Implications of a Post-American World

Originally written as a reflection paper for Globalization, The Poor, and Christian Mission, a class I'm taking at Fuller Theological Seminary toward my MAGL.

Scholars generally agree that globalization is a very long-term process.  Many trace globalization back at least to the 15th century explorers.  However, in the past couple of decades, globalization has begun to rapidly bring about a new ordering of the world.  Fareed Zakaria makes the assertion that the rise of the rest of the world is soon creating a world where America is not the dominant world power.  This book has very important implications for my personal life as well as for ministry.  The dominant nation in the world can afford to be provincial in outlook, but a nation that is in the thick of competition cannot.  As American Christians, and as an American Christian church, we must increase our awareness and involvement with the world around us, rather than focusing locally.

The world has been a “Western world” for over 500 years (Zakaria 2011, 65).  During that time, America was colonized, established, and grew to dominance on the world stage.  America may be likened, in this way, to an adult who has lived a sheltered youth.  With no understanding of the world around her, she continues to think herself the center of the universe.  This has led to the buildup of some anti-Western frustration around the world (Zakaria 2011, 36).  The world is opening up, however, even as America is closing down (Zakaria 2011, 60), and this is leading to the rapid rise and growth of the rest of the world.  Indeed, Americans are still not broadly oriented outwardly (Zakaria 2011, 58).

This process is strikingly similar to the process of the shift in the center of gravity of Christianity.  Over the last hundred years, the center of Christianity has shifted to the “global south” which includes the Eastern world (Jenkins 2007, 1).  Many Christians have been slow to accept this phenomenon, continuing to cling to a conception of Christianity as a white, Western religion (Rah 2009, 13).  America still believes itself to be the dominant leader of Christianity, but the rest of the world has risen and now American Christians are just one of many players on the stage.  The task then, is the same for American Christians as it is for Americans as a whole: throw off their blinders and release the world from an American and Western captivity, which stands contrast to reality (Rah 2009, 20).  For Christians, we must remember that our narrative is not one of globalization, but of people in relationships with God and each other (Groody 2010, 25).  God’s story is far broader than ours, and he is no respecter of people groups.

The new post-American world means that I must become a global American.  Being insular in my outlook would be contributing to the problem, rather than being part of the solution.  I cannot be uninformed about the world.  A study showed that 21 percent of American news coverage was internationally-focused, and the majority of that focused on US foreign affairs (Ghemawat 2011, 26).  That means that less than 10 percent of the readily-available news media is on international affairs that are not immediately related to the US.  I need to break free from that and be aware of global happenings and develop at least a basic understanding of world history, culture, politics, and current affairs.  This will allow me to operate as a global citizen, rather than merely an American citizen.

Second, I must become a global Christian.  Rather than continuing to think of my own theology as the baseline theology that must be contextualized into other contexts, I need to think of the Bible as the baseline theology that had to be contextualized to become American.  This means that, before I export my own beliefs, I need to give thought to stripping away American lenses from them.  I have a great deal to learn from Christians around the world, and to learn this I need to engage with Christians around the world.  This may mean travelling, or it may simply mean reading their works and having dialogue with them through the wonders of globalizing technology.

Finally, it means that my church must become global.  Without diminishing the crucial importance of local mission and community outreach, the American Church, and my church in particular, must become immediately engaged internationally.  My local church recently allowed its entire international mission program, which had been a vibrant and thriving part of the congregation for many years, to come to a complete halt.  Shutting down and outsourcing all international mission work, it has stepped away from sending missionaries overseas.  This is a regression from the direction implied by globalization and the coming post-American world.  The church should be even more focused on becoming involved internationally, especially in ways that are nationally-led rather than American-led.  The church ought to seek out existing local mission efforts abroad that it can support and be involved in, not as leader, but as a resource.

Furthermore, globalization and the shifting center of Christianity means that success in mission requires resources from all over the globe.  Western societies have become mission fields themselves, with missionaries coming from the global south to revive Western Christianity (Escobar 2003, 18, 162-165).  Therefore, the American church, and my church in particular, need to seek out opportunities to bring non-Western missionaries to our community.  We ought to recognize that receiving missionaries may be one of the best ways to reach the non-white members of our community, who likely have more in common with overseas missionaries than with our church staff.  Biblical mission work establishes reciprocal relationships (Escobar 2003, 157), and my church has the opportunity to create these both abroad and locally.

