10 theses on a ministry of the future

I have a wide variety of interests, and they show up in my reading: biographies, the land of this country, arts and philosophy, adventure, environmental and ecological challenges, politics, religion. I’m no real student of any one of them, and I’m certainly not a historian. I’m fascinated by life now and in the future, what can be anticipated or expected… and therefore I like looking backward for clues to the blind spots we may have in our moment. 

Over the last year I have had this growing conviction that the future won’t look like just more of the present or recent years. That the shaking or coarsening we seem to be enduring is more like a coming norm. Which has made me think that if my approach to ministry is dependent on the stability of my day (or what we have known), the prospects are not great. What if the next 25 years are marked by significant upheaval? What then?

So, here are 10 draft theses on the ministry of the future 

1. We will aim again for a whole gospel, proclaiming one that restores the relationship between God and self and calls for keenly living and applying it with respect to others and to the created order.
2. We will hold to a story of change driven not by education or accomplishment or demographic context or feelings or right opinions, but by grace, repentance, and restoration in the whole of a person’s life.
3. In an age of inhospitality and fear, we will relearn and reteach the welcome and love of the stranger.
4. In an age of incivility, we will measure our words and model grace and truth in all encounters
5. In an age of upheaval and migrations and shifting allegiances, we will privilege stability: God is with us, God is here.  
6. In an age driven by information speed and disembodied interactions, we will prioritize human touch and bodily presence.
7. In a mood of quick fixes and long-term abdication, we will exercise stewardship and think in generations.
8. In an age of individualism, we will recover the commonwealth.
9. In a politics of transaction, we will cultivate relationships as ends rather than means.
10. In an age that prioritizes competence and content, we will make character formation a focus of growing concern.

The more I think on this, the more these seem to be corrections we know now that could address ways bent or broken ways.

Ways that ought to be left behind.