buildings and live God’s mission, practicing Christian hospitality in cafés, music lounges, pubs, coffee shops and virtual gathering places enabled by social media. We are called to bear good news
in God’s world. In fact, a character- istic mark of evangelical living is and will be the need to live the good news before attempting to speak it. We gather as God’s people, we listen to God’s story, we leave because we are sent to become what we receive, the body of Christ, listening to oth- ers, loving our neighbors—especially those on the margins—living out God’s story. God’s church of the future won’t be
afraid to experiment and embrace the practice of faithful innovation. The essential premise is that during peri- ods of significant transition, human beings don’t need more rules but more stories. Alternative approaches or practices that fit the ethos of a par- ticular community will generate new stories and allow people to seek an authentic experience of God within community. This is not a whatever approach to
being the church—whatever works or whatever people want or whatever seems to be the latest thing. But alter- native approaches or practices will be needed to function and intelligibly communicate the Christian message in the future. Often, these approaches or prac-
tices represent nothing new but rather a retrieval of the very old. This entails a deep mining of the great (Christian) tradition, reclaiming ancient values and practices and contextualizing them in a community for a new day. If more experiential and participa-
tory worship practices are more val- ued, there may be communal lectio divina instead of one person reading the text, or walking a prayer laby- rinth during the time for intercessory
prayer, rather than the prayer-and- response approach. The practice of testimony may be reclaimed in the church of the future to allow more of God’s gifted people to share their faith with others.
Call to go The church of the future will need to be Spirit-breathed and display a more passionate spirituality rooted in the cross of Christ. Dying and rising each day, indi-
vidually and collectively, will mean removing obstacles: changing worn- out patterns, letting go of old resent- ments and fears, surrendering the need to be right, to be in control, to be bigger or better or trendier than some other place. Life on the way with the living Christ in the future will mean giving up the comfort of the club, the complacency of the conventional (in short, removing the church from the center of things) and opening our- selves to God’s in-breaking reign in unexpected or unbidden ways. We need to stop building and hop-
ing they will come and instead galva- nize our resources and energy around a focus on the call to go. Go—a short and seemingly simple word, yet bear- ing the weight of Christ’s daunting and daring call. The church of the future will
empower and release the baptized to witness and testify and serve and in all ways bear God’s creative and redeeming love for all the world. We will give our pastor, teacher
and friend, Tim Lull, the last word: “The church of the future will not
be the kingdom of God. It will have new problems that we cannot yet see, to say nothing of the old problems of sloth, division, and limited under- standing of the breadth and scope of God’s intention. But it will be the next stage along the pilgrim way, and it will seldom be a boring community or one that is scarcely visible because of its quiet passivity. Yet it too will be scanning the horizon, wondering in the midst of its rich common life about the church of the future of the 22nd century.”
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