Future Helps the Church

Patrick Dixon is a world-class futurist — one of the top 20 most influential business thinkers in the world. What he has to say about the future in this video should excite the church about our opportunities to impact the next generation.

While talking to school teachers and college instructors, Dixon proclaims that what everyone in the world wants more than anything else is successful relationships, and because they don’t see any modeled, most people have no idea of how to build a successful marriage, friendship, or parent-child relationship. Then he turns to a room filled with educators and asks, “Are you doing anything in your classrooms to help your students build successful relationships?”

For all my life, the church has bragged about promoting families. Yet, I get the sense that what we mean is “when you join our club, you’ll have to change your interests to something weird–families.” What most unchurched people hear us say about families is that we’re pushing an agenda on them that they’re not currently interested in.

I know a few churches approach family/relationship teaching as “here is the answer to your deepest longings.” In light of Dixon’s video, it makes sense that those churches are thriving.

I hope that more churches catch a vision for the tremendous evangelistic appeal in the Bible’s sound principles for relationship-building. Here is a message we believe in, here is a message most church folks practice, and here is a message the world is listening for.

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