The Church and the Vibe Shift

There are too many stories of strange conversions from surprising pockets of Western society—and within my own church—to not think something new is happening. How might the church respond?

A man wakes up from a strange dream in the middle of the night and hears what he believes to be the voice of God telling him to go to church. He doesn’t know where one is located, but he steps outside his apartment building to see a massive building he’s seen a hundred times. “Pretty sure that’s a church,” he thinks, and he goes one Sunday morning. That church was the church I pastor, Imago Dei Community, in Portland, Oregon.

A woman is practicing New Age Meditation in her apartment in the middle of the city. Suddenly (according to her) Jesus Christ appears to her and tells her that he is the the one she is looking for. She puts into Reddit “non-toxic churches Portland, Oregon,” and the first result is our church. She comes the next Sunday.

I have a handful of other stories of bizarre occurrences in peoples’ lives that led them to our church, as do the pastors I’m in immediate contact with in Portland. People simply showing up without any prior evangelization, “strategic initiative,” or any historical relationship with Christianity. They show up, for the most part, due to a strange event that they cannot make sense of but long to comprehend.

These are stories I rarely heard in the West, but always heard in the Global South and in the Middle East. Dreams, visions, bizarre “supernatural” occurrences happen all the time outside of Western secular society. Through my 15 years of ministry, I have heard a few stories like this in Portland, but now they seem to happen nearly every week at my church or a church with which I’m connected.

This is beyond a “coincidence.” The events are, from the perspective of those telling them, a moment where they felt the Living God’s touch upon their life in a unique way. They did not even have a “spiritual experience,” in the broad sense of the term—a little “inner peace,” a moment of levity—no, they were struck by the God of the Bible, the Triune God of Christianity, and they responded appropriately: “where’s a church?”

On a national level, a handful of public intellectuals of all stripes have come to faith in Jesus. The novelist and environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth became Eastern Orthodox, Martin Shaw became Anglican, the once celebrated atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now an evangelical Christian, and most recently, just last week, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, who holds a Ph.D in analytical philosophy, professed his full faith in Jesus Christ in a long blog post with remarkably orthodox theology in it.

Describing this phenomenon , I heard Mark Sayers use the term “vibe shift,” which was originally used as a fashion term by Sean Monahan in 2021. Now taken into larger cultural categories, some pastors are using it to describe the “changing tides” of faith and spirituality in the West. I don’t love the terminology, but I don’t get to pick these things. Whatever we call it, there is a changing cultural attitude towards spirituality. There are also, in my estimation, a larger number of strange works of the Holy Spirit in the West: visions, dreams, sudden illuminations of religious knowledge, etc…

It’s kind of hard to deny. Reading Sanger’s post this weekend, I was stunned. It’s filled with thoughtful engagement, humility, and intellect—grace, even. In one section, he writes about how surprised he was in interacting with the Bible and theology, saying:

“I looked up answers to all my critical questions, thinking that perhaps others had not thought of issues I saw. I was wrong. Not only had they thought of all the issues, and more that I had not thought of, they had well-worked-out positions about them. I did not believe their answers, which sometimes struck me as contrived or unlikely. But often, they were shockingly plausible. The Bible could sustain interrogation; who knew? It slowly dawned on me that I was acquainting myself with the two-thousand-year-old tradition of theology. I found myself positively ashamed to realize that, despite having a Ph.D. in philosophy, I had never really understood what theology even is.”

This man has a Ph.D in analytical philosophy. That’s not the normal tone of his type. These kinds of stories are best being captured by Justine Brierley, in his book and excellent podcast, “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God,” but I thought I would reflect a bit of what this means for us as local pastors and Christians. The question being, if there really is a vibe shift happening towards Christianity, how might we approach ministry? I got five things I’m learning.

