Learning From the Wind Mills

by the Rev. Annika Lister Strooope, Assoc. Pastor, Evangelism & Fellowship

If you've driven on I-35 between the Minnesota border and Des Moines, or on I-80 between Des Moines and Omaha in the past couple of years, you have noticed a change: the landscape now includes large swaths of occupied skyline. What were once open views now have groups of wind turbines that stretch for miles.

 I was thinking about this blog the last time I was driving on I-35 and I-80. I pondered the intersections of technology and things and places that don’t move as fast as technology seems to move. I pondered the fact that the wind turbines in Iowa have not made Iowa any less rural -- it is, in fact, the large swaths of land with low populations that have allowed for corn and soybeans farms to now also be wind farms.

Whenever churches try to keep up with technological trends, we often ponder: will we be less of the church we are familiar with if we adapt to modern technology?

It seems that a church blog and a wind turbine have something in common: both are new technologies that utilize the strengths of the community they inhabit. The Christian church has always embraced communication to the farthest reaches. Paul's letters traveled hundreds of miles -- distances that the average person at that time would have never dreamed of traversing. The Spirit, which is called by the same word as breath and wind in both biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek, does not know borders and boundaries. Technology actually tries, I think, to keep up with the Spirit!