Understanding the Times

Jesus incarnated and engaged an oral culture. Centuries after Jesus’ resurrection humanity transitioned an oral culture to a print culture. Uniquely my generation has seen rapid transition from print to broadcast to digital. This rapidity has caused overlap between the eras and the predominant teaching methods of each era. Oral readily lended itself to experience (and irrationality), print to rationality, broadcast gave us a global perspective and digital is shifting our way of knowing to an interactive, global, anytime, anywhere, multimedia experience. This will continue to have serious ramifications on methods of teaching reaching far into the future of this third-millennium. Even more interesting is how these changes are forcing the church to carry out its mission in an environment more like that in which the first-century church was born than perhaps any subsequent period in history. Michael Riddell says, “Mission is always in the direction of the other, and away from ourselves.” Isn’t it interesting that we’ve come full circle? Experience, experience