We do not live in interesting times. These are extraordinary times.
Artificial Intelligence is taking the digital age to a new level. AI is either the saviour of humankind by allowing us to progress technologically at a lightning pace and potentially solve all kinds of problems. Or it’s the advent of a super intelligence which dumbs us down even more and threatens to replace human life. The reality may be somewhere between those extremes, but whatever transpires will be enormous.
Our status as a nation under the British Crown is at risk. What began as a few suggestive comments by the U.S. president-elect has devolved into a full-out attack on our sovereignty. We are a takeover target, and every day brings a new volley. Consider the Fox News host telling the Ontario premier on January 7: “If I were a citizen of another country and I was a neighbour of the United States, I would consider it a privilege to be taken over by the United States of America. … That’s what everybody else in the world wants — American citizenship. For some reason, that’s repellent to you Canadians, and I find that personally offensive.”
The church continues to decline and it appears some courts don’t care. In December, the Presbytery of Hamilton pulled the financial plug on Family Church of Heritage Green – a bold and vibrant ministry – because it wasn’t financially self-sustaining. Presbytery has the money. And so does the denomination. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is rich. At the end of 2023, it had more than $126 million in investments. There’s plenty of money in reserves to sustain the denomination’s head office, which is budgeted to operate at a $3.5 million deficit in 2025, but no long-term strategy to sustain congregations which are going into domestic mission fields. The PCC operates like the church in Laodicea: neither hot nor cold but very rich.
And yet we see hope.
This past Christmas Eve, the small congregation where I’m interim moderator had more than 50 people in attendance — on a typical Sunday, they have about a dozen. The Roman Catholic congregation in my town was literally packed to overflowing, and many parishioners had to watch the live stream from the church hall. In my small town congregation, we’re experiencing growth, including young families. They’re not here for the show, or the interesting programs or the high-tech — because there isn’t much of that. They just want to hear the Gospel and go deeper in their walk.
Out of the Generation ‘Z’ — arguably the most woke in modern history — a new evangelical movement has arisen whose mission is to revive the mainstream denominations in North America. The spirit of Operation Reconquista has landed in the PCC and we are enthusiastically partnering with them.
How is the authentic church to respond to all of this? An edited transcript of the Living in Truth Café held by Zoom on Wednesday, January 15, 2025, will be posted in the next edition of Living in Truth on March 1.