So last week, 4 of us Grassrooters attended Unite ’24 – a biennial (i.e. happens once every 2 years vs. “biannual” which is twice a year… but I digress) conference put on by Jesus Collective. This year’s theme was: “The Prophetic Church: 4 Ways a Church Renewed by Jesus can Surprise the World” and it was, by all accounts, a great few days of learning and connecting with other Jesus Collective partners.

Along with some very practical workshops, the conference featured 4 plenary sessions that addressed 4 stark challenges taking place within the Church today: Cynicism, Polarization, Anxiety and Power. I won’t address all 4 of these challenges but I’d love to just touch on cynicism because not only do I “get” it, but I think the answer to addressing cynicism, provided by the speaker Brian Zahnd, is something that I, and maybe the rest of our community, could stand to pay more attention to ‘less cynicism begins to take root in our church as well.

Zahnd addresses the question, “How can a spiritually thick church bring hope to a cynical world?” and his answer, in a word, is enchantment. He argues the Church has by and large lost the sense of wonder and mystery in our ecclesial spaces, most notably through out teaching and preaching. We’ve diminished the reality of heaven in exchange for proclaiming messages that are solely practical: 3 Steps to a Happy Marriage; 5 Ways to be a Better Friend; The Path to Better Parenting and so on. We all know these types of messages. As a new pastor, this was particularly convicting to hear as I know I’m certainly guilty of elevating practicality in my teaching over and above any beckoning to the transcendent reality we confess. Frankly, enchantment can be…. weird. I’d much rather avoid it and focus on how you can live a better life here and now.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe it’s an either/or. That is, I don’t think it’s EITHER we just teach practical life lessons OR we emphasize any reality that transcends the material world but I remain convicted by Zahnd’s observation. The thing is, the world can get practical teaching anywhere. Check out the self-help aisle at Indigo to get started. What the world CAN’T offer, though, is a mystical experience, a mysterious encounter with the Divine. It can’t find a spiritual counter to the physical experience. The world holds that the only thing that can be experienced, and thus the only thing that matters, is what our 5 senses can perceive. Coming out of the age of reason—i.e. Modernity—the world no longer “needs” heaven, or any mystical reality in fact. Despite this concession, Zahnd believes, and I contend as well, that such longing is still present in each of us, regardless if we’re religiously affiliated with or not, and a church that ignores it does so to its detriment.

What does this look like practically? Zahnd suggests enchantment is about transcendence—going beyond what this material world can offer—and he notes three things that transcend – three things that are self-justifying and don’t require anything beyond itself to be experienced: truth, goodness and beauty. All three of these, he believes, can and should be found in the Church’s sacraments – moments like praying for one another, of sharing the bread and the cup, of baptism, and so forth. All of these point to truth, goodness and beauty and it’s within the Church that such experiences culminate best and most intentionally.

Phew. That was heady.

So what do you think? If nothing else, it’s certainly food for thought. This past Sunday our worship leader, Rhonda, helped lead our community in a practice of corporate prayer using our hands in various postures (learn more about this infinitum life). It was simple and yet, I think, if we allow it, we’ll see that through regularly partaking in practices and moments like these, we can begin to push against the cynicism and worldview that posits “this physical world is all there is.”

I’m excited, if not intimidated, to walk this road of enchantment together. I hope you are, too!