In conclusion, I, and my fellow American Christians, must increase our awareness and activity globally.  It is no longer enough to act locally and think locally, nor is it even enough to think globally.  The slogan of the “glocal” movement was once “Act locally, think globally.”  In a truly globalized world, and especially as Americans in a post-American world, we must also act globally.  The blessing of technology means that acting globally is no longer exclusively possible by long-distance travel, although that can never be replaced.  We must expand our outlook globally, then follow that up with true reciprocal global action that goes to the world and simultaneously receives from the world, all in a deep posture of humility.  God’s story of the entire world existed before American Christianity, and it will exist long after we are gone.  We are merely brief actors upon His stage.

Works Cited

Escobar, Samuel. 2003. The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone. Edited by David Smith, Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Ghemawat, Pankaj. 2011. World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Groody, Daniel G. 2010. Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Reprint, Seventh.

Jenkins, Philip. 2007. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Revised and Expanded ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Rah, Soong-Chan. 2009. The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Zakaria, Fareed. 2011. The Post-American World, Release 2.0. Release 2.0 ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Post-Information Age

We used to call this the information age.  The idea was that information would begin to be power as it became more widespread and transferable.  Information was going to be the currency that the world traded in, as inventions and discoveries became more commonplace.  Executives didn't need secretaries who could type letters, they needed assistants who could find information for them.  What dawned, however, was that information itself became commonplace.  It became unimaginably easy to find just about any information one wanted.  Suddenly, executives didn't need secretaries who could find information either (they could do it themselves) - they needed assistants who could understand and simplify information into meaning.

Now we are in a world where information is literally at our fingertips.  In less than 5 minutes' reading time, using only a digital device that rarely leaves my person, I can become a novice in nearly any subject.  Ken Jennings, the guy who won 74 straight games of Jeopardy, speaks about the pain of becoming obsolete.  Information isn't power anymore, because everyone with access to the internet has unlimited access to it.  The alchemists trying to create gold centuries ago would have limited its value.  Tim Berners-Lee limited the value of information by creating a platform for it to be widely-accessible.  The "information age" was short-lived.

I would argue, as Ken Jennings tries to do, that information has not lost its value entirely.  It's still better to know something than to have to look it up.  Our educational system, however, is training for a world that doesn't exist yet, and it's very possible that when our current students are in the prime of their careers, information will be so easily accessible that the value of knowing facts actually does decrease to nearly nothing.  What is the objective of education in that type of a world?

The value in a world inundated with information is found in connections.  I can read all I want about nanotechnology, but the information isn't valuable unless I realize a connection to something I know about architectural engineering.  I can become an expert in organizational dynamics, but that knowledge becomes truly significant when I start seeing the wisdom of the ages recorded in literature about human nature.  It isn't particularly important anymore for students to learn the name of the admirals in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, but it's exceedingly important for them to understand the implications of the Russo-Japanese War on the 20th Century.  Knowledge pales in comparison to an understanding of cause and effect and the ability to think critically and creatively.  Connecting disparate fields and linking separate disciplines creates innovation.  The importance of a "Renaissance Man" is being re-discovered.

A Good Habit To Be In

Stretching really isn't much fun.  Any kind of it.  Taking time out before sports to stretch can seem like a drag, but not doing it usually leads to injury (so says my two major leg injuries in the past year).  Being stretched beyond our capacities isn't much fun either.  In the midst of it, we generally feel frustrated, bitter, and overwhelmed.  Unfortunately, I had a mentor in college who admonished me, "Never deny God the opportunity to stretch you."  I didn't think I could take on one more thing that summer, but then the opportunity came up to go to Kenya.  I went, on his advice, and that trip radically changed my life.  The saying has become central to my life philosophy.  I enjoy growing and learning anyways, so deciding to put myself in positions where God has to stretch me works out well.  It generally doesn't make it any more fun in the meantime, unfortunately.

Since getting married, my wife and I have tried to make it a habit to regularly do things we don't think we can do.  One of them is charitable giving.  We decided that every December, we would give a large amount to various organizations that we don't regularly support.  We don't really look at our budget or bank account, we just do it.  We use savings to cover whatever we don't have.  Giving becomes addicting if you give it a try.  We've tried this habit again with our current plan to spend the summer in Peru.  It's well out of our comfort zone, and we have to overcome all sorts of challenges like 3 month unpaid leave from work, sublease our apartment, find a long-term dog sitter, fundraise, and more.  We felt like it was what we were supposed to do, however, so we didn't let ourselves get distracted by those things - we just made the commitment.

I think this is a pretty good habit to be in.  There's certainly worse ones out there.  Putting ourselves in situations that we don't think we can do forces us to exercise our faith.  If faith isn't regularly tested, it can become self-confidence.  Self-confidence isn't a bad thing, but it's not faith.  Faith is relying on God to come through because there's no other way.  Making bold commitments is a great way to get there.  It's like jumping off a diving board - there's that moment when there's no turning back.  Faith can be like that - you just close your eyes and pass the point of no return without thinking too much about the consequences (please don't think doing stupid things is faith, however).  Like the water, we know that we've got an unbreakable safety net in God and that one way or another, things will work out.  Maybe it'll cost us tremendously.  That's okay!  Either way, you'll find yourself well-stretched at the end of it.  And more ready to be an instrument of the Lord.

