Todd Hiestand // Missional Living in Suburban America

Am I Agent Smith???

Can you hear me, Morpheus? I’m going to be honest with you. I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality. Whatever you want to call it. I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste, your stink. And every time I do, I feel I have somehow been infected by it, it’s repulsive. I must get out of here. I must get free…
Agent Smith, The Matrix

Sometimes this is how i feel in suburbia…

We are living in one of the most individualized, marketed and comsumeristic societies of all time and at the same time, it is one of the most Godless places on earth. I was sharing my frustrations with the suburban life last week and a friend of mine responded with, “Welcome to Niniva.” I had to have a chuckle.

The idea that suburbia is a communal ghetto is no new thought (in fact, i have heard that the building pattern used to design the ghettos in WWII is the same one used in suburbia…)

A thought from the book i am reading called: Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

For the past fifty years, we Americans have been building a national landscape that is largely devoid of places worth caring about. Soulless subdivisions, residential “communities” utterly lacking in communal life, strip shopping centers, “big box” chain stores, and artificially festive malls set within barren seas of parking; antiseptic office parks, ghost towns after 6 p.m.; and mile upon mile of clogged collector roads, the only fabric tying our disassociated lives back together…

In spite of this, I am learning to live in suburbia better. Truth is, my wife and I are learning to find connection spots in the midst the disconnection. It must be intentional, but it is possible.

So, I guess really don’t want to “get out” of here. Fact is, I feel called here. I do however, want to be “free” and see others be “free” in the midst of it. Suburbia is our mission field. My dream continues to be we can help people can find relationships and belonging through communities that find hope in the name of Jesus…..