My second global experience was the eve of the most hyped date in history. I spent it snuggled in the pouch of the PBS kangaroo as it hopped around the globe to cover the wildly diverse and colorful panorama of 2000 Eve celebrations. For someone who loves parties, but hates going to them, it was the ideal way to bring in the people's 21^st century.

The truly unprecedented nature of such global celebrations too easily escapes us. For the first time in history, it is possible for the citizens of planet Earth as one body to have common experiences. On New Year's Eve hundreds of millions of people saw the same images, heard the same songs, and felt similar emotions of wow, wonder, and awareness from the collective genius of Earth's inhabitants.

What might this portend for our future? Might we come together as a planet and tackle some of the challenges (global warming, environmental degradation, racism and ethnic cleansing, terrorism, weapons proliferation, etc) that beg for shared solutions but are without shared structures for solving them?

While reflecting on this new world a-coming' and what kind of world it could be--I also was hit by the sense of another world a-going' and what a world it has been. A thousand years ago very few people anticipated the coming of the year 1000, much less celebrated it. Why? Because a thousand years ago the Christian calendar dividing history into before Christ and after Christ was the preserve of only a small band of literate elites in a small corner of Europe.

During the second millennium, Christendom so triumphed that by it's end the entire world is in some way governed by and celebrating the Christian calendar. Christianity so embedded itself in cultures (Western, popular, media, global) that people from China to Cancun are keeping time by the Jesus clock. On New Year's Eve we were celebrating 2000 years of what? 2000 from what? What was the hinge point of history? In short, PBS' New Year's Eve (and ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) could be interpreted as a giant celebration of the success of Christianity over the past thousand years. If not "every knee" was bowing, at least a significant portion of the planet's necks were tilting heavenwards. The skies were lit-up by fireworks celebrating two millennia of history spent in the wake of a WaterFire Messiah who showed how God's grace could be both a cleansing stream and a consuming fire.

The world of Christendom is over. The words "Christianity is dying in the West" launch a recent book by New Zealand novelist/theologian Michael Riddell.^[i] A special "Millennium Edition" of The Economist began its treatment of the last thousand years by observing: "Already Christianity, the faith once almost synonymous with Europe, is decaying in its homelandsBas its rival, Islam, is not.@^[ii] One wonders how many necks in Egypt, Israel, Indonesia, Japan, Nigeria would have bent backwards if they had been fully aware they were commemorating one of Christianity=s great triumphs.

What role will Christianity have in the next millennium? Postmoderns have no trouble singing with Mariah Carey "You and I must make a pact/We must bring salvation back.@ Can postmoderns learn to make a pact with the church as well as with pop culture to "bring salvation back?@ In fact, might the church learn some things from pop culture about how to "bring salvation back?@

Two of the most talked about shows on television now are both British imports: Antiques Road Show and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Both are so successful that they are spinning off clones. In the case of game shows, everybody now has at least one, comprising over six hours of prime time gaming a week: Fox (Greed), CBS (Winning Lines, $64,000 Question), NBC (Twenty One), ABC (Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, Mastermind, You Don=t Know Jack).

Why the success of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?@ This show has made the transition from rational to Experiential, from representative to Participative, from word-based to Image-based, and from individual to Connected. In other words, it is EPIC programming. The recovery of Christianity in the next millennium is likely to be based on whether or not the church can carve (not cast) its ministries into more EPIC shape.

EXPERIENCE: From the opening question "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?@ to the space-age set in which Regis Philbin and contestant face-off mid-air in hover-craft, Star-Wars like vehicles, everything is designed to offer everyone involved an experience. In the same way singing hymns and choruses back to back magnifies the experiential momentum of worship as opposed to stand-alone songs slotted into liturgical notches, the show appears on three successive days a week, not at weekly intervals throughout the viewing season.

PARTICIPATION: Rather than put contestants in an isolation booth, this game shows offers them "Lifelines@ that invite participation from the audience and from friends at home. Rather than off-putting fill-in-the-blank questions, multiple choice questions invite people at home to get involved and test themselves. The use of multiple choice is not about dumbing down, as some say about the less than genius questions that characterize the new game shows. It=s about drawing in. And its success in drawing in multiple generations to watch the same program is already making television history. In contrast to most other network programming, especially game shows, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? draws from all demographic groups and virtually mirrors the US population.

IMAGE: The image of "a million bucks@ is well-entrenched in popular culture, and only needs a little polish for it to shine like silver. The visual image of what a million dollars looks like and might do to change your life are ubiquitous on the program.

CONNECTED: The lone individual levitating center-stage is surrounded by successive rings of fans, friends, and millions of cheerleaders at the other end of the screen. The Judgment-Day sound of "Is that your final answer?@ subtly connects us all to the truth-or-consequences nature of every choice we make. 

When Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life@ he was giving us the three progressive steps of a pilgrimage gospel. EPIC was there from the beginning. Christianity is based on an image: Jesus the Christ. Jesus, the very Image of God, invites us to Participate in a pilgrim Way (steps one is "Follow Me@) that leads us into richer and deeper Experiences of Truth (step two is from which one can then build the only Life ("Feed My Sheep@) in which the circuits are completed that Connect with God, others and creation.

On the eve of Millennium Three, Christianity faces the most powerful intellectual and spiritual advance in the history of civilization. Internet technology is amplifying the worldwide flow of new kinds of experiences, interactions, images, and connections. The doors of the future are there for Christianity to open for the glory of God. Our ancestors helped create those doors. Will we their descendants open them? Or will we sit back, entwined like mummies in safety-belt strips of protection, fear and suspicion--all death sentences--and let others open those doors while the future flies by?

There is no door we can't open with EPIC love.

copyright (c) 2000 by Leonard I. Sweet  

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