Knowing Your Moment

It's the hardest thing to do

A few months ago, I stumbled on a Twitter (or X, if you prefer) thread arguing that Robert E. Lee was an overrated general and that Ulysses S. Grant was far superior. I am not an expert in the Civil War, nor in generalship. When it comes to those two men, I don’t think the interesting discussion is about which was a better general, because both were exceptional. Rather, what stands out to me is that both men understood the war they were fighting.

It’s often said that Lee knew from the beginning the Confederacy couldn’t win. That isn’t actually true. He probably believed that the South could not win through sheer fighting power, but he definitely thought it was possible to make the war cost more than the Union was willing to pay. And he very nearly did! Lee knew that he was fighting a war where he had to be aggressive, inventive, and in everything he did, make the Union bleed.

Grant, on the other hand, knew that if the Union simply kept hammering the Confederacy, they would eventually have to give up. Early in the war, when Grant was fighting out west, he learned something about the men under his command. An initial Confederate attack was usually ferocious and extremely effective. But Grant discovered that if his men could withstand the first day or two, they were almost always able to recover and push back the enemy.

One of the reasons the Civil War lasted as long as it did was that Lee knew the kind of war he had to fight. One of the reasons the Union prevailed is that Grant did too.

Learning from the past can be difficult; forecasting the future is usually little more than guessing. But have you ever considered how difficult it is to understand the present? How well do we really understand the moment in history we occupy? One of the hallmarks of our age is uncertainty. So much has changed so quickly over the last few decades, both for good and bad. Where is our world going? What will our place be in it?

One of the things we look to in times like these are leaders who understand the moment. Because men like Lee and Grant understood the moment they were in, they understood what was needed from them. Most importantly, they were each equal to that need. With Grant in particular, it’s remarkable the extent to which he seems to have been put on earth to do one and only one thing; and he did it.

Grant at Cold Harbor, 1864. Photo by Mathew Brady, colorized by @madsmadsen.ch from Battlefield Trust collection.

When you think about your own life and the work you do, are you operating from an understanding of the present, or the past? It’s much easier to do the latter, and assume the present needs what the past needed. We think that way because we already understand what has been done; it’s easy to keep doing it. Besides, it works, doesn’t it?

So the line of thinking ran for Blockbuster Video, Kodak, etc., etc. It isn’t just business — in my own world, I see it happen with churches all the time. I don’t just mean the little old Baptist churches where everyone wears suits and the KJV is the only translation permitted. I think it’s been happening to megachurches for the last several years at least, and maybe the last twenty.

Here’s what I think: In the 1980’s, men like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren had an insight. They believed that there were huge numbers of people in the suburbs who didn’t go to church but who WOULD go to church if 1) they were invited and 2) it was accessible. Invitations are easy; how to do the latter? Well, it’s America and we love our entertainment and even in the 1980’s attention spans were getting pretty short, so they decided the music had to be great and the messages had to be interesting. And it worked.

Forty years later, I don’t think that insight is enough. It isn’t enough because the moment is different and we all know it, even if we aren’t sure what that means. But the impulse is to just keep doing what’s been working and turn it up all the way. So, a lot of megachurches now operate like a streaming service; constantly pump out new content and make sure you’re adding more subscribers (sorry, congregants) than you are losing. Many pastors/influencers/celebrities can’t maintain the pace and so we’ve seen a remarkable number of men quit in disgrace.

I don’t claim to understand our moment in history either, but here’s what I believe:

We live in a very serious time and an incredibly superficial culture. Thus, people are searching for things that are deeply real. Religion claims to be one of those things and when people show up to church, that is what they hope to find. They aren’t looking for something that keeps their interest; they can find that on their phones whenever they want. Rather, they are searching for something that resonates with their soul. My fear is that when people show up to a highly-produced experience that resembles a concert followed by a TED talk, they won’t see anything else.

You can do church that way, but if you do there had better be something real at the heart of what you are doing. I think we have that at Seacoast, where I serve. One of the reasons we’ve been able to maintain that heart is that our leadership tries to figure out where God is leading us, and then follow. Very few of us can understand the moment we live in. Fortunately, we serve a God who does, and who will lead us in ways that match the moment even when they don’t make sense.

The world is indeed changing and the people who truly perceive the moment are the ones who will determine how those changes unfold. Yet, even these great men and women are simply playing a part in a larger story. We should always strive to understand the moment we are in, because God is the one who has placed us there. But even when we do not understand, he does, because all moments belong to him.