Genuine innovation in mission will require spiritual awakening (charismatics), missiological reflection (theologians), cultural translation (missionaries and planters), technological breakthrough (tool-builders), and structural innovation (entrepreneurs and org builders). We need an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to all of them.
And, I also think technology is too small of a frame for the conversation. We need to be talking about missional engagement more broadly than just tool-making. The answer isn't just better B2B saas products sold to megachurches backed by Christian PE.
Something I told 13 yo: Cities inhale and exhale each generation. People move to cities in their 20s in search of colleagues and mates, move back out to raise their kids, and then when their kids are in their 20s, they return.
A balanced New Testament eschatology integrates radical urgency and radical long-termism at the same time. Whether planting churches or caring for the environment, Christians should uniquely balance short-term intensity and very long-term horizons.
Institutions don't earn trust by making the right predictions, by saying the right things, by aligning themselves with the right powers, by reacting. The trustworthiness of an institution is founded on the quality of the relationships and the trust between people within the institution. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. All of the instinctual and reactionary tactics that institutions are using to 'win back trust' will not work unless there is a re-founding.
For my British and European friends who are "shocked" and "surprised", here are 10 reasons you didn't see this coming.
Read this short post and then read the replies from our American friends who will confirm what I'm saying.
1. Americans love their country and want it to be the best in the world. America is a nation of people who conquered a continent. They love strength. They love winning. Any leader who appeals to that has an automatic advantage.
2. Unlike Europeans, Americans have not accepted managed decline. They don't have Net Zero here, they believe in producing their own energy and making it as cheap as possible because they know that their prosperity depends on it.
3. Prices for most basic goods in the US have increased rapidly and are sky high. What the official statistics say about inflation and the reality of people's lives are not the same.
4. Unlike you, Americans do not believe in socialism. They believe in meritocracy. They don't care about the super rich being super rich because they know that they live in a country where being super rich is available to anyone with the talent and drive to make it. They don't resent success, they celebrate it.
5. Americans are the most pro-immigration people in the world. Read that again. Seriously, read it again. Americans love an immigrant success story. They want more talented immigrants to come to America. But they refuse to accept people coming illegally. They believe in having a border.
6. Americans are sensitive about racial issues and their country's imperfect history. They believe that those who are disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth should be given the opportunity to succeed. What they reject, however, is the idea that in order to address the errors of the past new errors must be made. DEI is racist. They know it and they reject it precisely because they are not racist.
7. Americans are the most philosemitic nation on earth. October 7 and the pro-Hamas left's reaction shocked them to their very core because, among other things, they remember what 9/11 was like and they know jihad when they see it.
8. Americans are extremely practical people. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we produce great writers and intellectuals. In America they produce (and attract) great engineers, businessmen and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump's rhetoric than you do and more about his policies than you do.
9. Americans are deeply optimistic people. They hate negativity. The woke view of American history as a series of evils for which they must eternally apologise is utterly abhorrent to them. They believe in moving forward together, not endlessly obsessing about the past.
10. America is a country whose founding story is one of resistance to government overreach. They loathe unnecessary restrictions, regulations and control. They understand that freedom comes with the price of self-reliance and they pay it gladly.
There has been a LOT of reaction to the 4th Lausanne Congress that took place in Seoul six weeks ago.
I've collated 25 of the best posts about what happened and why it all matters.
Have a scan and check out the topics and authors that catch your eye...
https://t.co/nvPkVLuujE
I think so much of our social impact work is (theologically) the pursuit of the new creation, but our approach defaults to strategic planning or power games, divorced from the life of prayer, imagination, community, and context, where change actually happens.
If the Gospel is to challenge the public life of our society, it will not be by forming a Christian political party, or by aggressive propaganda campaigns. It will only be by movements that begin with the local congregation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced. (Newbigin)
(As an addendum, I think much of the revitalization will come from grassroots efforts from the global south, and western institutions should invest in emerging Christian leaders and voices from emerging nations).
As a Christian who works with a lot of Church leaders and ministry leaders around the world, I think we need to get more focused around building a "great commission" innovation sector.
Imagine what might be possible if the talented writers and artists (including entrepreneurs, who I consider artists) with a beautiful aesthetic and moral sensibility banded together to work for the common good rather than each trying to build their own empire. What made America great in the first place was not rugged independence or limp socialism but a healthy tension between the individual and group, the one and the ninety-nine—a recognition that we each need to be free to build and reap the rewards of our efforts, but that it's also good if we cooperate along the way. In the tension between those things lies the secret to prosperity, and it's simply a lot more fun to enter into the war of art with a band of brothers.
The people that hang out on twitter and the people that went to the Lausanne congress is a very small overlap. But I went and here are my thoughts:
https://t.co/UtFHvQBOWz