This past June, Acadia Divinity College tried something different with the annual Simpson Lecture Series. Rather than inviting people to campus for a three-day event, a small ADC team travelled to Halifax, Moncton, and Charlottetown, offering three distinct lectures and engagement activities.
Each evening, President Anna Robbins provided a theological foundation for thinking about the future, while Dr. Joel Murphy, Director of the MacRae Centre, introduced a different compound driver shaping the church today and into the future.
Recordings are available here
Writing Letters to the Future
Alongside the lectures, participants in the room and online took part in a theo-foresight activity designed to help them interpret these changes within their own contexts and imagine possible responses.
Attendees wrote fictional Letters to the Future addressed to someone they care about in 2035. They reflected on what was shaping the future, the questions church leaders were asking, what they had tried, and what they hoped future leaders would learn.
Participants were also invited to contribute their letters to a research project exploring how Christian leaders across Canada understand the present and imagine possible futures. Although not everyone who attended contributed a letter, the 37 submissions offer several compelling initial insights. Three themes stand out.
Digitalization Is Shaping the Future
Approximately 38% of the letters identified some aspect of digitalization, including social media, artificial intelligence, information overload, echo chambers, and the tension between online and embodied presence.
These concerns point to deeper questions about formation, trust, attention, and discernment.
Questions to consider:
- How are digital environments forming the people in our congregations?
- What wisdom will people need in a world of constant information?
Leaders Need to Slow Down and Discern
The most common hope was that future leaders would learn the importance of slowing down in order to discern faithfully.
Contributors imagined leaders who remained curious, continued learning, listened carefully, made room for prayer and rest, and created communities where people felt cared for and able to belong.
This suggests that the future will not be navigated through speed, efficiency, or innovation alone. Faithful response may depend upon learning to pause, notice what is changing, listen to different perspectives, and discern what God may be inviting us to do.
Questions to consider:
- What assumptions about the future are shaping our decisions?
- What practices could help our leaders and congregations become more attentive, curious, and prayerful?
Connection and Belonging Are Being Shaped by Deeper Forces
Many letters raised concerns about loneliness, fragmented relationships, and genuine community. More importantly, participants connected these challenges to deeper forces such as overstimulation, individualism, fear of vulnerability, and the tension between online and embodied presence.
One participant asked:
“How do we create more genuinely connected relational villages and ‘in real life’ cultures of community?”
This matters because it moves the conversation beyond blaming technology and toward addressing the deeper causes of disconnection.
Questions to consider:
- What deeper forces are shaping relationships in our community?
- Are we addressing the causes of disconnection or only its symptoms?
Continuing the Conversation
These are only three initial observations from the Letters to the Future research. Together, they reveal leaders who are concerned about technological and relational change, but who are also imagining hopeful and faithful responses.
The letters do not offer a single prediction of what the church will become. Instead, they invite us to pay attention, ask better questions, learn together, and respond with wisdom and courage.
To learn more about this project or other research being conducted through the MacRae Centre, contact Joel Murphy at joel.murphy@acadiau.ca.
