My catholic heart was disoriented by the very rational reordering of the Reformation. The sanctuary and high altar were no longer in use and I found myself unmoored as I wandered around the cathedral, which is really not a cathedral in anything but name. In the center stands a white marble monolith. I asked the sexton, who busied himself with his work, if this was where Holy Communion was celebrated, and he said, “Everything happens in the center of the church on Sunday, and everyone faces the crossing.” He was referring to the way the chairs were all arranged in a circle around this central table, a lecture, and a pulpit. When once worshipers would have fixed their eyes on the high altar, now they are left to wander in empty space.

As we exited St. Giles’, we scanned the crowded tourist shops and vendors for some lunch.

I was in Scotland for a week of study leave, taking my yearly time away to focus on prayer and reading and writing, all while looking back over the past year of ministry. My wife, Amy, was able to join me, and while I huddled in the library reading and writing, she spent time exploring the many sights of Edinburgh.

Part of what drew me to Scotland was an interest in the Scottish Episcopal Church, this tiny province of the Anglican Communion that has persisted in the chilly shadow of Scottish Presbyterianism. I was interested in the history the church, with its ebbs and flows, keeping in view especially its outsized influence on the Episcopal Church here in America by way of the ordination of Samuel Seabury in Aberdeen by Scottish bishops.

But I was also interested in Anglicanism’s role in contemporary society in a country that is highly secularized, and even the historic and dominant Presbyterian Church of Scotland is in freefall. In a society that is increasingly indifferent to Christianity, I thought, maybe I might glimpse something of the future of the role the church in a place like North America.

What I found was that the visible vestiges of the gospel loom large, but they are crumbling quickly, and the lifeblood of the faith is hidden, sprouting up here and there without much notice.

On Sunday, we worshiped at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, the mother church of the Diocese of Edinburgh. The building was impressive and housed the hush of the sacred. I found it easy to pray in St. Mary’s, and later that week, while I walked its outdoor labyrinth planted in wildflowers. But this cavernous building was not ancient like St. Giles’ or the many other churches or ruins that dot the Scottish landscape. Rather, it was built in the late 19th century, and features the ideals of Victorian Gothic Revival, the style entwined with the theology and practice of the Anglo-Catholic movement.

It’s true that Anglicanism has deeper roots in Scotland, especially in the highlands, but it has vacillated between privilege and suppression throughout the centuries since the Reformation. There were times when Anglican priests were forbidden from celebrating the Eucharist for more than four people at a time, an odd precursor to some of the more heavy-handed restrictions imposed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whatever wealth and prayer and energy financed the building of St. Mary’s seemed to have dwindled down. As we worshiped with the 1982 Scottish liturgy, not wholly unfamiliar to me, I looked around to see about 100 mostly older folks scattered throughout the capacious nave. Still, we heard the Word of the Lord, and were nourished, all of us, by the body and blood of Christ.

That St. Mary’s still has a congregation, even if it’s a little flock, seems no small feat considering that many of the beautiful and historic churches in Edinburgh are no longer places of worship at all. Some have turned to pubs or galleries or theaters, but their imposing presence stands as a judgment and witness today. They are a judgment of the way the church has failed. All of the work and striving of Christians across the centuries have left but a heritage of stone. But these deconsecrated churches also serve as a witness to the faithfulness of the triune God and his gospel. This once was spread through the land like leaven, and love for this God inspired women and men to build temples for worship and praise.

Where did I see signs of life?

I wandered into St. John the Evangelist, just before a midday Mass. St. John’s is an Episcopal Church just off the busy Princes Street, an attractive shopping destination. I knelt and prayed before we began the simple spoken liturgy. A dozen or so of us gathered with an elderly priest. She offered prayers of anointing for healing after Holy Communion.

A tourist wandered in, not taking part in the service. I kept my eyes on her as she sat transfixed. I wondered if this was her first time hearing the gospel. Perhaps other wayfarers have wandered into services like this and have felt sparks of faith.

