By Darren DeMent
Sequels. Reboots. Existing IP. Extended narrative universes. It seems like that’s all we get when it comes to movies these days.
An article in Forbes magazine highlighting recent cultural trends noted that in the 1990s, just 11.7% of the domestic box office went to sequels, whereas in the 10 years between 2014 and 2023, it was an average of 41.7%. The writer of the article is Kian Bakhtiari, founder of The People, a Gen-Z consultancy on a mission to diversify and futureproof companies. He has written about marketing through a Millennial and Gen-Z lens for Forbes since 2019. He says this trend not only demonstrates “a lack of creativity but a prevailing culture of playing it safe and being rewarded for the familiar rather than exploring the unknown.”
As we gather for worship on this Reformation Sunday, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if a certain German Augustinian friar had decided to play it safe back in 1517. At the very least we can assume we wouldn’t be leading off worship singing A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and at most we likely wouldn’t be gathered together at all. Martin Luther’s decision to go public with his thoughts and ideas triggered a chain of events that we now know as the Protestant Reformation. And our history is full of examples of people, insignificant at the time maybe, whose decisions to buck trends and norms had consequential results far beyond what they could have imagined at the time.
Now it may seem like a big leap to draw a connection between the Protestant Reformation and the fact that we now have four installments of the Kung Fu Panda franchise, but I think there is a warning to us in there — or maybe it’s more of an opportunity. Bakhtiari concludes his article like this:
“The yearning for nostalgia conceals a lack of imagination. If companies, producers and creators continue to feed this nostalgia we end up in an unimaginative feedback loop. We need leaders who have the vision to create new stories rather than mimic the old.”
Wilshire, may we be stirred this morning to consider what new stories, visions, ideas and dreams are possible for our church, our communities and the world. May we have the courage and the faith to not simply mimic what has been, but to boldly move forward into what can be.