Where Are the Church Futurists?

For the last few months, God has been slowly guiding me through a transition; he's been calling me to focus more on the calling I have "between and among churches", and to "church pioneering." This has been really unexpected, and a strange combination of really exciting and really intimidating. I hear that John Wimber used to say, "every new season you enter into the kingdom requires giving up everything you've had up until this point" - that somewhat describes how it feels. (To those who are concerned, don't worry, I'm not giving up School of Kingdom Ministry or leaving my local church - just a pivot in focus, but one that comes with risks and new beginnings nonetheless.) It's certainly been one of the hardest things I've ever done, but when God makes it clear, he makes it clear! Probably more on this whole process, etc, another time. For today, I want to talk about an initial discovery that I'm still trying to work out what I think of.

One of the things that God has been making clearer and clearer to me is that my assignment has a definite future focus. In fact, in some strange way, I often feel like I belong more in the future than in the present. It feels to me like I can see over the horizon, and in a way that feels like "home" in a way that sometimes I can struggle to feel here. For a long time I wrestled with that; was this an indicator of some dysfunction? Was I avoiding the present? It didn't feel like that, just that I felt a draw towards the future in some inexplicable way.

Over time, what it seems to me that God has pointed out is that I feel this way because the locus of my assignment is the future. What I mean by that is this: when God gives an assignment, it has parameters. Often these are a set of people (say ministry to the homeless), or a location (ministry to a certain city). For me, as best as I can discern right now, it seems my assignment is to the future itself; to see it, describe it, and work to actualize it. We are in the process of so many fascinating changes, and these are driving a re-ordering of our world into something new and qualitatively different than the world of 50 years ago. That process of change and what we're changing into just grips me; it seizes who I am and I can't not think about it and want to work towards it.

I'm still very much working out what all this means with respect to my new season. How do I begin to do that? What does that look like? I have a sense that part of what the Lord is refocusing me on includes this; maybe the majority of it. To that end, I began to look into finding some church futurists out there.

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What is a Futurist?

If you're not familiar with what a Futurist is, you're not alone. It's not exactly a common profession. Put simply, a futurist is someone who works to track with global trends to try and read the trajectory of the world. While it may feel like much of our lives is subject to radical change at any moment (particularly in this unstable season), the fact is, large-scale forces drive a significant fraction of the eventual outcomes of many things in the world. The things we see on the news really are the small-timeline fluctuations on global and generational forces - such as the ongoing population explosion in developing nations coupled with the population shrinking in the western world. In case you're wondering some of my favorite futurists are Patrick Dixon and George Friedman.

How do these futurists actually help the world? They are often brought in as advisors or strategists to organizations and governments to help them understand where things are headed and how to position themselves for future success. They help raise the perspective outside of the present moment and help take a longer-term view in their thinking and strategizing. If we're not intentional to be looking up towards larger-scale trends, we'll be swept up with the priorities of the moment and always be reactive to our circumstances. This is something that industry leaders are constantly and purposefully engaging in. Before multinational corporations and governments make billion-dollar decisions, they're always looking to read where things are going to be heading in the relevant timeframe as well as they can.

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Church Futurists

So here is the shocking thing that I recently discovered: I can't find any church futurists out there. I googled this recently, and found a multi-religion counsel, one talk and an article we some trends that may be applicable for the near-future (also with a bunch of stuff on the theological bent called 'Futurism'). Here is what I couldn't find a trace of: church futurists. I can't remember the last time that I looked online for something and found a ghost town. Where are the church futurists? Do they exist? If not, what should we think of that? Don't we care about the future of the church?

To me, this lack seems crazy! Right now we're in the biggest technological and communications shift in the last 500 years, and we have every reason to suspect that the form of church will  radically shift over the next 25 years. Look at the way that our technology is disrupting and reinventing industry after industry right now: it used to be to get around a city you'd call a cab, now you call an Uber. Not that long ago you had to go to the store to buy things, now Amazon drops them off at your front doorstep. Once upon a time you had to book a hotel to travel, now you stay in the comfort of someone else's unique home, and you save money in the process. These industries have been completely disrupted as modern technology opened up the possibilities for new product categories.

It's worth pausing to think about the difference between what is happening here and the way the church is usually using technology at this point. There is a fundamental difference between using technology to reach further with the same product, and developing a new product that can only exist because of new technology. The taxi companies aren't being replaced by Uber because Uber is using technology to market better; taxi companies are being replaced by Uber because Uber has a new technologically-driven product that displaces the old taxi-cab one. It's not the same product taking advantage of benefits of new technology; it's a brand-new product with new technology wired into the backbone. This is what Amazon, Airbnb, and many other globally disruptive companies are doing. If you can build the new version of an industry that is rooted in our tech-centric 21st century, you can own the marketplace.

I've yet to see this type of innovation in the church space. What I've seen in the church is trying to do mostly the same thing, but using the avenue of technology to broadcast further.  We run services or meetings in cyberspace instead of in a physical room. That's a great first step, but we're still running on an understanding and expression of church that was designed in the 1500s - no technology wired into the core at all yet. I can't help but think that there is likely a church disruption around the corner waiting to explode onto the world. The digital change for the church hasn't barely started yet. (The new technology that is redefining industries is connective after all. It has the power to facilitate relationships in ways that far exceed our natural human capabilities. Imagine the impact in a relationally-based ministry context like a church.)

It seems clear to me that now is the time we need church futurists. Now is the time we need people who can lift their eyes up and see a little further down the road. People who can help the church position for her next chapter, and who can speak into the challenges of the now and the opportunities of the next. Where are they? I don't know. It may be they are out there somewhere, working away. If you know of them somewhere, please reach out and let me know! Either way, I've decided that I'm going to step forward and do my best. I think we need futurists; the church needs to be tracking with what God is doing in the entire world and how that is going to affect our ability to pursue the great commission. Admittedly, this freaks me out! Do I know how to do to this? Nope. Do I have the slightest clue how to get started? Other than writing this post, not really, no. But I've decided I'm not going to wait to figure that out to begin to obey. If God says I belong to the future and that I'm going to step forward and give him my yes, and we'll figure the rest out as we go.

(PS - expect some church futurist posts coming sometime I guess!)