[Taken with permission from chapter 2 of Doug Pagitt's book, Church in the Inventive Age.]

WE DON'T KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING, BUT WE SURE KNOW WHERE WE'VE BEEN

THE FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE, IT IS JUST UNEVENLY DISTRIBUTED. -WILLIAM GIBSON

We live in the midst of inescapable change. Maybe this thrills you. Maybe this scares you. Regardless, the changes happening right now in American society mean every cultural institution, every community, every individual has a choice to make: We can either be in on the change or we can be left behind.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say that everything in our lives, everything we depend on for our basic survival, was created in the last 200 years. Think about your typical day. You wake up in a bed made of materials-internal springs, polymers, anti-microbial fabrics-that didn't exist 200 years ago. You are awakened by an alarm clock that was invented in 1876 (or maybe to an iPod that was invented in 2001). You take a shower (indoor plumbing arrived in the mid-19th century); eat eggs shipped by trucks from a different part of the country, purchased at a grocery store with a credit card, and cooked over an electric stove. You drive a car to work and maybe make a few calls on your cell phone on the way.

You might live in a state that was open frontier in 1860 or in a town that was nothing but grassland in 1922. You might send your kids to a school where they read digitally printed books and use computers and watch DVDs. You might go to church on Sunday morning at 11:00 where you speak into a microphone and sing along with words projected on a screen.

The basic frameworks for communication, transportation, education, religious life, even plumbing, have been around for centuries, but the actual resources we use every day are relatively recent additions to the social landscape.

For most of human history, changes in broad social structures came occasionally and were limited in geographic scope. But in the last two centuries, cultural change has become far-reaching, constant, and increasingly rapid.

Why and how societies change is a fascinating subject, but I'm more interested in what change brings with it.

In the last 200 years, American culture has moved through three distinct ages--the Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age, and the Information Age--and is heavily engaged in a fourth--an era I have dubbed the Inventive Age. With each of these ages has come a shift in what we think, what we value, what we do, and how we do it.

Living in the Inventive Age is not optional. It's here. It is changing us. It will keep changing our culture at a breakneck speed, whether we are on board with those changes or not. If the church is going to survive, we have to do what the church has always done: figure out how to live and thrive in our culture.

CHANGE IS THE NORM, NOT THE POINT

I'm an ideas guy. I love big ideas. I get a vision for something and I'm obsessed with making it a reality.

Because of that, people think that I am always advocating for change. They hear about the church I pastor--Solomon's Porch--where we sit on couches and write our own music and create sermons as a group. They get hung up on the ways we've changed what church looks like. They hear me speak at an event and come away thinking they have to change everything they're doing-get rid of the pews, light some candles, grow facial hair-to become something other than who they are.

But that's not the kind of change to which I'm calling us.

LIVING IN THE INVENTIVE AGE IS NOT OPTIONAL.

I'm calling us to find our place in a swiftly shifting culture, to consider how we need to change what we think, what we value, what we do and how we do it. I'm calling us to be the church in the Inventive Age.

We are not called to change for change's sake. We are called to live faithfully in the time and place in which we live. Living faithfully may require us to make changes in what we do, but changing our practices is not the point. Change only matters if it's based in an understanding of why that change is needed. If it's not, the only change you'll make is to trade one set of problems for another.

When a culture changes, everything in the culture changes. Not all at once, but over time. The tensions we are seeing in American Christianity--declining membership in mainline churches, fractious relationships between evangelicals and mainliners, an untapped spiritual hunger among young adults-point to the discomfort change brings with it.

Your level of willingness to live with some of that discomfort will determine if this is a dangerous book or a hopeful book.

We can't pretend cultural change doesn't impact the church. It does. It always has. Every church exists in the context of a culture. Every church has inherited a culture.

Most churches meet on Sunday mornings, not because there is something sacred about 11:00 a.m. but because that was the best time for farmers to head into town for an hour. They could do their morning chores, go to church, and get home in time to eat and head back to the fields for the afternoon.1 Those churches that still meet at 11 a.m. on Sundays, despite having not a single farmer in the congregation, are living out an inherited cultural norm.

We can't pretend churches don't bring about cultural change. They do. They always have. Again, even the most innocuous parts of our lives point to the interplay between the culture and its various institutions. Would restaurants all over the country set up Sunday brunch buffets if not for the Sunday church crowd?

Thankfully, the discomfort and the need to push through it are not new phenomena. This has been the call of the church since its birth.

YOUR CHURCH IS MORE MULTICULTURAL THAN YOU THINK

The narrative of our faith is strung together by change. We should be used to it by now.

THE REFORMERS CHANGED THE CHURCH BY REWRITING THE RULES OF AUTHORITY.

THE 1ST-CENTURY CHRISTIANS CHANGED THE CHURCH BY INCLUDING THE GENTILES IN THE JEWISH STORY.

THE APOSTLES CHANGED THE CHURCH BY BELIEVING IN A RESURRECTED MESSIAH.

THE PROPHETS CHANGED THE FAITH BY TURNING THE STORY OF CAPTIVITY INTO A STORY OF REDEMPTION.

MOSES CHANGED THE FAITH BY CHASING A PROMISE.

ABRAHAM CHANGED THE FAITH BY MAKING A COVENANT WITH GOD.

The Gospel of Mark gives us a rather strange introduction to Jesus. Jesus is walking alongside a lake in Galilee and says, "The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15). For a Jewish teacher and Messiah to be introduced walking, not in Jerusalem, but in Galilee, meant something was changing. It's as if Mark wanted to point out that the center of the faith was no longer the Temple but Jesus.

The New Testament tells story after story of the shift from a faith based on the Temple and synagogue model to one that included apostles, Gentiles, and home churches. The Bible is clear that this process was more than-a-little uncomfortable for the religious leaders of the day.

Still, these people understood that change comes and that the faith compels us to move forward, not back. They faced upheaval, doubt, even death. They faced the wondrous task of proclaiming the kingdom of God in their day. And that will never change.

Too often, churches stay stuck in the past and end up dying off as their lifeblood is sucked away in the name of tradition. Just as often, churches ignore the past and move forward with no regard for the strengths of our history. Both approaches are a mistake.

The past is not our standard. It is not the test of whether something is right or good. But it's also not an albatross we need to shuck off as quickly as possible. The past is our constant companion. It is always with us. The question is what do we do with it--return to it, let it rule, or take its best efforts with us into the future?

[Taken with permission from chapter 2 of Doug Pagitt's book, Church in the Inventive Age.]