Hopeful Living in an Anxious Age
Christ in Culture Conference Sessions From My Church Now Available
Two months ago, I had the privilege of helping organize and run a conference at our church where 170 people attended.
It was absolutely amazing.
I primarily helped manage the content itself; from inviting the speakers, crafting the big ideas that we wanted to hit, ensuring the flow from one session to another, and ultimately, getting out of the way of the speakers so that they can deliver the good material that I knew they’d bring.
We can now share that material with you! Here are each of the main talks with my brief comments.
Main Session 1: Endless Demands, Anxiety, and the Comfort of God’s Presence - Kelly Kapic
Click the image, or right here, to watch the session on YouTube.
Kapic began the conference by talking about the clock. Yes, the clock. And honestly, it was gripping. The clock represents a shift in our culture from time serving us, to us serving time. A mechanized world has plenty of benefits, but it also comes with dehumanizing forces that disincarnate us from physical presence.
This first talk was primarily focused on culture. And we need this as Christians. We need to think deeply about our culture to help us understand how to live like Christ in the midst of it.
Kapic concluded by contrasting our sense of being pulled in all sorts of directions and Christ’s perpetual presence with us.
Kelly Kapic is the author of over a dozen theology books and his talk here is unpacked in more detail in: You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News. It was one of my top ten books of 2022.
Main Session 2: Experiencing the Supernatural Peace of God - Tobi Adetayo
Again, click the image above to watch the video.
Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Tobi simply unpacked this text. He’s a great Bible teacher — my favorite preacher from my homiletics course from years ago — and he demonstrates his passion here.
If this session were the only message given at the conference, I would have been uncomfortable. You see, there is a false perspective where people believe that all anxiety can be controlled through prayer, better thinking, or by having better trust in God. This is simply not biblical. And just preaching Philippians 6:6-7 alone, and not bringing up the rest of Scripture, could lead to this mistake.
But there is also a second false perspective, one that says no anxiety can be controlled through prayer, better thinking, or in trusting in God; that anxiety is only a bodily reaction and no supernatural or Biblical influences can change it. But this is wrong, too. (Scripture, and the Christian tradition, can be quite nuanced here and some theologians have analyzed anxiety in-depth.)
Tobi’s sermon here spoke very strongly against that second false perspective. We cannot be hopeful in our anxious age if we only have naturalistic answers. We need the supernatural peace of Jesus in our deep and difficult depressions.
Main Session 3: How to Pray Through Anxiety With a Heavenly Hope - David Robinson
Saturday morning began with Psalm 55, a lament psalm.
We need lament when we face anxiety. We need the language of the psalter to say the words we need to say, feel the things we need to feel, and like David, place our hope in the one who can bring about resolution.
David Robinson is both a pastor and a counseling professor. In this talk, David brought out the way in which the text takes time to get to hope. Sometimes we grieve and stress and cry before the hope comes, and that’s okay, too.
Main Session 4: Hopeful Living: God’s Promise to Finish the Work He Began in Us - Kelly Kapic
This was my favourite session of the entire conference.
Once you have an awareness of how the clock has shaped the way we set expectations (Kapic’s first talk), then you can better appreciate why we have unreasonable expectations for ourselves and for God.
Why does sanctification take so long? Why does God seem so slow to fix me?
Even when our best efforts are at their best, and even when the Holy Spirit is dwelling inside us, true growth still takes time.
The speed of God is 5 kilometers per hour. We know this because we know that Jesus was fully man and that 5 km/hr is the average speed a human walks.
Adjust the pace of your expectations accordingly.
Panel Discussion: Anxiety and Loneliness in this Cultural Moment
Hey look, it’s me on the right!
I prepped about seven questions to ask of Dr. Kapic, David Robinson, and Melodie O’Connell, who is a Social Worker with 20 years of experience. Here they are:
1. What changes have you found as a social worker in the last few years when it comes to the people you meet?
2. Right now in Canada, 20 percent of people, or 1 in five, have received an anxiety disorder diagnosis. What do you think are some of the key factors driving up anxiety in our society?
3. What do you think the relationship is between loneliness and anxiety? When we planned the conference know both topics are important, and that they must be related, but how?
4. In Ontario we had some of the most prolonged social distancing measures in the world, but even before the pandemic, there was a notable increase in loneliness. One study found that in the 1990s most people said they had around 3 close friends, friends they could share their most intimate secrets with, whereas by the 2010s, the average number of close friends was just 2. While there might be factors causing loneliness outside of our control, how might Christians and churches be contributing to the problem of loneliness rather than helping?
5. Jesus and Paul each say something to the effect of, "do not be anxious." Would you say then that Christians should always consider anxiety to be sinful? Or should we sometimes think it's sinful? Or never? How should Christians think about sin and anxiety?
6. Is it possible to talk about mental health and relieving anxiety TOO much? For example, preaching on mental health and neglecting to preach the gospel? Can mental health become an idol?
The answers surprised me! This is worth watching as there was a great diversity of perspectives, each with similar underlying values: a Christian social worker who works in a non-Christian medical practical, a Baptist pastor who teaches Biblical Counseling at a seminary, and a reformed theologian whose wife suffers from an (at times) debilitating illness.
Breakout Sessions
For these, I’ll simply list the title, session description, and speaker. For a background of each speaker, click here.
Hopeful Living and Trauma - Melodie O’Connell
When most people think of trauma they think of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but there is a much greater range and diversity of traumas that affect people to varying degrees. Come to this session to grow in your understanding of how trauma affects the human body, what responses are beneficial, and how Jesus gives us hope amidst it all.
Worshipping God from Dark Places - Dr. David Barker
This breakout session reviews stories of pain, loss, and loneliness of the psalmist David found in the psalm titles, hears his cry and call from those places, and helps us with our own voices when we find ourselves in similar places. The session will look at the place of the church as uniquely positioned to minister in this context. We will hear his voice of lament in particular as a communal worship voice for the church, and how it takes him, and us as Christ’s people, from despair to hope.
Digital Addiction, Anxiety, and Rest - Joel Jacob & Andrew Noble
How do digital devices addict us? How do they, as Jonathan Haidt argues, make us anxious and depressed? And how do we respond without rejecting the common grace given to us through technology? It starts with rest. Come to this session to learn the relevance of Jesus’ words in our attention economy.
How to Be Mentally Healthy as a Young Adult or Teenager - Stella Mfoafo-M’Carthy
One of the worst mistakes we can make in supporting others is to reduce their health to be either spiritual, physical, mental, or emotional. We need a holistic framework with Scripture as our authority and Christ as our counsellor. Come to this session to see what this looks like, whether you’re a teenager or young adult yourself or loving one who is.
Main Session 5: Suffering & Glory: Final Redemption as the Believer's Greatest Hope - Tobi Adetayo
The final message in the conference focused on the Christian hope of glory as unpacked in Romans 8:18-25.
In light of this hope, we run the race laid out for us, no matter what suffering we might face. God’s promises cannot be broken. They cannot be made invalid. They can only come true.
As Christians, we have a promise of all our restlessness being put to rest by a Savior who bears our burdens. In light of eternity, we can face the present.
A Final Thought
One key to the conference was music. I didn’t realize this before the conference, but those on the planning team knew better than I — you can sing hope in a way that cannot be expressed in mere words.
In fact, words in isolation are precisely the error we make in modernity. Rather, we are carried up to God with the chorus of the congregation.
So whether you sing in lament or make a joyful noise to the Lord, my hope is for your hope to be in Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
.