they are easily adapted to the needs of the world. Jesus will not be in
a box with a cross on top. Jesus will be (actually where Jesus has always been)
with the poor, the lost, least, broken. And that is where you will find His
people. In the future, we won’t be defined by our denomination or doctrinal
agreement. We will be united by our passion for sharing Christ.

The change is already happening. The winds of Pentecost are
blowing! God is on the move! Do you want to be a part of it? Will you go? Will
you be a part of God’s amazing, powerful work? Will you ride on the fresh winds
of God’s new thing?

You don’t have to. You can cling to the old, the classic.
You can still make a church that looks like it did in the 60’s and 70’s. You
can shine up the brass, put a new cover on the hymnal and meet for no good
reason except for the sake of meeting to decide to not to decide. You can do
that. And you’ll be like the restored classic car – an oddity, an eye-catcher
that causes others to reminisce, wax and wane. But it will remain as inefficient,
unreliable as ever.

Change is hard! Darn near impossible when it comes to our
institutional church. But in this case, to change is to move with the Spirit. I
don’t have a clue where it will lead, only a vague idea of how we will get
there, but I’m ready to go! I see the future church! There is no building to
define it. Its shape is the shape of the hearts of disciples of Jesus as they
share Christ and be Christ in their workplaces, homes and play-grounds. People
know it by the power of its transforming presence. They know it not by the name
of a denomination or saint, but only
by the name of Jesus.

Let’s go! Let’s move into the future – God’s future!

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