The World is DICEy

At times of disruption, good things can happen

I am in Zürich and spent yesterday at the Grossmünster, the church that was Zwingli’s platform to lead the Reformation. While most of us think of Calvin and Geneva when we reflect on the Reformation, Zwingli was more of a movement leader. Think about how influential these Reformers were and how their leadership coincided with cultural shifts that were already underway. Great leaders can sense these shifts and rather than fear them, they harness them for their movement’s benefit.

How might we think about our own era? What opportunities lie under the surface, waiting for them to be “milked” to further the Kingdom?

In 1987, a couple of researchers working for the US military coined the acronym VUCA to describe the leadership environment that was emerging at the time. VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Google's NGRAM tool reveals that VUCA has grown in use and continues to be mentioned. I remember hearing it back in 2016 at a Missio Nexus leadership event. The world has changed in massive ways. While VUCA was highlighting the challenges of its day (not to mention it is fun to pronounce), the principles have largely been "operationalized." Most of us would consider 1987 to be a much more stable, non-VUCA leadership environment than what we have today. That was 37 years ago and it is time to retire VUCA.

I decided to make a list of changes underway and arrange them into categories, like VUCA but for our current environment. I would describe our new leadership environment as DICEy.

Deconstructing

It does not matter what sector of society we are referencing, all are being deconstructed. This is the culmination of Marxist analysis that began a long time ago via critical theory. We are reimagining humanity, creating new identities that arise from subjective concepts of self. Technology has contributed to the deconstruction of human norms (like the pill has done) and it continues to challenge how we understand and know things (AI will lead a revolution in epistemology). Today we are anti-Institutional. This is true on the right (for example, seeing Christian leaders as "big Eva") and on the left (Antifa, BLM, and student protests). Leaders are tainted, imperfect, anti-heroes.

Deconstruction is not always bad. Zwingli deconstructed Catholicism, replacing it with a Bible-centric Reformation. You can see where the Catholic depictions of Mary were scraped from the walls of the Grossmümster church. The current deconstruction, though, has a much darker root. Where it will end up, nobody knows. But there is redemptive possibility in a deconstructing heart, so let us pray for wisdom for a proper response in this age.

Indigenizing

Modernity was homogenizing. Now that modernity is being deconstructed, we will hear more critique about the problems this created. Globalization likewise was homogenizing. As it winds down, an emphasis on local culture will become more prevalent than global culture. This is not to suggest that globalization’s effects will fade. The easy movement of people and the Internet will continue to create a sense of the global, but it will be regarded as morally inferior. Instead, entertainers will emphasize indigenous expressions of culture, educators will recount wicked colonial histories, and the melting pot will give way to the protection of tribal identities.

The gospel is fluid when it comes to culture. The gospel is unchanging but it is not bound to a single culture, like Islam is to Arab culture. An emphasis on the indigenous should feel right at home to a Christian who understands this. This will only happen insofar as a missionary appropriately contextualizes their approach to the receiving culture. We also must recognize the dark side of the “indigenous worldview” that we are creating. Is tribalism a human good? When our feeds are filled with self-reinforcing messages are we able to be empathetic? What is the difference between an emphasis on the indigenous and nationalism? Indigeneity has its limits. The gospel is not to be hyphenated by race, ethnicity, or tribe.

Contracting

The next century will be marked by shrinking populations. Economies don’t do so well when the population           is shrinking. While we have seen this on a national level, imagine the effects of this principle when it is global. Population and economic prosperity will both shrink, but what else is contracting?

Distance is contracting. I was in Florida on Thursday afternoon, London on Friday, and Geneva on Saturday. Even more contraction is evident in virtual meetings. Today, global conferences can tie us together virtually at near-zero cost. This is a form of teletransportation that COVID made acceptable to us. Whereas the idea during globalization was to offshore, in our current era reshoring is the word of the day. Companies are striving for shorter supply lines, resulting in regionalized trading blocks where overseas transportation is not required.

Time is also contracting. AI and quantum computing will make the current rate of change multiply. Change is already a proper expectation but the rate will be unlike anything we have seen thus far. Relevance will quickly go by the wayside as entire industries devolve due to this rapid change. AI is already reducing jobs in certain industries and will only improve.

Contraction will play a role in our future ministry plans but it will not be evenly distributed. Working in China? Get a handle on how to work with the elderly. Nigeria? Explosive growth already provides plenty of opportunities for youth ministry and this will accelerate. Childhood, a Christian invention, is contracting. The church should be in the lead in the current fight against smartphones but we are not. This is one example of incredible opportunity for the church in the face of an onslaught of pornography, transgenderism, and addiction. Could a bigger “techlash” be on our horizon?

Erratic

The world is changing in unpredictable ways. Who would have guessed that we would be seeing protests like, “Queers for Hamas?” The very idea sounds absurd but the conflicting value systems of post-modernity have created this ironic movement. California, a state focused on equity, has the greatest income equality in the US. If Donald Trump defeats Joe Biden this fall, the US will probably go from one of the most left-wing governments of its history to one of the most right-wing. While some predicted a plague at some time, COVID caught us off guard. Few today would credit our leaders with leading us well through this time. It will be crititiqued for generations.

The irony is that this feeling of unpredictability comes in part because the world experienced two long periods of stability. First the cold war, and then the 1980-2020 era of American dominated globalization were stable periods. Some were saying that the liberal democratic form of government would become so ubiquitous that we were facing the “end of history” – no more wars and the like. In between the Cold War and globalization was a short period of disruption, mostly limited to the disintegration of the USSR. Our current disruption is marked by COVID, the rise of an authoritarian China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and political instability in the West (both in the US and Europe). Things are erratic.

Change theory suggests that there are often stable periods interrupted by times of disruption. This period of disruption marks the end of globalization. The culmination of post-modernism is also upon us. What does the future hold? We simply do not know. Today’s leadership environment requires shorter projection and planning timelines.

So, my friends, in place of VUCA I see our current world as DICEy. These are the days when fortunes are lost or made. How we lead in this unstable era will have ramifications far beyond our lifetimes. Zwingli also ministered in a time of instability. He drove some of that instability and made mistakes. Yet, he also contributed to a movement that reverberates to this day.

Will we do the same?