1. Invite people to follow Jesus regularly, and be prepared to receive them into the faith even when you don’t.

Five weeks ago, during a normal Sunday message on Ephesians 1, I said the phrase, “I love being your pastor.” Later in the message, I made a pretty anemic ask if people wanted to receive Jesus. I’m not even sure I was entirely clear. During our response time of prayer, Eucharist, and singing, a 16 year-old girl came to our prayer area and asked to receive Jesus. She said she knew she wanted to be Christian when she heard me say, “I love being your pastor.” I think people are so open, so ready sometimes, to take their first step with Jesus, that you don’t need to have these massive, evangelical “asks” ready. Simply present the option in the context of prayer and expect the Spirit of God to move. We have a few stories as simple and beautiful as this at Imago.

2. Our public, online, proclamatory witness of the Christian faith matters.

People listen and watch before they arrive. We don’t put a ton into our online stuff and we certainly aren’t social media masters. But this stuff does something. Most everyone shows up to church after they have done some Googling. Stay online and stay honest.

3. Conversion is often an extremely private affair that can take years or seconds.

Larry Sanger’s essay on his conversion does an amazing job of showing just how long this can take in someone’s life sometimes. While we have had some wild stories of dreams and supernatural power, it’s clear to me that those moments happen often in the context of a larger longing in a person’s life.

In the church, creating space for people in the “in between” will become increasingly important, I think. This past year, our church has hosted a series of “Doubt Nights,” where all are welcome with all questions. Our vision was to create community and infuse times of prayer into a two hour event where we also jump into Scripture’s actual answers to hard questions. So we talk for a bit, hear a presentation, ask more questions, and have people pray for us. We have been shocked at the turnout and the effect. Each night, we had people drive from nearly an hour away who subscribe to our newsletter just because they desire a space to work out doubts and honest questions. Those spaces are rare and the church must be right there. I love Alpha, but I often see its structure as potentially inhibiting and a bit too process-driven. It has its use, but I also wonder what a more flexible space can do that meets the person at their primary question and calls them in prayer to faith.

But at the same time, the stories I opened with seemingly happened in seconds. Conversion is a strange thing in that God is the most active agent in the equation. Conversion is something that happens to you. There’s a level of passivity to it. It’s personal and it can sometimes be a slow victory, but it’s a movement of the Spirit of God upon the human heart. But it can also be sudden, arresting, and glorious. How might our ministries be prepared for both?

4. Expect the miraculous and pray like it.

I have been challenged by the prayers of Paul in Ephesians. I’m preaching them to my church right now and using them as a guide for our staff team. Here (particularly in Ephesians 1:15-23 and 3:14-21), Paul prays theological realities of power into the life of the communities he is writing to. Some things must be “prayed in” to churches. They cannot be taught and they often aren’t even “caught”—that is, transmitted from human to human. Instead, they are “received”—given as a grace to a surprised handful of believers. Some of us pastors at Imago have asked for a kind of “holy discontent” to stir up.

5. The local church will not only be the place where the atheist/agnostic shows before they believe, but where they show up after they already believe.

There’s a preparation many of us are accustomed to that was given to us by our seeker-sensitive ancestors. Speak and preach like the non-believer is in the room. That should probably continue. But we also need to preach as if the freshly converted Christian is in the room as well. For us, there are stories of folks who are arriving at Imago Dei already converted by the power of the Spirit. There’s a readiness, an eagerness now, that perhaps wasn’t there before. Our ministry spaces can assume we will receive people who weren’t converted inside your church—they were converted outside. I think this will mean more regularly orientation and theological depth to our current practices like Eucharist and baptism and the role of Holy Scripture in our gatherings. When people convert after watching YouTube, or having a dream, or because of a bizarre experience in their life, the kind of “orientation” to the faith is drastically different from someone who received the gospel after a message your Lead Pastor preached.

There’s so much more. I’ve just been thinking in the past six months that ministry is incredibly exciting right now. I don’t care much about what sociological research says (I can a little). I don’t think this is a “negative world”—or if it is, it always has been. I really consider the opportunity before the church is exciting. The Spirit of God is working in a new way. I don’t care what you call it.