It's All About Me, Pt. II

In my previous post, I wrote about how it feels like we have a culture of individualism creeping into worship music.  I feel a bit, however, like I might have missed a deeper point regarding my facetious title ("It's all about me").  More significant than whether or not our worship music is too individualistic is whether or not our worship is too consumeristic.

I stole this graphic, but I think it's pretty funny (video is definitely worth a watch too).  It's easy to poke fun when you look at it this way, but I fear that it hits too close to home and that's why we poke fun at it.  Worse, it sometimes feels like people easily talk disparagingly about "consumer worship" one moment, then dive straight into it the next.  There's two culprits here, as each side is quick to point out.  The churches blame the people - nobody comes if it's not what they want.  The people blame the churches - this is what they're being fed and who would go eat cereal when you could have eggs and bacon?  Gotta start somewhere, so I'm just going to consider a few thoughts, then I'd love to hear your feedback.

First, churches.  I believe this is a culture thing.  You're right, the people demand it.  But cultures can be changed.  I'm not talking about the entire nation, I'm talking about your own congregation.  To do this, you need to "exegete" your own cultural artifacts.  For example, do you have rows of comfortable seats facing a band on a stage?  You might be encouraging something.  Do you constantly work to make your production more and more professional to compete with the church down the street?  That's keeping up with the joneses, not ministry.  You're dealing with a symptom of something else.  When the Holy Spirit shows up, you won't need to worry about your production.  Spiritually mature believers, being discipled deeply at your church, won't be looking to be fed by worship - they'll be looking to praise God for feeding them throughout the week.  God laid down instructions for the Israelites to worship Him, and he didn't take their comfort into account.  Consider setting the bar a bit higher for your members - they may surprise you by reaching for it.

Second, people.  I get it, I really do.  It's called a "heart language of worship" - everyone's got one, and it goes deeper than just your "language."  Just the same as you wouldn't ask a Hispanic to sit in a Korean church week after week, you wouldn't ask someone who worships through contemporary music to sit through a liturgy with an organ and no choir.  There's nothing wrong with wanting to worship in your own "language."  But sometimes we need to put ourselves aside.  When you are a missionary, you enter another culture and choose to worship as they do.  Perhaps we need to think of ourselves more as missionaries, choosing at times to set our own language aside to be part of a community that ministers to each other, and then joins weekly to minister to God.  If you're complaining about the length of the opening set of music, or standing too long, or "those young whippersnappers with guitars", or "those old whippersnappers with organs," you're missing the point.  You don't go to church to get fed.  It's worship.

Anyway, that's just how I feel.  I really do get it.  I feel it.  As a postmodern, I hate scriptedness - it feels inauthentic.  You can tell when the church is really scripting their service, and it drives me nuts.  That's my consumer bent in worship.  I need to remember that it's not about me.  Every time I allow annoyance at anything to block my worship from God, I've got things backward.

It's All About Me

Worship music is a close subject to my heart.  I feel very connected to God when I'm singing to Him, as music runs strongly in my genes and influences my life significantly.  To me, singing worship is a two-way street of glorifying Him and telling Him things as He speaks back to me, convicting me of sin and the truth.  I sometimes close my eyes, I often use my hands, and I always move my feet.  It's like a subtle dance that I do with God, involuntary, but energizing.  I dedicated my life to God during a worship music set, on 7/27/98, and on 9/17/11 I married a worship leader.  Worship music is a close subject to my heart.

I feel a bit like I've been lined into this approach to worship music, however, by a prevailing American cultural artifact.  We tend to think ideally that our approach to God is informed solely by the Bible, but I generally find that it's informed far more significantly by our culture.  The American cultural artifact I'm talking about is individualism.  I began to notice it a couple of years ago.  It seemed like a lot of popular worship songs were focused on a "personal relationship" with Jesus, just like a lot of our preaching talks about.  Worship songs use "I" and "me" a lot.  They often talk about what I'm going to do, or what He's done for me, or what my emotions are.  Nothing really wrong with that, unless it becomes the predominant message.