Taking a break from study at the New College Library, I wandered down to the National Gallery of Scotland for a coffee. On the way into the café, I saw some college students in matching shirts were handing out pamphlets in the square. I warded them off with a wave of my hand. “No thanks,” I said.

I went into the café nestled into the gallery. I ordered an Americano, which was served in a beautiful pottery mug. I took a seat in the corner and read while I sipped. After I drank my coffee, I returned the mug to the barista and schlepped my bag of books back onto the square.

The students were still at it. I tried to keep my head down, but one of them caught my eye and speed-walked over. “What do you think about abortion?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t think it’s a good thing,” I said.

He gave me the pitch about how he and his fellow students were raising awareness about Scotland’s abortion laws and were trying to advocate for pro-life legislation and better care for women.

I figured these young people must have been evangelicals of some sort. So I asked. “I assume you’re Christians?”

“Yeah, we’re all Catholics.”

I said, “I’ve been to a few churches while in town, and I’ve read some statistics. It seems that not many folks your age go to church. What’s kept you going?”

“Well, my parents have been good examples of what it means to be a Christian,” he said. Just then a girl walked over.

“This is my sister,” he said. “We’ve also got a really good priest too. There still aren’t a lot of us at Mass on Sunday, but we’ve found a community with the Catholic student ministries. That’s why most of us are here.”

I talked to him for a few more minutes before heading back to the library.

There are other vignettes I could recount, but the gist of all of them is this: Established Christianity is no longer a given in Scotland the way it must have felt decades ago. I am sure this is true in many places. And where the gospel persists it will be in small communities of worship, among families, student groups, friends.

My intuition is that one can never place high enough value on the influence of parents. For most of us, our families introduce us to the gospel and first model the way of Jesus.

And the church should never neglect the training and support for those entering ministry. Godly and faithful priests who are invested in discipling young people have an outsized effect on the future of the church.

P.D. James’s dystopian novel, The Children of Men, describes an unnerving world in which humanity suddenly and collectively loses the ability to procreate. Everyone is still being married and given in marriage, but copulation no longer produces children. With the last generation of children, the Omegas, in their mid-20s, the human race is headed for extinction.

Other than the absence of children, life more or less goes on, but in an eerie atmosphere. Oxford University still holds classes for its mature students, people still go to work, there is a government of sorts. For a while, life is more or less stable in the present, even if a question mark looms over the future.

Permeating all of this, however, is what James describes as an ennui universel that settles over humanity, draining the joy out of life. Without children, without a future, the meaning of life is wrung out of the surviving generations. Suicide, even mass suicides, become increasingly common.

Instead of pursuing worthy goals for the sake of posterity, those with privilege devote themselves to pursuing a life of safety, security, and pleasure. When the dreaming spires of Oxford start to crumble, there is the question of whether their upkeep is really worthwhile, given that in 60 years or so, there will be no one left to enjoy them. For Theo Faron, the protagonist, and many like him, life is an attempt to make the most of a nihilistic existence, with suicide as the logical end.

As I was reading the novel, the strange ambience of a world emptying out, a world with no children felt disturbingly familiar. At first I couldn’t place it, but then I realized: I’ve had this same feeling when looking at the future of North American Anglicanism. All of the beauty and majesty of the church’s past is remembered through our liturgy, our architecture, our tradition. And yet for many parishes and many places, there is no future because there are no children. Thus, the focus changes from handing on the gospel to fiddling with canons and prayers and slowing the decay of sanctuaries until the last gray head in the congregation is laid to rest.

David Goodhew’s analysis of the decline of the Episcopal Church, and Calvin Lane’s recent piece on the same, are reminders that our churches are not healthy. The latest ACNA statistics are perhaps less bleak, but average Sunday attendance still lags significantly from pre-COVID numbers. “Less bleak” is not the same as “encouraging.” Neil Elliott has shown us the Anglican Church of Canada is a small fragment of what it once was, with congregations still in steep decline.

