Sine’s fourth conversation is substantial. He starts with a question: ‘How might it change our lives, congregations and communities if we both anticipated and creatively responded to even a few of the coming challenges?’ His basic premise is that most churches and Christian organizations, including those in the emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic streams, lack foresight; that they have not woken up to the ‘coming waves of change that will impact our lives and the lives of our poorest neighbors’; and that if they are to be missionally effective in the coming years, they must come to grips with the far-reaching changes that are taking place.
The driving force for change is ‘economic globalization’. Sine considers, first, the environmental impact of runaway economic growth and argues that as followers of Christ ‘we need to live our lives and influence policies that reflect our unqualified commitment to creation care’. But the chapter mostly focuses on the challenges faced by the three levels of society: the global rich, the vulnerable middle, and the imperiled poor. In each case he attempts to re-imagine how these different groups might respond to these challenges. The super-rich can become super-philanthropists. Middle class Christians should ‘reexamine our love affair with our individualistic lifestyles and explore community and cooperative based models’. And the church must do something to empower communities trapped in poverty:
The only way that poverty will become history is for those of us whom God has entrusted with God’s generous resources to critically evaluate our own lives and priorities. It is estimated that today over 200 million Christians live in dire poverty. Isn’t there something terribly wrong, in the international body of Christ, when some of us live palatially and other Christians can’t keep their kids fed? Isn’t it past time to recognize that we live in an interconnected, interdependent global village in which there is no longer any such thing as a "private" lifestyle choice?
This is very good stuff. I was left wondering at times what is going to make the Christian response to the evils of economic globalization distinctive. Is this simply a matter of us throwing in our limited economic and political weight behind the governments, NGOs, and philanthropists who might really make a difference to the world? There is more to be done here in exploring the theological framework of this sort of activism. But Sine squarely faces the challenges to the church’s fund-base as the baby-boomer generation heads for retirement, its numbers as the under 40s find themselves increasingly disenchanted with the modern institutional church, and its missional vision that are looming on the horizon.
Given the trends we have discussed regarding the future of the poor, the middle class and the church, it is time to recognize that a "business as usual" faith will not serve. It is critical that we seek to raise the bar in all our churches on the meaning of discipleship, church and mission. We will all need to more authentically reflect God’s new order in which we make our lives and resources more available to the growth of God’s quiet conspiracy of compassion in a world of mounting need.
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