What is this election teaching us about us?

If this election cycle has has revealed anything about the current state of the church it’s these two things:

1. We’ve taught people what we think at the expense of how to think.
2. We’ve confused felt needs for our needs.

How did we get here?

Full disclosure. You’re not seeing a 2,000 word rant about why I think “you” played a role, and how we got here, in creating the problem I’ve summarized in the above two statements.

I deleted it.

It’s easy to blame “you.” “You” is a perceived enemy I can easily create. “You” is everyone that’s not me.

“You” is blaming.

“You” is easy. “You” is a bit lazy writing, creating a monster that’s easy to vilify.

What’s my role?

But “you” is also “me.”

It’s much harder to look in the mirror, realize I’ve played as big a role in this as anyone else, and instead say… “What’s my role in making it better?”

So I’m wondering…

• What can I do to help encourage independent thinking, celebrate intellectual conversation, and create spaces to facilitate that? 
• How can I better connect with “them” so I’m not guessing about felt needs? What can I do to truly meet needs for actual people instead of imagined ones?
• How can I help us move from “topical” to “full”? In other words, how do we help people see that Scripture isn’t just what’s interesting to us– skipping around from short burst to short burst in 4 or 6 week “series” and instead dive deeply, sometimes into the boring parts, to connect to a deeper narrative?
• How do I justify elevating real, researched felt needs above my own needs? You know, because the latter pays the bills sometimes better than the former.
• How do we fix it without burning it down?