Ed Marcelle on the Resurgence Blog is doing a quick series on how people have “done church” over time in different eras. The fourth installment is about the church during the Industrial Revolution period that is ending. then there is this little teaser for what comes next:
The world had changed. The Industrial Revolution had brought with it precision and control. There was a top-to-bottom pyramid structure that would be, by its nature, successful everywhere it could touch, where its power could be diurnally felt. It would be this very strength that would be its undoing, as the world became electronic and limitless, and to have influence meant never even having to touch when things became high-tech.
That change would be a great shift, and just as the Industrial Revolution made those who were separated from their Agrarian forefathers very different, it was even more so with those who were born on the other side of the Information Age. They found a brave and new world, and with it new ways of incarnating church. These ways would ultimately invert the previous ways. Control would no longer be the virtue, but would become the very anchor that would not allow progress.
If the Industrial Revolution was about standardization, localization, and control, the Information Age was about to demand the exact opposite, and the church would need to understand how it would shift accordingly.