"The Millennium Matrix: Reclaiming the Past,Reframing the Future of the Church" by M. Rex Miller

As I read M. Rex Miller's book, The Millennium Matrix: Reclaiming the Past, Reframing the Future of the Church, I thought about how a church and youth ministry will emerge from this new cultural ethos. I have come to realize that the church will want to embrace the digital mediums (as opposed to the broadcast culture we are exiting.) With new forms of communication through digital means, it is fascinating to think how such eclectic groups of people can be formed as communities with common interests.

Miller helps us understand how we can reconnect Word with Spirit and how the digital world will shape us:

• "We now have the means to allow our desires to journey virtually anyplace, to consider anything we choose." (77)

• "In a not-so-distant future, digital's desire for direct, unmediated, hands-on experience will replace broadcast's passive gestalt. Digital's reliance on networks and personal relationships will replace broadcast's bias toward collective main-event experiences. Digital's open-source technologies, organization, and thinking will replace broadcast's branding and proprietary claims. Digital's ability to reframe the past will replace broadcast's tendency to discard the past. (78)

• He sees worship as a "Gathering...an interactive, intimate, multisensory, improvisational, immersive, mystical, highly engaged experience." (96)

• He sees truth as "Contextual....truth is malleable and relevant with particular contexts of meaning. Context becomes the simulator for our understandings of reality. Community (virtual or otherwise) tests and validates reality." (97)

• He sees faith as "Pragmatism...belief resides in the medium of digital community. Faith begins with the context of a community, both physical and virtual. The community narrative creates a microworldview expressing origin, points of validation, and destiny. Doctrinal differences blur, yet microworldviews separate. For example, faith communities emerge centered around sustainable living, traditional family values, or alternative lifestyles, each with its own genealogy of thought, filtering process, and rites of initiation." (98-99)

• He sees the gospel as being "Recontextualized....unprecedented individual access to church history, traditions, and styles creates a desire to freshly encounter past traditions and gospel truths, sampling and synthesizing them into new expressions." (99)

• He sees the "Godhead (Body or church)....expressed with a new awareness of the church....leadership acts as a catalyst for members of the church to minister to one another and to community....in acts of healing, confession, correction, and charity." (100)

• He sees God's location...."Everywhere...all creation is a reflection of God. Because God is everywhere, we can access God through many means." (101)

• He see the connection with God through the "Heart of God...we see God's heart expressed in a yearning for connection and community and getting back to something simpler." (101)