Suburbia becomes unstable

Big Creek Church is a suburban church. We are reaching out to a suburban people. Typically suburbanites are self-sufficient and always "appear" secure. That security and confidence is beginning to fray at the edges.

Some proclaim the unfolding demise of suburbia.

"Many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and '70s - slums characterized by poverty, crime and decay," said Christopher Leinberger, an urban land use expert, in a recent essay in the Atlantic Monthly.

Most experts do not share such apocalyptic visions, seeing instead a gradual reordering.

"It's like an ebbing of this suburban tide," said Joe Cortright, an economist at the consulting group Impresa in Portland, Oregon. "There's going to be this kind of reversal of desirability. Typically, Americans have felt the periphery was most desirable, and now there's going to be a reversion to the center."

Read the entire article from the international edition of the New York Times.

This fraying and lack of stability may provide a needed crowbar to open up the hearts and lives of suburbanites. God often uses uncertain and unsettled times to get our attention. Circumstances such as the economy may be God's needed megaphone to speak not only the church (because we have much to repent for) but also toward those still far from Him.

God is asking to turn away from our self-sufficiency, narcissism and isolation and turn to Him.

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