When did we stop being concerned? In The Children of Men, the decline of the race is completely outside of human control. Notwithstanding the headwinds of secularism, in the church we retain so much agency. What have we done to ensure in 20 or 40 or 60 years there will be a place where our children can be formed and discipled in Christ? Where will the hear the gospel and fulfill it?

“The future of the church,” which is just another way of saying “children,” is eclipsed by our struggle to make sense of human sexuality (though I would argue the two are not unrelated) and other important issues —Hello, environmental justice! Hello, racial reconciliation! I don’t at all mean to downgrade these, but such pressing concerns diminish in meaning if there will not a be a church in a generation. Who cares how green our buildings are, how well our policies lead to integration, if there is not a soul left in the sanctuary in 40 years? North American Anglicanism will be nothing but an ecclesial artifact.

I need to qualify this.

First, I serve in a parish in which this ennui universel is not present at all. I am grateful to serve in a thriving community of Christians in which we are bucking the trends of the Episcopal Church. Some of our Sunday services are just plain old rowdy, teeming with children running this way and that.

But I’ve served in enough churches, and have had enough conversations with other Anglicans and Episcopalians, clergy and lay, to know this is an anomaly in North American Anglicanism. So many of our beloved churches are silent on Sunday mornings — not because we are arrested by the beauty of holiness, but rather because they are emptied of anyone younger than 60.

Second, as a father of four rambunctious boys, I well understand the gifts and challenges that children bring. Reading James reminds me that a childless world is quieter, more controlled, more predictable. But that safety and ease comes at the cost of so much more. Despite the challenges that children bring, they are gifts, goods, graces given by God that decenter us from the story of the church. We are only one part of that story.

We recently completed a capital campaign at Christ Church to restore our children’s ministry spaces at our historic downtown campus, and to build a new wing on or contemporary campus for children’s ministry, where we had simply run out of space.

It was so moving for me and my family to see the commitments and contributions to the campaign, especially from parishioners who did not have children, or whose children were already grown. When they were sowing prayers and finances into this project, it was not for their benefit, but for the sake of the gospel, and the flourishing of a generation they might never meet. This kind of radical hopefulness, this yes to the kingdom of God, brought me to tears.

I was almost taken aback to think that when my children have children (if the Lord allows) this will be a community in which they can raise their children in the faith. And this will be possible by the grace of God and his blessing on the hard work and planning that the people of Christ Church are doing today. The future of the church is not inevitable, but neither is its decline. The hour is late, but there is still plenty of time to sow into the future of our churches by sowing into the lives of children and children’s ministry. Who knows what kind of harvest God may bring about?

Looking back almost a year later, here are some ways  this has changed my life and ministry.

1. I am less anxious.

I don’t understand the science behind all of this, but, as Cal Newport has pointed out, research shows that taking a break from social media is better for your mind and body. I can’t speak for anyone else, but this has been my experience. I have found that I feel more at ease in my day-to-day life.

Since I am less anxious, I can also be more present. I can be more present to myself and to my family. And when I am more present to myself and my family, I am better grounded to be more present to the folks I minister to.

I still have a long way to go with this. I still find pesky emails and texts keep me distracted from time to time, but removing social media from my life was a major step in the right direction.

2. I am exposed to less information.

Another benefit to not using social media is that I have access to less information.

This is a good thing because much of the information I spent time consuming was either useless or damaging.

I think most of what people share on social media is banal. It is not necessarily bad to know what is happening to my friend’s neighbor’s dog, or for me to learn my what my cousin’s kids did at a friend’s birthday party. But this information doesn’t improve my relationships with anyone. And it certainly doesn’t add value to my life. It is useless information, and I don’t feel the need to collect it anymore.

Some of the information I consumed through social media was damaging. I think this had less to do with the content of the information, and more to do with the outrage or anger with which it was shared. I felt like knowing more about the world and the ways it (usually) angered folks I was tangentially connected with didn’t help me to love them more. It most often made me roll my eyes or think I was better than them. Now that I don’t know what everyone thinks about everything, I feel a kindlier disposition to everyone.

