Thrive Spring/Summer 2021

thrive-magazine.ca
thrive / 19
RESPOND?by Jack
Taylor
In 2006, James Canton, in his book
The Extreme Future, suggested that
speed, complexity, risk, change, and
surprise would define the times up
until now. In the past 15 years these
trends intensified; we don’t need a
5G network to tell us that. Christian
singles, seniors, and families — attempting
to hold onto traditional
values, practices, rights and freedoms — are getting blown
over in the tumble of cultural challenges and opportunities
through a tsunami of technology, globalization, and
diversity.
The question of who is influencing whom endures as
churches fill the digital waves with Christ-promoting messaging
and governments propose legislation undermining
the faith and convictions of the faithful. A third of church
facilities (9,000) are designated for closure or demolition
as crumbling buildings and shrinking congregations proliferate
the landscape. Surviving congregations are partnering
up, renovating and repurposing for social justice,
housing, and community programs, welcoming ethnic
diversity, and rebranding themselves on the air waves.
Loss of structures can mean loss of beauty, memory, community,
programs, landmarks, and history along with
worship spaces. Does loss of visible presence mean loss of
influence, or has it always been about the believers living
as salt and light through faith?
The culture wars seem lost with issues like intersectionality,
conversion therapy, MAiD, secularism, cancel culture,
political extremism, consumerism, and technology anchored
in place. Perhaps our prosperity, individual security,
and comfort have influenced us more than incoming
cultures, changing social mores or even government legislation.
Where are the voices of influence coming from seasoned
Christian leaders? Have they all been compromised
into silence, leaving us defenseless?
Christians engage contemporary culture by segmenting
into one of four categories: those who participate without
reservation, those who critique and redeem, those who
select segments to engage in, and those who separate from
anything originating through an ungodly source (see Bill
Strom, More Than Talk). A new generation of believers is
producing resources available on all social media platforms
to help with the dysfunctions and struggles.
Sociologist Reginal Bibby noted in a UBC 2017 report
titled “Resilient Gods” that although the early 1960s witnessed
a “flourishing religious forest” in Canada, “it’s as
if a fire of secularization has devastated much of [the forest]”.
Over the last 50 years we’ve seen church attendance
drop from 66% to 25% or less. The younger generation is
evaporating in many spaces, and the pandemic will test
the commitments of other faithful men and women. More
than 25% of Canadians now claim no religious affiliation.
Still, the church was birthed, and is sustained, by Jesus. He
has promised to build it and to not allow the gates of hell
to prevail against it. The mission of disciple-making continues.
New selfless leaders will emerge to envision new
strategies in the spiritual war, calling a new generation
into the conflict. The internet will become a front door for
spiritual entrepreneurs, the Gospel message will transform
hearts, and the Spirit will gift transformed followers
to build and rebuild the body. We may become intimate
and informal in small gatherings and/or we may enlarge
and establish ourselves in modernized facilities, but we
will face the holy restlessness within and look for brothers
and sisters to influence us toward godliness in the middle
of the chaos around us. The influential DNA of the early
church is still in our souls.
— Jack Taylor is a Fellowship author and Lead Pastor of
Faith Fellowship Baptist Church in Vancouver, BC.