The ongoing pain for so many in our culture today has led some to adapt the stock greeting “How are you doing?”/ “I’m fine” into something more honest, more vulnerable, more reflective of the moment. “Frankly, I don’t know how I am doing until I hear today’s news,” responds one person. “How can I be fine in a world like this?” asks another.
Still another has intentionally stopped saying “I’m fine” and chooses instead to respond, “I am as fine as the world allows.”
Sometimes, the most dangerous choices seem benign on the surface. The world is in turmoil, with the greatest harm falling on those who don’t have the power to fight back. And yet, to cede our well-being to the world can drown out God’s voice in our day-to-day life.
On your church board, it may not be the largest of global or national upheavals, but the medium-sized tempests that are in constant rotation in church life. Worship, youth group, budget, staffing – the opportunities are legion to believe that your church board and your church’s ministry can only be as good as all these pressure points will allow at any given time.
Ted Gioia recently observed:
[T]he Internet creates the illusion that all culture is taking place right now. Actual history disappears in the eternal present of the web.
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- Everything on YouTube is happening right now!
- Everything on Netflix is happening right now!
- Everything on Spotify is happening right now!
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Of course, this is an illusion. Just compare these platforms with libraries and archives and other repositories of history. The contrast is extreme.
We can place this in the context of all media today. David Brooks noted last month:
One of [media’s] jobs is to motivate you to click on our headlines. A team of researchers from New Zealand looked at headlines from 47 American publications. They found that between 2000 and 2019, the share of headlines meant to evoke anger more than doubled. The prevalence of headlines meant to evoke fear rose by 150 percent.
The systematic erasure of historical context, coupled with a pervasive media environment that encourages fear and anger, makes for a destructive mix.
You may not see these larger trends on your church board or in the life of your congregation. But the subtle, persistent erosion of God’s potent hope is something that many congregations are experiencing. “I honestly don’t know how I am doing until I hear today’s news” is, at its heart, a statement devoid of hope. It is a statement that drains the present of awareness of our place in history and of those who have struggled in faith before this moment. It is also an abdication – even in these fraught and abusive times – to model the hope within us because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We are writing this from Greece. Along with other Ministry Collaborative colleagues, we are exploring the literal and biblical terrain of Paul’s ministry as it went global. We were in Thessaloniki, where Paul was not well received. In Phillippi, we saw the jail where Paul was imprisoned and the ruins of the very community to which he later wrote, saying:
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. (Philippians 4:4-7)
Read through the lens of today’s headlines, framed by the pain and injustice of current realities, those words seem hopelessly naïve – an abdication of faithful resistance to the moment. And yet all was not well when Paul wrote this anthem of hope and rejoicing… far from it. Out of a well-spring of faith, across every conceivable hardship, Paul held out God’s hope in his ministry.
To hear the call to “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, Rejoice” … to trust in the experience of being held by God in all times, even ours … nothing is more powerful and nothing is more orienting for the leadership of your board.
“I am as fine as the world allows” is a choice that will put you on a road. “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, Rejoice” is also a choice. And a road. And, crucially, a promise of God.
How are you navigating the casual “how are you” in this time? Have you found yourself struggling to respond in a way that seems authentic to this moment?
What do you make of Ted Gioia’s observation that “actual history disappears in the eternal present of the web”? How exactly does that work?
In these stressed times, how do you and your church board strike a balance between the challenges of today and the promises of God?
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