Our Theme for 2025
BBC Brings People Together
Our theme for 2025 is BBC Brings People Together.
I was saddened to read an extensive article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson titled, The Anti-Social Century. The column detailed how Americans are now spending more time alone than ever, and how that’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality. The share of U.S. adults having dinner with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30 percent in the past 20 years.
In the 1930s, video entertainment existed only in theaters, and the typical American went to the movies several times a month. Film was a necessarily collective experience, something enjoyed with friends and in the company of strangers. But technology has turned film into a home delivery system. Today, the typical American adult buys about three movie tickets a year—and watches almost 19 hours of television, the equivalent of roughly eight movies, on a weekly basis. In entertainment, as in dining, modernity has transformed a ritual of togetherness into an experience of homebound reclusion and even solitude.
From 2003 to 2023, in person socializing plunged by more than 20 percent, according to the American Time Use Survey, an annual study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among unmarried men and people younger than 25, the decline was more than 35 percent.
Men who watch television now spend seven hours in front of the TV for every hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home. The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species. Since the early 2000s, the amount of time that Americans say they spend helping or caring for people outside their nuclear family has declined by more than a third.
“Human beings are social creatures. As God states early in Genesis, it is not good for us to be alone.”
The impact of all this isolation and loneliness is profound and far reaching. Human beings are social creatures. As God states early in Genesis, it is not good for us to be alone. While some solitude is healthy and appropriate, we have moved way beyond that. We’re created to be in relationship with others and we’re emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and physically healthier when we’re appropriately connected with other people.
One of the hallmarks of the early church was the amount of time and the variety of ways that people were together. This is described in Acts 2:44-47,
“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.
Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread from house to house and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Throughout the month of February in worship and at the Annual Meeting on February 9th, we will be sharing ways we will be seeking to provide opportunities for people to Love, Grow, and Share together which we believe will lead to more meaning, friendship, connection, contentment, joy, and peace. As Hebrews 10:24-25a says,
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.”
Let’s journey through 2025 together!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Doug Scalise