pat loughery

I’m taking a break from reading for my Doctor of Ministry – following what I believe is the inspiration of the Trinity – and reading “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine).

I’ve read several good summaries or reviews of the book, for example this one from Johnny Baker, or this one that Tom wrote to the Anabaptists – I started reading mine a couple of nights ago, and it’s definitely Tom’s best one yet.

When I’m done I’ll summarize the book too, but for now I wanted to throw up a quote or two.

In a chapter Tom wrote entitled “Coming Home to the Good LIfe of the Global Mall” about the church’s entanglement in global consumerism as its great hope, he says this:

Why don’t we discuss the influences of the dominant culture at church? Why don’t we discuss the stories so many of us buy into and their influence on us and our kids? Why don’t we explore the major role these stories play in defining our notions of the good life to which we aspire to come home?

I think part of the answer is that the Western church has historically taken a limited view of conversion. In most churches we are taught that following Christ involves transforming our spiritual lives and our moral values and helping us with our relationships. We rarely hear that God might want to transform our cultural values too.

(p.77)

Here’s Tom’s point: Christians are too easily embracing of the dominant culture’s belief system, as much as we say that we’re countercultural. But we still want comfort, safety, a nice home, good education for our kids, cars that don’t break down, a fulfilling job. We wrap these hopes in the banner of ‘relevance’ if we’re analytical, or worse, ‘God wants us to have the good life’ if we’re just buying in uncritically.

But, what if we took seriously a challenge to rediscover what ‘the good life’ and ‘God’s preferred future’ really meant?

How then would we live?