One of the big ministry questions facing the church of today is how to minister to a society that will be forced to deal with extremely rapid and sustained increases in energy costs.[1] See below for a brief analysis and some graphs.[2]

This is a huge consideration for us in Alaska. Over 98 percent of our food is flown to Alaska from the Lower 48 states, along with nearly all of our consumer goods. The projected scale of increase in transportation costs means that life will have to change dramatically very soon. I therefore want to offer a few initial thoughts on what this might mean for the church.

1. Future economics will make transportation so costly that locally self-sustaining economies will have to be developed (or redeveloped as in the past).

Families and small communities will have to be more self sufficient and self-sustaining. This means learning to do for ourselves will become a trend. Cooperative groups will be more self-sufficient than solo individuals or families, which means building communities and neighborhoods that can work together will be essential.
Christians have a long history of building community around various ministry causes. Yet, as a whole our society has lost much of that ability. Is this part of the gospel we have to offer the world? If so, how do we begin preparing to meet that ministry need, how do we recapture our ability to build community around specific needs? The awareness of this need is only beginning to rise up in the larger society just now but will expand rapidly in the near future. Can the church connect its ability to build cooperative community around Christian mission with the world’s emerging need to build cooperative community around sustainable skills?

2. Mission is most effective when it recognizes real needs and organizes to meet those needs. There are a number of needs that go along with the future economy. Here are a few that come to mind as I brainstorm about the future:

Food: Organizing neighborhoods to garden effectively. Note that by the end of WWII New York City was producing nearly 25% of its food from rooftop and balcony gardens within the city.
Helping neighborhoods organize to share gardening crops, or to share equipment or expertise (not just gardening, also maybe maintenance, etc) would help them reduce costs.
Forming community together is hard work, because of the personalities involved and the natural conflicts that appear. Processes of reconciliation are available through so many Christian resources and would be of service in building the new reality.
The level of transition needed from current lifestyle (expanding consumer economies and a consumer mentality) to the Post Peak Oil lifestyle will be huge. Helping people cope with that level of change will be an important ministry.
To deal with ongoing relationships over distance will require continued improvement of high tech communications. How can we use current high tech communication today, and how do we help shape future ministry through technological means?
Cross-cultural communication is always challenging, and cross-cultural partnering and visioning is even more challenging. How can we continue as a connected “body of Christ” faith community with much more expansive travel and less face-to-face time?
Connecting these ministries of necessity both with an awareness of the adventure of new life in the Holy Spirit, and with the basics of the Christian gospel and life will be essential for the spiritual grounding of the emerging new society.
In this cosmopolitan world, we need to ask God to guide us in our relationships with other peoples of faith who are not Presbyterian…and also how to shape relationships with peoples of faith who are not Christian.

3. Most young people are less interested in maintaining old religious structures than they are interested in living authentically for God and discovering the adventure of how the Spirit will lead them and form them for the future. They are therefore connecting through social media, and forming local small groups to explore these possibilities.

Can we help such groups to be more effective in raising up disciples of Jesus Christ?
Can we help such groups as they develop missionally, impacting their communities with the love of God?
How can these intentional faith communities fit in with the Post-Peak Oil emerging society?

Recommended Reading: Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, by Richard Heinberg, New Society Publishers, 2010.

[1] So many of our world oil fields are in decline that we are facing a rather dramatic decrease in world oil supply for the foreseeable future, at the same time we are facing a rather dramatic increase in world demand for oil (especially from India and China). This is because there have been no large new oil discoveries since the late 1970s, and older sources (like Prudhoe Bay) eventually decline. The world appears to have peaked in production in 2006-2008. Further projections (Heinberg, Richard: Peak Everything; See the Preface) show that we are too late in developing alternative energy sources fast enough to be able to avoid a very large impact on our economy and lifestyle.