Twenty-five years ago, Zygmunt Bauman coined Liquid Modernity to describe a world where “forms of social life
cannot keep their shape for long, because they decompose and melt faster than the time it takes to cast them.” That liquid has since thinned and accelerated. In response, many congregations focus on practical questions:
- Should we prioritize in-person or online gatherings?
- Which programs will attract people?
- How can we schedule activities for greater participation?
These common questions miss the deeper issue. The challenge isn’t just about time, access, advertising, or interest. It’s more fundamentally that our capacity for presence and connection is being eroded by the churn of noise, information, and the unrelenting false urgency of media narrative and digital life.
Three words keep surfacing for me: fragmented, frenetic, flattened.
We are fragmented, pulled in countless directions without a unifying center. Our identities are shaped by competing roles and platforms, leaving us scattered across emotional and digital spaces. These spaces are both isolating and global in reach, a dynamic that exceeds our psychological capacity. The self becomes a collage of curated yet rarely integrated performances. Communities, mediated by algorithms and shifting loyalties, feel fragile and provisional. We long for what Parker Palmer calls a “hidden wholeness” and “an undivided life.”
The apostle, Paul insists, “…in Him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).
Congregations participate in the life of Christ in part by resisting the focus-devouring, spectacle-driven logic of the attention economy. We need spaces that are free from spectacle and performance, nurturing focus, where we can return to ourselves and to God. Shared rhythms of prayer, silence, confession, and meditation on God’s Word draw us into a common story that anchors our common faith.
We are frenetic. Even when we stop moving, our minds keep racing. Time is no longer received but managed,
every moment a currency to spend or waste. Chronic stress traps us in what Bruce Perry calls “fast brain,” which is reactive, urgent, and hyper-vigilant. In fast brain, time narrows and urgency intensifies. Apps and algorithms feed this restlessness, offering quick hits and the illusion of control. But they leave hollow spaces for meaning-making, spaces quickly filled by conspiracy, outrage, ideology, and distorted belonging.
“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength… they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40:31).
The Gospel calls us to a slower way. Waiting is not passivity; it is trust.
How can your congregation be a community where people shift from reactivity to receptivity? What will it look like to cultivate patience and learn to more deliberately discern God’s movements? What are the slower processes and practices you could introduce?
We are flattened. Life feels thin, stripped of depth and wonder. Charles Taylor called this the “immanent frame,” a world closed to transcendence, where mystery is muted and beauty becomes something we scroll past.
But Scripture refuses a thin world. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). That’s not just about stars. It’s an invitation to linger, to gaze until wonder returns. Jesus, too, extends this invitation: consider the lilies and the birds, not as distractions but as signs of God’s sustained attention and care. (Matt. 6:26–29).
“The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.” ― Abraham Joshua Heschel,
How might your congregation bear witness to the wonder of God’s majesty and holiness while reminding people that God’s glory touches even the most familiar corners of our lives? What sort of proclamation will draw people to behold the mystery of the God who is both wholly other yet one of us and remaining with us?
Fragmented. Frenetic. Flattened.
It’s the reality we face, but not without hope or good news.
Christ gathers what is scattered.
The Spirit slows what is hurried.
The Father opens us again to wonder.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest… for my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30).
Prompts for discussion:
For individuals or groups, consider the questions interspersed throughout the post.
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