Onward

We’ve come through a chaotic, tumultuous time, both as a nation and as American Christians. The pandemic and “wokeness” exposed the weakness of our institutions, and many of them failed. Many of our high-profile leaders were quite old and passed away. Others, not being very old, were brought home sooner than any of us expected. Still others were found to be charlatans. In the middle of all that chaos, new voices emerged, some good, many worse. For the last several years, many have felt they were in some form of holding pattern, unclear on the direction things would go. I was there for a while. But I think we’re transitioning into a new phase.

Many of the older institutions are compromised. They still possess credibility, infrastructure, money, and decades of accumulated relationships, so they aren’t going to disappear overnight. They’ll die slowly.

At the same time, many of those institutions have enough people invested in the status quo that genuine reformers are often treated as threats rather than assets. That leaves reform-minded Christians with a choice: keep their heads down and work quietly, or be pushed out (or thrown out). Some will choose the first path. But many aren’t interested in spending their lives sneaking around inside institutions they believe are already in decline.

Meanwhile, many of the online influencers who rose to prominence over the last six years have disappointed their own supporters. What initially looked like the beginning of a serious movement often devolved into personalities building media platforms around themselves. Since their influence depends on attention via conspiracy of the week/shock-jock nonsense, their relationships increasingly became zero-sum. Platform wars replaced institution building. Endless controversy replaced patient construction. Many of the reasonable people who initially supported them have grown tired of it.

That leaves a growing number of Christians in an unusual position. They still believe in legitimacy, stability, and enduring institutions. They aren’t anti-institutional. But they no longer believe they have a future inside many of the existing ones. At the same time, they recognize that many of the loudest new voices on the Right know how to attract an audience but not how to build something that will outlast them. So…

We’re going to see a period of consolidation and construction.

Rather than chasing the next controversy or trying to capture existing institutions, serious people are going to gather where they already are. Do what they can with what they have. They’ll build healthy churches, schools, businesses, ministries, and regional networks with people they know and trust. It will be local, relational, and incremental rather than primarily driven by social media.

I think this will be a threat to both the new voices and the old institutions. The new voices will start losing audience capture to people who actually want to be productive, while the old institutions will suddenly face something that competes with them for legitimacy and credibility.

One side will mock them for not being hard-core enough. The other will mock them for being small, pitiful, and/or schismatic.

They're probably right to feel threatened.

Over time, those pockets of stability will become the new respectable institutions, because they will have proved they can endure, govern themselves well, and produce healthy families, churches, and communities.

That’s the next chapter: patient construction rather than revolution or endless reaction. Across the country, in hundreds of places, people who have found trustworthy partners are going to get to work.

Onward...