If your church board feels tired and confused from time to time, trust that you are in good company. Compared to what church boards dealt with in earlier decades, today’s leaders are facing a tsunami of challenges across the world and inside the church.
In a recent address – given before his encyclical on AI, which also deserves attention – Pope Leo reflected on this tsunami and its implications for the work of religious leaders:
Pope Francis used the term polycrisis to evoke the dramatic nature of the historical situation we are experiencing, where wars, climate change, growing inequalities, forced and contrasting migrations, stigmatized poverty, disruptive technological innovations, personal isolation, and precarious employment and rights converge… in such important matters, the Church’s social doctrine is called to provide interpretive keys that bring science and conscience into dialogue, thus making a fundamental contribution to knowledge, hope, and peace.
It’s not just one challenge, one crisis. It’s a host of challenges, a polycrisis. Some are connected; some are scattered along your church’s path. Each of them is crying for attention, and all of them elude easy solutions.
And then, last week, a study out of Great Britain told us that the average Briton will spend five years of their life … doomscrolling.
Lest we think this is just an issue for ‘the younger generation,’ the study assures us otherwise.
Doomscrolling is an intergenerational habit. People aged 16 to 24 spend 44 percent of their time on smartphones unintentionally, followed by 45 to 54-year-olds at 42 percent. Women are slightly more likely to spend time on their smartphones unintentionally, 38 percent compared with 34 percent for men.
And the kicker to this study is that word, unintentionally. After observing 6,000 people of all ages for a year, the researchers found that 36% of smartphone scrolling is unintentional. The study concludes:
People who spend more time doomscrolling are more likely to report negative effects linked to phone use. Over half of the highly unintentional phone users say they feel worse after using their phone for longer than intended
Amid the polycrisis, many of us have drifted into habits that make us feel worse, and which we lack the intentionality to counter. This is a moment that challenges – and invites – your church board to act with intention.
Paul had a warm relationship with the church at Philippi. His letter to the Philippians is soaked in joy – the word appears roughly sixteen times in four chapters. And it is written from a prison cell, which means that Paul is not offering the contentment of comfortable circumstances. He’s describing something that persists inside adversity, not instead of it. That’s an intention that demands our attention.
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:4-9)
In Philippians 4:8, the word translated “think” is logizomai — to calculate, reckon, deliberately consider. It’s a word of accountability. Paul isn’t saying “feel good thoughts.” He’s saying: keep an account of what you’re putting in your mind. Make thinking a practice of active, intentional reckoning, not passive reception. That’s directly useful against the 36% of doomscrolling that no one decided to do.
As we head into summer, it seems appropriate to spend some extended time considering our intentions as followers of Jesus and as church boards. We will explore this further in coming weeks.
What habits have you unintentionally developed since the pandemic, and how do they make you feel? What habits have you intentionally developed in the same time period, and how do they make you feel?
Thoughts on the percentage of time you engage in one set of habits versus the other?
How do the crises listed by Pope Leo show up in your congregation? How about in your church board meetings?
What unintentional habits have you developed as a church board in recent years that you might want to break?
What intention is Paul setting for the Philippians in his letter?
What would it look like to act on that intention in your next board meeting?
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