View from 30,000 Feet

I sit writing this at midnight on Monday evening MST in Salt Lake City, UT. I am here this week for a New Church Development Conference being put on by my denomination. My intentions are to blog my thoughts all week. This will probably mean at least five entries in the next five days, perhaps more since I have a list of things I now wish to blog about.

In order to arrive here in Salt Lake City it took two flights, both about 2-1/2 hours in length. The first flight was to Dallas and the second to my destination. On the second leg, we basically flew along the entire length of the Rocky Mountains. If you have never seen the Rockies from the air, it is a truly amazing sight. This beauty of God’s creation was in my view for over 60 minutes. Beside me sat a young man from Boise, Idaho who was telling me the names of many of the peaks. (Not that I can recall a single one!)

I have lived my entire life on the East Coast and very close to the Appalachian Mountains. I have hiked the Appalachian Trail and camped in the wild. Three years ago I rode my bicycle the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I have seen this mountain range from about every angle. It is indeed very different from the Rockies. I do not mean just in shear height, although that is indeed one difference. From 30,000 feet it is very clear that the two ranges were formed in very different types of creative activity. The Rockies are sharp, steep, edgy, rocky, (hence their name) and full of cliffs. The Appalachians for the most part are rolling mountains, full of forest, wild life and greenery. It is true that both ranges contain wild life, but here again; it is different because of the differing terrain. Both are God’s unique beauty in their own special way.

But that is not my point in this blog. This is. As I flew over the Rockies I thought: A couple of hundred years ago, settlers were traveling across these same mountains. They had crossed the Appalachians only to face a thousand miles of basically flat land in the Midwest. Then as they would leave Kansas or Iowa and move into Colorado or the Dakotas they would see looming in the horizon a sight they were totally unprepared for . . . the Rocky Mountains. Almost to a person the only mountains they had ever seen were the Appalachians. Nothing in their past could have prepared them for the vast wild area of the Rockies. There was no frame of reference for them to understand what they were about to encounter. The mountain ranges are totally different. The lessons from one range would not translate easily to the other.

Here is my point. The Church of Jesus Christ is facing a future that is different than anything we have ever faced in our 2,000 years. There are more people alive today than have been alive cumulatively for most of the planet’s history. We are facing an earth that is becoming smaller by the day. The days of isolation are history. Technology has made information available in quantities that could not even have been dreamed of earlier in the church’s history. Men and women are becoming increasingly pluralistic every day. Faith is a cafeteria. Pick and choose what works at any given point in time. Next week, next month, or next year you can always change. The list could go on, but the point is obvious.

If we as the church are facing the Rockies after crossing the Appalachians and the plains, we will need to operate differently than we have in the past. Let’s be honest here. It really does not really matter what Christian talk radio, periodicals, or preachers say, most of our culture really is not against the church. They do not see the church as the enemy at all. Oh, that it were that simple. The issue is far worse. In truth, they see the church as irrelevant. They do not see the church as a player at all in the big scheme of things. That is far worse than being perceived as the enemy.

As I write over the next weeks and months, I want to address what the church is going to have to do if we are going to cross the Rockies. My thoughts will not be unique or original with me, but I believe they are true. Stay tuned. The lessons learned in one mountain range do not translate easily to the other.