The next big thing

The search for “the next big thing” may be the defining mark of our culture.

One writer who has exploited this hunt is Malcolm Gladwell. In 2000, he wrote The Tipping Point, which attempted to ferret out pivotal moments in social and personal trends. What was it that turned New York City from its slide into disaster to a model of urban renewal? What made Sesame Street so successful? What sparked the revival of the Hush Puppy?

These events, Gladwell said, were not so much the confluence of circumstances as the result of some often hidden “tipping point.”

In 2005, Gladwell followed up with Blink. He described moments of instant and accurate discernment, often made against overwhelming evidence. The power of the “blink” is the ability to “thin slice” vast amounts of information – not a bad skill to develop when you’d like to jump to a conclusion in the face of more data than you can easily process!

The premise of these books is that if you can exploit your blink insights, you too can be a tipping point, ready and equipped for the next big thing. You may even set it in motion.

Malcolm Gladwell knows us well. As we look back on our lives we see tipping points. We remember when an incident or a comment turned us from one course to another, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The good changes are the stories testimonies are made of. The bad ones send us scurrying to counsellors.

We also remember occasions when we “knew,” in our gut, something no one else seemed to see. Of course we never said anything, but we remember our flash of insight in hindsight. Ah, if we could only capture the power of the blink and be the tipping points in our worlds! Imagine what a power for good we could be!

There’s no denying the existence of tipping points or blink moments, but for Christians caught up in the quest for the next big thing, some caution is in order.

The purveyors of spiritual blinks and tipping points do a brisk business in the church. Our God-given optimism and hope are divine gifts but they also make us suckers for a sales pitch on the next big thing.

For me it began with the preachers of the Homogenous Unit Principle. That was a technical term for “birds of a feather flock together.” This, I was told, was a discovery the social sciences were gifting to the church. Everyone needed to understand it. If you feel like you don’t fit in, it’s probably because you don’t. Go find your own HU.

Then came the Seeker Sensitive Service. We were told that church services are not for believers but for attracting and stimulating the curious. And so we scoured our communities to find out the perceived needs of our neighbours. We all became seeker sensitive.

Somewhere along the way a disarming but very effective California preacher came across the word “purpose” and we all changed our labels to become purpose driven.

Now the prophets of the Emerging Church claim that they understand what Jesus meant, that they will wipe out the old structure and show us the way. This is a recent, but definitely not the last, next big thing.

None of this is particularly new of course. For previous generations, the next big thing was the revival. Preachers and writers looked for tipping points that would set the revival in motion.

There is something healthy about the quest for new things. The Scriptures warn us about stagnation. On the other hand, however, the essence of Christianity is definitely not about a search for the next big thing.

The big thing for us is Jesus and while there are tipping points and blink moments in our walk with him, these neither define nor drive our quest. Rather than looking for tipping points we are challenged to persevere; rather than obtaining blink insights by thin slicing we are told to study diligently.

To use a slightly archaic word, our quest as Christians is not for the “temporal” but for the eternal. A dose of healthy skepticism may be the spiritual gift for our time.

James Toews is pastor at Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C.