After considerable thought and discussion,Sandy and I recently decided to change Faith Communities, and joined The Methodist Church of the Resurrection (COR) in Leawood, KS. We decided to move our membership to COR on 29 Aug 2010.
This 17,500 member congregation has been a significant change for both of us. The scale of EVERYTHING related to “church” has just been magnified by more than 50 times..... We left a congregation where we knew almost every person, and have been immersed in a congregation where we know almost no one.
The church was started in1990 with 4 people and has grown exponentially. This fall, the church is celebrating its 20th anniversary by attempting to eliminate its capital debt by a special fund-raising campaign. It is also encouraging people to dream what the next 20 years at COR may entail. Certainly, the 4 original members had no idea that COR would be like it is today when they started a church in 1990. It is also very difficult to see what the next 20 years will involve. One thing I think is universally true: 20 years from now, our world will have changed considerably, and COR will need to change considerably if it is going to continue to thrive.
What will change in the next 20 years? Technology will have continued to develop in an ever increasing rate. Most forms of energy will have become very expensive. (Controlled Nuclear Fusion could reverse this trend.....let’s hope!) Social problems that have vexed our society and world for millennia will........ probably be the same. I would like to believe we will have solved some of them, but social problems seem to also evolve as we try to address them. Moving targets are more difficult to hit.....
I would love to live in a world where dogmatic fundamentalism will have been finally exposed for what it is: a security blanket for people so they don’t have to think, OR, an effective and intentional control mechanism that adherents use to control followers. However, it is because a large number of people in the United States choose to follow semi-blindly rather than spend the effort at thinking about their lives, those leaders who espouse fundamentalism will be able to continue controlling the “non-thinkers”.
Bio-engineering is now in its early, formative stage, preparing to make significant impacts on society. It will also produce some new ethics challenges: How much control should humans exert over natural life? Is it Okay to create new or modify existing life forms just because you have the ability? What do we do with our experimental mistakes? The church will be pressed to address these and other new ethics problems in the next twenty years. Just like all other tools of significant power, bio-engineering will have the ability to be a formidable asset AND liability.
Electronic technology will continue to develop at an even more increasing rate. Personal Digital Assistants have evolved into smart phones, that will evolve into even more powerful computing resources that are ubiquitous and always present, ON the individual, maybe even IN the individual. While still considered too “over-the-top”, the insertion of Radio Frequency IDentification chips beneath the skin of individuals could be common in the future. I have read magazine articles telling me how to implement under skin RFID chips to allow specially designed computers to recognize the RFID carrying individual and automatically obtain password credentials form the RFID. It is common practice now to insert RFID chips in our pets so that they may be identified at veterinary offices when the pet wanders off and becomes lost.
Similarly nano-technology is nascent. We could be swallowing pills, or receiving injections, of nano-robotic machines that travel through our bodies delivering medicines to specific internal body sites, or performing even mechanical repairs using nano-tools. How could this affect the church? I don’t know, but who would have thought in 1990 everyone in a worship service would have powerful computers capable of communicating with GPS satellites in their pockets and purses?!
I think social norms will also continue to change. Some of these changes may be good, but generally, there will be problems for the church to deal with the changes. If you had conjectured with church attenders in the 1950’s that in 2010, people would regularly attend church wearing athletic shorts and T-shirts to listen to rock-themed worship music played on electric guitars, they would have thought you were crazy. Today, that type of dress and music is exactly what draws some previously un-churched people to worship! However, the church must also find a balance in not abandoning more traditional worshipers. In addition, there needs to be some balance in the church influencing society and not just being influenced by society.
When asked by my Pastor to dream about the next twenty years at COR, here are a few of the thoughts I contemplated:
- Charging stations for electric cars that are parked during Worship Services. (This could also be a source of revenue…..)
- The ability to register your attendance using your phone, PDA, or your IDD (Internal Digital Device) eliminating current manual data entry.
- The ability to transfer funds from your bank account(s) to COR’s account(s) in real time during a worship service, from your smart phone, thus eliminating manual data entry and a great deal of the Church’s bookkeeping function.
- 3D projection of video content
- Assistive technologies for the blind and hearing impaired. (BTW: Why doesn’t COR have sign language interpreters for the hearing impaired now?)
- Greater challenges discerning the eternal truths of scripture from culture-of-the-time norms that no longer apply. This may develop into needing to operate as more than one church: those that wish to stick to traditional beliefs and those that want to change with societal changes. The challenge of homosexual inclusion is only the beginning.
- Dealing with an older average age congregation.
- Dealing with individuals and the general concept of bio-engineered body parts. It could be that actual identity confirmation will be difficult because people will be able to completely modify their appearance and body capabilities, like youthfulness appearance.
- Assimilation of even a greater number of faltering/failing UMC congregations
- The establishment of an internet “country code” for people who have one phone number, and it is a voice over IP phone number. They may then receive phone calls from any phone on earth.
- Maybe not in 20 years, but maybe in 20 years after that, there will be regular COR-Lunar or COR-Mars worship services!
- Perhaps in 20 years there will be less need to physically travel to a specific geographic location to participate in small groups, rehearsals, or even worship services. The “church building” may be wherever each of its members and visitors are at the time. Attendance might be virtual, with participants from all over the world participating interactively at the “worship site” just as if they were physically there. It may be possible to even “shake hands” and otherwise “feel-the- presence” of the other participants even though they might be several thousand miles away.
- Even though these imaginative dreams might actually happen, it is also very likely that the age old problems of humanity will still be daily challenges to overcome. People will still misunderstand communications. People will still have difficulty treating others in a manner they would like to be treated. Sin will still separate us from right relationship with God. We will still need to recognize our sinful state, repent, seek forgiveness, and be thankful for God’s unfathomable grace……. I look forward to the future!
