June 24, 2025

Exiles & Dissidents: Beyond Face-Lift Missions

Recent polls reveal "divided" as the word most used to describe our cultural moment. But dig deeper and you'll find: chaos, mess, confusion, disappointment, shame, depression, turmoil. Only 20% expressed curiosity with words like "opportunity" or "good."

This negativity bias is real—psychologists tell us 80% of our thoughts are negative, and news follows suit. Negative thoughts stick like Velcro in seconds, while positive ones need 10-15 seconds to take root in our prefrontal cortex.

Yet behind all this frustration lies holy longing.

We're at a cultural inflection point, and many are experiencing a soulful shift—hungering for something more humane, expansive, and full of light.

The numbers back this up. Pew Research found that over 30 million evangelical Jesus followers no longer identify with the current Christian witness in culture and politics (alongside our liberal or conservative Jesus). They're either leaving entirely or quietly engaged but privately disconnected, searching for communities that ask deeper questions.

Consider this: a study of the most Christian city in America revealed some of the nation's highest rates of poverty, income inequality, racial segregation, and limited healthcare access. This makes me wonder what kind of gospel produces such outcomes.

The tired debates between social versus proclamation gospel miss the point. Jesus’ life and teachings suggest it's both/and, not either/or. The ancient world did not differentiate in the ways we do now. Everything was spiritual.

For those longing for deeper meaning, some of what happens in Churches feels like scratching where there's no itch – and while some might be tempted to be cynical or snipe, the truth is, we’re meant to build up, not tear down the body of Christ. She’s the beautiful bride. But we must move beyond our ideological binaries or try to keep a “thin” peace. By doing so, we lose our prophetic edge.

Walter Brueggemann wrote:

"The gospel is a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane. What follows is a reduction of the story of God that we tell. The telling of a reduced story takes away the always impressive and authoritative story of Jesus, and siphons it of its transformative power, drains it of its restorative influence, or simply bleeds it dry until it is lifeless." 

These reductions have left us unprepared for this cultural moment. And how we show up in the world is no longer fit for purpose.

Throughout the West, people long to participate meaningfully in our neighborhoods, cities, workplaces, and around the world. But many double down on traditional missions paradigms: send more missionaries, plant more churches, and export a skinny gospel. While others, overwhelmed by the harm we’ve caused or unsure of how we show up in the world, become paralyzed and disengaged.

We believe there is another way – a third way.

Jesus' gospel invites us into something far bigger: liberation from sin, economic, physical, and social flourishing, all as spiritual realities. As Dr. Curt Thompson says in our Practice: an eternal quality of life both now and forevermore.

The call for reform, renewal, renaissance, and revival echoes everywhere. But these "re" words often feel cosmetic, like a facelift. Change vocabulary, shift strategies, rebrand, and get people excited about rethinking. Meanwhile, the guts remain the same.

We need paradigm shifts and excavating and practicing a way of being, not just designing new strategies. The early church's Ecclesia practiced kingdom life as the oikos (household)—the root of our word "economy." There's a kingdom economy that challenges how we understand human flourishing through giving, sharing, and receiving our social, physical, and economic needs. It's all "on earth as it is in heaven" stuff.

As NT Wright puts it, the early church was "the heaven on earth show"—what it looks like when heaven's life comes to birth on earth. Today's church often assumes God's primary activity happens in the church, when God’s primary activity is in the world, with the church as God's instrument sent to participate in redemptive flourishing.

We need kingdom incubators that shape who we are, what gospel we practice, and how we show up. We cannot reduce our participation in the world, but we must reimagine it. The world has changed—we need surgery, not cosmetic touch-ups.

We’re curious about being webbed through stubbornly loyal relationships, knotted together in a living network committed to practicing Jesus' way from goodness and renewal of the world.

A Creative Minority includes exiles and dissidents, edge dwellers and risk takers, builders and makers. It's living with prophetic imagination, avoiding ideological snares and binaries like progressive versus conservative. We long for something deeper and wider, choosing to live in the wonder of difficult challenges with a bias toward building, creating, and imagining from shalom—seeking flourishing.

As Saint-Exupéry wrote:

"If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare materials, and organize labor. Rather, teach people to yearn for the deep, wide ocean."

Let's keep taking risks, step out of the kiddie pool, and run into the ocean of divine love.

Written by David Schmidgall