IN FOCUS: It’s time to change the conversation

The Global Language Monitor has announced “Twitter” is the top word for 2009. It is followed by “Obama,” “H1N1,” “stimulus” and “vampire.” The top phrases are “King of Pop,” “Obama-mania,” “climate change,” “swine flu” and “too large to fail.”

“Global warming,” “9/11,” “Obama,” “bailout” and “evacuee/refugee,” after Katrina, were the top words of the decade. The decade’s top phrases were “climate change,” “financial tsunami,” “Ground Zero,” “war on terror” and “weapons of mass destruction.”

Some of the most prominent names of the past decade were largely unknown prior to Jan. 1, 2000. How many knew of Barack Obama or Osama bin Laden? Ground Zero, Twitter and Facebook did not exist as identifiable sites. It has been said that more than 350 million people are on Facebook, which would make it one of the five largest nations if it were a geographical location.

Words are mirrors that reflect our thinking and emotions. They are reminders that the past decade was a time of war, change, ecological disasters, financial collapse and pandemic. Baby Boomers in the United States probably will describe this as the most challenging decade of our lifetime to this point.

Is the church in America responding to this new reality? 2009 still looks very similar to 1975 in many congregations. Architecture, methodology and liturgies remain the same. Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning still is one of the most segregated hours of the week. The vocabulary is familiar. We still love to tell the old, old story and the old, old stories.

The world needs to know that “Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” The Bible should not be rewritten nor the Ten Commandments reduced. Jesus still is “the way, the truth and the life.” The Great Commandment and the Great Commission both still are marching orders for the church.

Yet in this new reality of Twitter and Google, the church must decide how much of its consistency is stability and how much is lethargy. Is it possible that the new fellowship hall is now the website? What are the new realities of missions and evangelism? Will someone soon walk the aisle and declare that God has called them to be a missionary to the nation of Facebook?

Is the church addressing the questions that are being asked? Are we even invited to the conversation?

Has the church become a stained-glass refuge from the world where Christians can retreat and hang out with folks who look like them and think like them, and especially where people talk like them?

We should never tire of biblical exegesis. We need to conjugate the verbs and decline the nouns of Scripture. We must ask what God was saying to the early readers and to us. Yet it also is time we do an analysis of culture.

A world frightened by tsunamis, global warming, swine flu and 9/11 needs to know there is hope in Christ. It is still the privilege of the church to announce this good news.

 
Randel Everett is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.