What if the church became the human incubator for creating the world’s best future? What if we walked away from our security in the “what is” and began to live in this mystery of the “what if”?
If Mosaic in Los Angeles is anything as a community of faith, it is that she has never found her “what is.”
There are some things that are incredibly reproducible, like McDonald’s, and aren’t we grateful for that? (That’s a joke.) Or Starbucks.
There’s something strange inside of us that, at first, causes us to feel grateful there are franchises, but then later, we learn to despise them. I can tell you, I’ve traveled the world, and I’ve been so grateful when I’ve seen a McDonald’s in the middle of some obscure country when I’ve been really, really hungry. After a while, even the smell of grease is appetizing.
For a season—when Starbucks was taking over the world—I would feel a sense of connectedness and community when I saw a Starbucks in an obscure and unexpected place—like I’d found my place to belong wherever I was around the world. “Oh, there’s a Starbucks.”
My wife used to mock me and say, “Every time we pass a Starbucks, you have to say, ‘There’s a Starbucks.’”
I don’t say that anymore. Now I say, “Let’s go to Peet’s … Let’s go to Intelligentsia …Let’s find some Stump Town or Handsome coffee”—the world keeps changing for the better.
There’s something inside of us that, at first, longs for standardization so we can make sense of the world, and then something that causes us to despise standardization because it causes us to lose our sense of self.
What’s happened is that we, as the church, have chosen to live in the space of standardization, security and comfort. We live in this “what is” reality, and then we talk about things like creating culture, making history, creating the future, and we don’t realize that we actually do not have the fundamental core values of a “what if” culture because they violate our core values that protect the “what is.”
When I became a follower of Christ, I didn’t feel I was properly equipped to believe because faith became about what we knew, not what we imagined. The church was actually more about belief than about faith.
What if the church became the epicenter of human creativity and human imagination?
I have worked as a futurist for 20 years for companies and organizations. I realized the reason I was a futurist outside of the church was because the church wasn’t interested in the future. When I would work with churches, organizations and denominations, people would come and say, “How are you able to have such keen insights into the future?” I’d say, “I don’t have any keen insights on the future. I just see the present really clearly.”
Most people are living in the past, and the present terrifies them.