Not knowing about every bad thing happening in the world does not diminish my life. Knowing the details of political scandal or global convulsion doesn’t help the people who are harmed by them. Now, I seek to know enough about what’s going on in the world to pray about it — and, if possible, to be helpful to those in need, but without feeling drawn into darkness over which I have no control.

3. The information I take in is curated.

Since I spend less time scrolling, I’ve had time be selective about the information I receive and the art I enjoy.

There are so many benefits to this: I can filter out junk news and overly biased reaction that is so prevalent or X or Facebook. I can think intentionally about my blind spots and seek out interesting scholarship and sound reporting to enlighten me. I have more time for what Newport, in his book Digital Minimalism, calls “high-quality leisure.” I can read the books I need to read and enjoy those I want to read.

No doubt algorithms still play a role in the articles I search for on Google or the books I seek on Amazon. To some extent, I remain enmeshed in a digital system, and I suspect there is no viable way for me to be free from this. But I think I have far more autonomy than I did before, and leaving behind social media freed me, if only a little bit.

4. I have more time for the things in life that matter.

This relates to the first point, that having more time and less anxiety has freed me to be present to the people I live with and see every day.

I also feel like I am a more attentive pastor. I can talk about politics or faith or any number of things with friends or parishioners in a way that feels constructive and healthy, because when we talk we sit down and face each other. I understand their points of view not as discreet snatches of information, but as part of the story of their lives, and the whole web of reasons that led them to a particular opinion.

And I feel closer to friends who live far away too. Instead of trolling their walls, now I send them email or give them a call. I have started catching up with a few good friends once a month or so. We talk for an hour while I am on a long drive, or swap news while I am taking a walk during my lunch break. These relationships are far richer, and leave me feeling far less alone than distant, digital-only connections that I fostered online.

I’ve also become a more productive writer. Instead of expending time curating a digital persona, I can write meaningful things. This includes scholarship and magazine articles, but I’ve also turned to Substack, where I can share books, interests, and experiences with a small group of people who are interested in my work. I write these epistles once a month or so, which means I have time to think about what I want to say, without feeling I need to drum something interesting every few days.

There’s one last thing I wanted to share about this journey.

A few weeks ago I preached on Mark 1:21-8, when Jesus is confronted by a man with an evil spirit while he is teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. I was struck by the way the evil spirit knew exactly who Jesus was. He had all of the right information about Jesus, but still rebelled against him.

He “knew” Jesus, but only in this intellectual way, without any love, obedience, or relationship. Knowledge extracted from the context of relationship in this sense is demonic.

I think this is one of the temptations we will face with the continued advances in technology. When using social media especially (and the internet and phones and so on more generally) we have limitless information at our fingertips.

It’s easy to think we know all kinds of things about others or God or the world. But this knowledge is divorced from love, from being with, and thus it can lead to unfettered hate and destruction. It can become demonic knowledge. That’s why so much of what we see online on X or Facebook or on the internet more generally can be so toxic.

As I stepped away from social media, I’ve tried to cultivate knowledge that is couched in love, in relationship. I want to be the kind of husband, father, and pastor who is wise, not just knowledgeable. And I know wisdom has far more to do with the love and fear of the Lord than mastery of information.

Upon opening the cover of this lovely book and thumbing past the table of contents, you’ll find a note:

This book is a kind of Advent calendar. The pages are numbered — Advent 1, Advent 2, Advent 3 — for the days of December leading to Christmas, like the little doors on an Advent calendar. And like an Advent calendar, this book’s “doors” are meant to be opened slowly, one — and only one — each day.

These instructions are important because they remind parents and their children to slow down, to savor each image, to listen to the music of the words. As we parcel out waxy chocolate to our children, we might read aloud about these creatures each day throughout the Advent season.

