Engaging Christians ‘in a Google world’
Winnipeg Free Press October 16, 2010 | Anonymous Does the church in North America have a future?
Yes, says Christian futurist and author Leonard Sweet. It just won’t look the same as it does today.
“God will not be left without a witness,” says Sweet, who will speak in Winnipeg Oct. 19 to 20 on the topic Toolkit for the new Millennium. “The question is whether it will prevail in its present configuration.” For Sweet, a professor of evangelism at Drew University in Madison, and author books such as Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ, The Gospel According to Starbucks and The Church in Emerging Culture, it’s a matter of whether Christians are willing to change so that Jesus is relevant in today’s culture.
“The church still lives in a Gutenberg world of words, chapters and verses, but most people today live in a Google world of story and images,” he says.
Sweet calls this the “TGIF world” — Twitter, Google, iPhone and Facebook. People born before 1973, when the cellphone was invented, are immigrants in this new world; people born after that date are natives.
Like immigrants anywhere, many older Christians find this new world a scary place, he says. The temptation is to “stay together, speak our own language and preserve the old ways,” instead of engaging the new reality.
If the church wants to be relevant to the culture today, it has to “speak its language” and use the communication tools the culture is accustomed to, says Sweet, a father of two teenagers. googleiphoneappnow.net google iphone app
“The first thing missionaries need to do when going to a new country is to learn the language of the culture they are trying to reach,” he says, noting that it’s the same for the church today.
The church also needs to be willing to change the way it does worship services, he says. This means, among other things, being less rational and sermon-focused.
“The church is a left-brain culture,” he says. “It’s rational and linear. But we live in a right-brain world of images and stories today… the church has been half-brained for too long. We need a whole-brain approach to faith.” For Sweet, this means a greater openness to the arts and images and less emphasis on expository preaching and teaching.
“We can’t continue with the same preaching style,” he states. “We need to think in stories, like Jesus did.” It also means “no more 20- to 30-minute sermons,” he says. “Nobody today can maintain their attention that long.” He cringes to think of how he once derided Sunday school teachers who used flannelgraph — a felt board where Bible characters were used to act out stories — and chalk pictures to bring the Bible to life.
“They were on to something,” he says, noting they were ahead of their time. “The Bible stories I know today were taught to me by those chalk artists. They understood how to teach the Bible with images and stories, not verses.” Churches also need to be flexible when it comes to how people gather today, he notes; the traditional Sunday morning model, in a traditional place of worship, may not be the only model in the future.
“People are meeting in house churches, pubs and coffee shops,” he says, adding that “there will be lots of changes, innovations and diversity” in the way people gather in the future.
He also sees a change from “parking lot churches” — churches where people drive to gather for worship — to “pedestrian churches,” where people can walk to church.
“People want to walk to church today, just like they want to walk to the grocery store and work,” he says. “People want a neighbourhood sense again. We need to put up a sign in our churches: ‘Walk-ins welcome.’” As for denominations, they will still have a role, he says, but that role will change. “It will be resourcing, not regulating,” he says. The question will be “not what you should do, but what do you need from us?” Some things haven’t changed, Sweet maintains. “The most important thing is to be focused on Christ and his Gospel, to marinate our minds in scripture,” he says. “We need to rediscover a passion for Christ.” Sweet’s presentation in Winnipeg is sponsored by the Synod of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. this web site google iphone app
For Peter Bush, pastor of Westwood Presbyterian Church and clerk of the synod, Sweet’s visit is important because “he challenges us to think deeply about the new time the church is in and how to be open to the new opportunities around us.” Sweet’s visit is open to all but Bush hopes many Presbyterians will attend.
“We just have to look at what has happened to our church over the past 50 years,” he says, noting that the Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario Synod has lost a third of its members — down to 4,000 people from 6,000, most of them “greying.” “We can’t afford this model of church anymore,” he says.
Sweet will be giving a free presentation Oct. 19, 7:30 p.m. in the Laudamus Auditorium at Canadian Mennonite University, 500 Shaftesbury Blvd. He will also be speaking on Oct. 20, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at CMU; cost for the day is $50 per person.
For more information, or to register, go to www.sweetinwinnipeg.ca or call 837-5706.
Anonymous
