Wanderings: The Fractured Mind and the Silent Church

The Hurry Virus | Friday, June 6

I’ve been on some lonely trails lately.

One of the benefits of a trail like this is the chance to think and pray without interruption. And this week, as I’ve been wandering, I keep coming back to a hard but honest observation:

The church—at least the way we often do it—is no longer a place where we see or hear one another.

We gather in rows.
We face forward.
We listen to artists. We take in a message.
But most of the time, we’re looking at the back of someone’s head, not their face.
We’re absorbing a performance, not participating in a shared transformation.

This isn’t a rant against the church. I’ve given my life to it.
But I’m grieving what it’s becoming. Because in many ways, we’ve adopted the very patterns that are breaking us.

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Speed Has Entered the Sanctuary

Worship has become an experience to consume—tightly timed, production-ready, and emotionally curated.

We’re not forming people for presence.
We’re conditioning people for speed.

And here’s the deeper problem: even if the music is meaningful and the sermon is helpful, it rarely slows us down enough to see each other… or to truly listen.

We don’t pause together.
We don’t linger.
We don’t ask or answer real questions.
We don’t confess in each other’s presence.
We don’t even look each other in the eye.

And so the very space that once held our soul formation has begun to mimic the world we’re trying to escape.

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What Our Brains Are Telling Us

Neuroscience can now explain some of what our souls have been groaning about for decades.

Dr. Curt Thompson and others have shown how a chronically hurried brain begins making fast, utilitarian decisions—especially in relationships.

The prefrontal cortex, which governs executive functioning, becomes overloaded.
It starts scanning instead of seeing. Filtering instead of listening. Triaging people as inputs, threats, or tasks to avoid.

We stop asking, “What’s this person going through?”
And start asking, “What do they want from me? What will this cost?”

This isn’t because we’re cruel.
It’s because we’re overloaded.
We don’t have time to listen.
We don’t have bandwidth to care.
We’ve trained our minds to move on.

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Bowling Alone, Attending Church Alone

Years ago, sociologist Robert Putnam published his now-famous work Bowling Alone, documenting the collapse of social capital in American life.

People still bowled, he noted. They just no longer did it in leagues.
We used to do life together. Now we do it separately.

And that wasn’t just sociology. That was prophecy.

Because now we also go to church alone—even when we’re surrounded by people.

And the reason isn’t just individualism.
It’s neural fatigue.
We’re too overloaded to risk depth.

We don’t have enough quiet to attune to others.
We don’t have enough slowness to be curious.
We don’t have enough margin to stay and ask the second or third question.

And so we don’t.
We worship. We exit. We repeat.

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Strategic Silence in the Church

And in some places, this isolation hasn’t just happened—it’s been designed.

There’s a church strategy that’s been quietly shaping evangelical spaces for decades:
Don’t pressure people to engage. Let them come, consume, and go.

The rationale?

“When people go to the movies, they don’t talk to strangers. They take in the performance and leave.”

And so church becomes a curated experience—like a theater.
Excellent music. A helpful message.
And then… everyone leaves.

No eye contact.
No questions.
No lingering.

It’s the church version of bowling alone—even if you're sitting in a crowd.

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What We Need Is Not More Efficiency

You can’t solve this with a faster Sunday service.
You can’t solve this only with deeper teaching.
You can’t even solve this with more neuroscience.

What we need is the slow, patient work of spiritual formation.

Formation is what rewires the brain to attend to God.
Formation is what reawakens our capacity to see the image of God in each other.
Formation is what teaches us not just to think more clearly—but to love more deeply.

This is not self-help.
It is soul recovery.

As Paul said in Romans 12:2:

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Not reprogrammed.
Not upgraded.
Renewed.
Made whole.
Brought back to a way of thinking and seeing that allows love to emerge again.

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A Different Kind of Church

Maybe the church of the future won’t look like a stage and rows.
Maybe it will look like a firepit.

Not flashy.
Not timed to the minute.
Just a circle of people who aren’t in a hurry to leave.

Think about what happens around a firepit—when people linger — and mosquitoes don’t drive us away:

• We settle in.

• We stare into the flame.

• We let the silence stretch.

• We tell the truth, without pretense.

• We laugh until we cry.

• We cry until we breathe again.

• We say things we didn’t plan to say—because someone finally made space for them to come out.

No one’s performing.
No one’s watching a screen.
No one’s rushing the moment.

We’re just… there.
Warmed. Lit. Seen.

What if church felt like that?

What if our gatherings were slow enough, deep enough, and spacious enough that something shifted in us?

What if our eyes began to open—not just to each other, but to Christ quietly present in our midst?

What if we left not with notes, but with a sense of having been human together—and attentive to God together?

Here’s the hard truth:
You can have size, or you can have the firepit.
But you can’t have both.

If you want size, you can have it—stages, crowds, systems, scale.
But don’t pretend it’s the same thing.

And if you want what the firepit gives—depth, presence, transformation—then you’ll have to give up some size.
That’s the choice.
And it’s a real one.

One leads to performance.
The other leads to presence.
One impresses.
The other transforms.

Which will we choose?

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A Quiet Call

If you’ve felt unseen, unheard, or rushed past—
If your faith has started to feel like one more program in a packed calendar—
If you’ve forgotten what it feels like to really listen or be listened to—

Let this be your quiet rebellion.

Choose presence.
Choose listening.
Choose a life that moves at the pace of love.

Because that’s where renewal begins.
Not just in your mind.
But in your soul.

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🕊️ Benediction: A Blessing for the Unhurried Life

May you walk more slowly than the world demands.
May your eyes learn to linger, and your ears to truly listen.
May you resist the lie that says speed is strength—
and remember that love has never been in a hurry.

May your mind be renewed, your breath deepened,
and your soul reminded:
You are not a machine.
You are a beloved human, made for communion.

And may the God who is never rushed
meet you in the quiet
and walk with you at the pace of grace.

Amen.

Gratefully,

— Gene

The Compass