All Creation Waits is a kind of bestiary set to an Advent tune. Each day, the life of some creature unfurls before our eyes, with an accompanying prose poem that describes the animal’s hibernal activity. Lushly illustrated, each page opens to dream-like portraits of animals in their habitats.

The color palette is cool, as we might expect for a book written about winter, and the viewer is rewarded for looking deeply. These are not illustrations one can skip over with a quick glance. A refrain in the bottom corner of each illustration reminds the reader that “The dark is not an end. It’s a door. It’s the way a new beginning comes.”

We meet a painted turtle whose work is to wait, and a muskrat during his winter swim. We see little brown bats huddling together to stay warm, an opossum creeping in the dark, and we watch a lake trout laying her eggs where she herself was born.

Do you ever wonder how honeybees survive the cold? Tens of thousands cluster together in their hive. And as Boss writes, “Each bee knows that to live through winter they all must dance and shiver together.”

Finally, on December 25 we meet Jesus the Christ in the barn with Mary and the animals. We are told, “When the sheep-men found the child they saw what all creation is waiting for — a human at home with creatures as kin.”

The last several pages of the book list the creatures we’ve met in turn, with a short paragraph explaining what we might learn from them, along with a question to engage young readers. This is where Boss turns most explicit in drawing out the spiritual truths we might glean from observing creation.

This is a wonderful book to read with children during Advent. Parents and grandparents will enjoy it too, though I expect preschool children will love it best.

If you live in the American South, it may make you homesick for the winter.

Comics have long been the playground for imaginative exploration in science fiction and superhero escapades. And funny papers remain a welcome respite from the tumult of world news. But comics are also becoming the domain for exploring religious questions. Craig Thompson’s Blankets remains an early foray into evangelical subculture, and Alison Bechdel’s most recent graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, is a masterful (and delightful) look at the spirituality of exercise. Both books are deeply personal and recount the experiences of their authors, but fail to convey what religious experience might look like in a broader community. Jonathan Dyck’s Shelterbelts does just this. Dyck weaves together a tapestry of Christian life in the fictional Canadian Mennonite town of Hespeler, and gives texture and nuance to characters we like, people we all know.

Shelterbelts is less of a narrative than a meditation. It contains narrative, sure, like the story of Gerhard Suderman, pastor of Jubilee Mennonite Church, who is trying to shepherd his small congregation to be more open and inclusive, especially given that his daughter Jess is queer and coming to terms with what that means in a small town. Or there is the story of Mike Wall, the pastor of Park Valley, a megachurch with a mission to expand its campus to include a skatepark and coffee shop.

But the vignettes that make up Shelterbelts are not so much leading to a point as showing that life in community is ambivalent, that the characters who populate Hespeler are like the people who populate our lives: They are flawed, they are charming, and none are as good or bad as we might like them to be. The people in our communities, like us, have parts of their stories that are beautiful and parts they would rather forget. In the words of an older Mennonite character featured in the book, Henry Neufeld, “All of our family stories have parts that we wish were different. But that’s no reason to run away from your heritage” (pp. 39-40). Dyck succeeds in presenting these family stories without running from them (and without using them as fodder).

While the themes that Dyck tackles have a quintessentially Canadian flavor, they will resonate with American readers familiar with rural life, especially in places like the Midwest. Religious themes are most prominent, but Dyck gives interesting portrayals of how pacifism is expressed in a country with a military, how old homesteads are being covered in concrete, and how to honor one’s heritage while recognizing one’s ancestors took lands that did not belong to them.

I think priests and pastors would be well-served by reading Shelterbelts, if only because Dyck portrays characters fairly and sympathetically. In a world of polarization and division, the first step to loving our enemies might be to see them in their complexity. This book is an opportunity to attend to the ways that those who are most unlike us are human. If Dyck is critical of religious life, it’s not from a far distance, but as one who knows intimately how Christian life feels. And to top it off, Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon’s Resident Aliens even makes an appearance (p. 31).