I've started to think about the richness of a community coming to God.  Sometimes worship music makes me feel like we are a bunch of individuals who happen to be in the same place singing to God at once.  My personal theology has a lot more to do with God restoring creation than with God merely restoring me.  I'm grateful for my salvation, of course, but I'm pretty interested in God saving others, and God lifting people out of poverty, and God saving us from our own ecological destruction, God restoring marriages, and so on.  There aren't a lot of worship songs about these topics.  Sometimes I just sing different lyrics.  I absolutely love the song You Hold Me Now by Hillsong United, but I love it even more when I sing "You hold us now" and "For eternity, all the earth will give all the glory to Your name."  Suddenly the song doesn't seem to be about God wiping away my pain, but the pain of all creation!  Wow!

I'm hardly the first to talk about excessive individualism or a me-focus in worship music, but I hope to see more church music about the things that God's heart is about!

Mind Over Matter

I have been in the post-college workforce for just over five years.  In that time, I've virtually proven that the mind is capable of telling the body what to do.  There have been times that I've sustained 70-hour work weeks for a month in a row.  There was a time when I was working full-time, working part-time, going to school part-time, and dating the girl who would become my wife.  I've pressed forward with volunteer activities, mission travel, church involvement, family commitments, and laid 10 hours a week of school over the top of all of it.  And through it all, every time my body said, "Enough, I'm tired!" I would tell it, "You don't have time to be tired, get to work."  And I pressed on, sometimes finding in myself superhuman strength to work harder than I ever thought possible.  And I'm here to tell you that it worked.  I was able to forbid my body to feel tiredness.  And I was able to accomplish a lot.  A whole lot.

But that isn't the whole story.  There's a price to be paid for living this way.  The price of forbidding your body to feel fatigue is that your body learns to accept fatigue as "normal."  It's a constant struggle to get up in the mornings, even on days when you're looking forward to your activities.  Things blur into an unrecognizable mass of activities until you don't feel fully present at any of them.  Memories slip away, or are never formed, and there is a danger of missing the potential for amazing experiences.  Furthermore, friends slip away, as they perceive that you don't have time for them, and you never quite find the time to deepen that friendship that you're just beginning.  Family events become a burden, and you start to get cynical toward people around you that seem to stand in the way of getting done what you're trying to get done.  Even if you love everything you're doing, and I do, the price gets paid daily.

I don't pay this price gladly.  I do not regret all that I've accomplished and learned in the past five years, but I certainly regret paying the price.  I wish I had made more time for friends, family, and relationships.  I do know that this is a temporary condition.  School will be over in about a year and not having that constant burden hanging over me will be a life-changer.  In the meantime, I've learned that I am capable of far more than I think I am.  I've also learned that my mind has a great deal of power over my body.  I've also learned that I don't want to live this way.  I want to balance work, worship, rest, and play each day.  It's time to take a break!

The Business of the Church

I function as a business director at a Christian ministry organization.  I stand in a confusing middle world between the business world and the ministry role.  Constantly, priorities must be made and interests balanced...accountability versus flexibility, tax law versus grace, and more.  This is a place that I feel is my calling right now - not to be a ministry person with a gift for administration, but an administrator with a gift and passion for ministry.  Given this, it might surprise you if I say that

THE CHURCH IS NOT AND SHOULD NOT BE A BUSINESS!

Now that I have that statement off my chest, I can breathe much easier.  It seems so common for churches and ministries to cross over an imaginary boundary where they begin to function like businesses.  This should not be!  Under no circumstances (legal issues aside) should secrets be kept in churches!  Under no circumstances should people (staff, member, or otherwise) be treated as an object!  Under no circumstances should the "business" side of the ministry be allowed to take precedence over the ministry itself!  These are things that serve for-profit businesses well.  They have no place in the Church.

I've seen all of these things happen too frequently.  Pastors who keep secrets from the congregation or avoid divulging very significant information until the opportune time, and people who have become mistreated in the pursuit of a mission statement or a bottom line.  I've seen a desire for saving electricity cause ministry events to be regularly shut down prematurely.  There are many pastors who become CEOs, managing the staff and business and losing the shepherding in the process.  I've sadly had to watch a pastor ask for forgiveness from the altar for making the church an "organization" rather than an "organism."  Praise God that he was humble enough to say such a thing in front of the entire congregation!

None of this should be read to imply that the business is not important.  It is beyond important - it is critical.  I believe that a ministry that fails to keep its house in order loses favor in the sight of both God and men.  Unwise business decisions will sink the best ministries, and a poorly-laid foundation of policies, procedures, and support systems will topple incredibly fruitful programs.  However, we on the "business" side should never allow ourselves to think that our work is the end.  We are the means to the end.  Our job is to set missionaries and ministers up to succeed, not to ourselves succeed.  Sometimes that means we'll have to bend over backward, go above and beyond, and even grit our teeth and not say anything.  If we can do this, we'll see great ministry in our organizations, and after all that's why we all took the pay cut to go this route in the first place!