Are You Worried About the Future?
Have you ever found yourself saying things like “Where is our country going?” Or, “What’s going to happen to young people today?” Or, “Where will our church end up?” These are important questions, to be sure, and they are understandable given the number and pace of changes happening in our world.
But what if I told you that these questions are related to some of our deepest beliefs and needs?
In my work at ACU, I teach some of our church history classes. One of the things we regularly talk about is how, for the past fifty years and more, churches of many stripes have worried about the future. But, as many observers have noted, the worries have not always been arising from the same place, and that diversity comes from disagreement over how we view the future. Some folks are much more optimistic about the future, seeing progress in both cultural changes and the spread of the Gospel. Others are more pessimistic, which can lead them to want to retreat, hide, or hole up in refuges.
So how do you view the future? Is it a promise or a threat?
In last month’s newsletter, our executive director, Dr. Carson Reed, invited us to think about the ongoing work of God’s Spirit in and among us, and to welcome that work as it can help revive our churches. As he said, there are historical reasons why the Stone-Campbell movement has struggled to articulate teaching about the Holy Spirit in a way that can help us seek and welcome God’s active work among us. But we can embrace the work of God’s Spirit among us, and I believe that embrace will help us as Christians and as leaders to face the future. It will help us walk boldly in the present and into the future, confident in the work of God among and through us.
The reason goes back to my introduction: because how we view the future shapes and is shaped by some of our deepest beliefs and needs. Let me name three:
Our beliefs about the work of God. When I watch us in our concern about the future, I notice that it often leads us to glorifying the past. However, the past we focus on is often related to our experiences and comfort rather than what we have seen of God’s action. We like “how things were,” but we may not link that with the work of God. In other words, we’re thinking more about what it was like for us than what God may have been doing. But what if we could look at the world with eyes that search for God’s work? Psalm 77 gives us an example. After the Psalmist expresses distress and describes the experience of difficulty, there is this crucial line: “To this I will appeal: the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand. I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.” This memory does not devalue or erase the current experience, but it does remind the Psalmist that the God who was present and active then is the same God who is present and active now—and who will be in the future!
Our view of the world around us. Sometimes our worries about the future get transferred onto our culture(s) or the world around us. Our surrounding cultures can make life more difficult for us as Christians, but this way of thinking can unintentionally cause us to think that “the world” is something that is fundamentally against us. This kind of language does appear in Scripture (especially in places like John’s Gospel), but it’s crucial to remember that Scripture also tells us that the world is God’s intentional creation (Genesis 1-2), that the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1a), and that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (Psalm 24:1a). We do have a struggle, but it is not against flesh and blood, and the world is not our enemy; rather, it is a difficult, complicated arena in which God is working and in which we are invited to join him!
Our feelings amidst struggle. Finally, our worries about the future can hamstring our ability to have hope. I’m a parent of teenagers, and I am very familiar with the feelings that come when we despair that “it’s all going downhill!” When I’m laser-focused on the idea that nothing will ever get better, it’s basically impossible to have any hope for change. But as my now-retired colleague Randy Harris recently pointed out in an ACU Chapel talk, Romans 8 contains three “groanings”: the creation groans “as in the pains of childbirth” (v. 22), we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption” as God’s children and the redemption of our bodies (v. 23), and the Spirit groans with us while interceding for us before God the Father (v. 26). And it’s that knowledge that the Spirit is groaning with us that can allow us to maintain hope and keep on going when we ourselves are groaning. We are more than conquerors (v. 37) not because of our own skill or effort, although those are needed, but because God is working in all things for the good of those who love him (v. 28). And nothing can separate us from God’s love (v. 38), not because we are so good or have earned that love, but because God has adopted us as children (vv. 14-17).
Brothers and sisters, we know that church leaders need vision to see God’s work, clear eyes to see our ministry contexts, and hope for God’s redeeming work in the world. As 2026 begins, let me encourage you as you face the challenges of our world and our ministries. We know that the future is uncertain, but we also know that God is at work, that the world is not just our enemy, and that we have good grounds for hope! As Carson wrote last month, may the Spirit of the living God fall fresh on us as we proclaim the good news of Christ in our contexts.
David
