In an article posted a couple of weeks ago, Matt Shumer, CEO of HyperWrite, warned that we are now in a phase with AI like we were in February 2020 with COVID-19, when many dismissed the threat … right before the world entered lockdown that March.
Shumer’s warning is hard to process. Seriously, you might say, our church board has so much to handle as it is! Are you really saying that we need to take on AI and potential apocalyptic doom, too?
Seriously, we might reply.
Let’s take a step back and consider twin observations that have been put forward in several venues in recent weeks:
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- There’s more misinformation, manipulative content, and mental garbage available for free than at any point in human history.
- There’s also more high-quality, healthy, and mind-enhancing content available for free than at any point in human history.
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We are awash in all this content, both the good and the bad. And yet, weirdly, no one is awash in the same content—not in your workplace, not in your home, not in your congregation. The result is what one news outlet, Axios, has described as a global “collapse of reality” in our time.
America isn’t alone in witnessing a massive shattering of its common reality. The same mess is metastasizing across Europe, Canada and Japan.
61% say mainstream news media can’t be trusted. Politicians are the least trusted source of truth (22%), worse than ChatGPT (34%). More and more people worldwide cling to influencers in an atomized media ecosystem for some version of reality, leaving those people highly susceptible to manipulation and misinformation.
In this context, Axios urges readers to “take control of your reality.”
Your reality is formed from what you read, see, listen to and experience. It’s no longer mostly shaped by the “news.”
The people you follow, the videos you watch, the podcasts you hear, the news you read all shape the world you know.
This brings us to your church board, your faith in the Living God, your desire to follow Jesus Christ in word and in deed, and the way your congregation understands its unique call.
If churches are one of the few places where people still gather in person intentionally to engage with the depth and meaning of reality … and if churches are one of the few places left with power to shape a shared reality for those gathered … are we rising to that unique and remarkable call?
We will assert that we don’t need the “ifs” in these statements. The church is one of the few places in our society where people still gather in person to engage with the depth and meaning of reality. The church is one of the few places with power to shape a shared reality for those gathered together.
In John 8, Jesus says to those who have left their known world to follow Jesus: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Throughout the history of the church, this text has often been misappropriated. It has been misread as offering freedom from doubt or accountability, instead of freedom for deeper and more obedient discipleship. The freedom described is the freedom to live out of the truth that God, in Jesus Christ, gives life to the world, and that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are the way of life offered to followers of Jesus. These are gifts of truth and of a way of life, entrusted to the church, to share with the world.
Imagine that your church possesses an hourglass filled with sand made of precious gold. When you gather people, when you convene meetings, when you offer programs, when you worship together—the hourglass turns over and gold starts moving through it, marking the time spent in community. That time is just as precious as gold in this world, and increasingly just as rare.
So, in all we are doing as a church, are we spending this precious time wisely? Is every meeting adding deeply to our collective imagination for God? Are the classes, the worship, the informal conversations, building a shared reality of God’s activity in God’s world? And is it all palpably urgent?
Can you feel that urgency in the very air of your faith community? If so, how do you nurture it? And if not, what are you, as a church board, going to do about it?
Looking around at your life, where do you see signs of the “reality collapse” that Axios and others are seeing right now? Where do you see signs that counter that reading of things?
As a church board, what topics of urgency are engaging you and your congregation right now?
In John 8, how do you understand Jesus saying, “If you continue in my word”? What does that mean?
How does Jesus conceive the relationship between truth and freedom?
Do you agree that your church has the power to shape a shared reality for those it gathers? If so, what reality are you trying to shape … and how?
Imagine your time in community as a congregation as gold in an hourglass. What time felt really well spent in the last month? What time felt less so?
Thoughts on how you might adjust that use of time to the urgency and the power of your congregation’s call?
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