What do we do when things fall apart? The way we answer this question shows us the truth of who we are. We all look great when things are comfortable. It’s in the times of challenge, when the building is burning down around us, when all that we’ve held onto dissolves in our arms, that our true allegiance, our true character, our true identity get revealed.
Christianity is in exile in the Western world: if current trends continue, between 1950 - 2050 the number of self-identifying Christians will have dropped by more than 50%. So how are Christians to live in the world as exiles?
Listen as Pastor Clint unpacks this shift and how Christians today can learn from the work and words of Jeremiah in his own time of exile. In this famous passage from Jeremiah 29, explore how God teaches followers not to isolate from culture, but to settle in, seek the flourishing of the society around them, and signify hope in God's ultimate coming shalom.
Sermon Resources:
1. For resources on Christendom and Post-Christendom, check out "The Next Christendom," by Philip Jenkins and "To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World," by James Davison Hunter
2. On Gen-Z Religious Demographics: https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/generation-z-future-of-faith/
3. On the future of Christianity in America: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/
4. “The church is one of those former power brokers who once enjoyed a place of influence at the cultural table, but has been chased away from its place of privilege and is now seeking to find where it belongs amidst the ever-changing dynamics of contemporary culture” -Lee Beach, "The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom"
5. Exile is "being an outcast within one’s own country” -Paul Tabori
6. “If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.”― Wendell Berry, "The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays"
7. "Christians are distinguished from others neither by country, nor language...nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines...following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners...they marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all people, and are persecuted by all...they are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified...they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor.” -Epistle to Diognetus
8. Information on the McDowell Miracle Mile: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/10/27/phoenix-mcdowell-road-miracle-mile-refugee-immigrant-diversity/74682840/
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