DEFINING OUR RELATIONSHIP

THE FUTURE IS THE SAME AS THE PAST, RIGHT UP UNTIL THE POINT WHEN IT ISN'T.

—DOUG PAGITT

Authors are often told that a book should build a relationship between the writer and the reader. So here we are, starting a relationship.

It's a rather strange relationship to be sure. I'm going to do all of the talking. I don't know you but I'm going to take my best guess so I can talk about the work you do. I'm assuming you are a church leader of some kind—a pastor, a ministry leader, or one of the saints among us who puts energy into your church without pay. Maybe you're reading this book for a class or because you are on an elder board and someone told you to read it. Maybe you've just picked it up because it's short and you need something to read on your flight. Maybe you've read other things I've written or maybe you've never heard of me.

There are enough variables in this relationship that I think we should start it with some straight talk about what this book is and what it isn't, what I'm up to as I write and what I hope you'll do as you read.

I am making one point in this book: The United States is in its fourth cultural age, the Inventive Age. Every cultural age has four components: how people think, what they value, a collection of aesthetic preferences, and a set of tools by which people do what they need to do. Today's churches need to decide how they want to fit into the Inventive Age and develop the components needed to live well.

I am going to throw out big ideas and move fast. This isn't a book in which I tell you what to think. It's a book in which I raise issues in order to make you think about the future of the church. I want this book to leave you with questions, to get your head spinning a bit. I want it to lead you into new conversations with the people in your church. I want to give you the language and categories to move into the future with a clear sense of who you are and where you're going.

It won't take you long to read this book. The average person reads between 200 and 250 words per minute. That means the average person could get through this book in about two hours. But I hope you spend far more time talking about the suggestions in the book than you do reading about them. I hope you'll spend more time putting your ideas into play than you do learning about my ideas.

I'M GOING TO THROW OUT BIG IDEAS AND MOVE FAST.

As you'll see in a moment, the Inventive Age is all about collaboration and creativity. This book is my way of collaborating with you, of inspiring you to create a faith community that can thrive in our changing culture.

I can't wait to see where this relationship takes us.

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...