Russell Chandler, Racing Toward 2001: The Forces Shaping America's Religious Future (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 354 pp., cloth. Condensed version available on audio tape.

George Barna, The Frog in the Kettle: What Christians Need To Know About Life in the Year 2000 (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990), 235 pp., cloth.

The impending dawn of a new millenium frames contemporary "future-talk" with a sense of urgency and suddenness. Change is now accepted as a fundamental law of life in Western society, and mortals step back to observe the tidal wave of change with a mixture of fascination, awe, and foreboding.

The church finds itself addressed by new challenges and crises, but also by unprecedented opportunities as well. Journalist Lance Morrow suggests that the 21st century will represent a "cosmic divide" in human history.

That cosmic divide represents the most critical challenge the church has faced in the past two centuries. The pace of change has caught the church off guard, and often without defenses. But ministry requires an effective reading of the times and seasons of life and a keen sense of historical context.

The mega-shifts which frame our contemporary social, economic, and political transformation form the radical and undeniable context for contemporary ministry. Preachers are among the first to recognize the impact of these critical shifts, for they are revealed in the lives of the persons to whom we preach and minister.

Russell Chandler, resident religion specialist at The Los Angeles Times for over eighteen years, has taken a comprehensive look at these issues in Racing Toward 2001, one of the most thorough surveys of social transformation yet published. Chandler writes with an intentional focus on the meaning of these trends and developments for the church.

Chandler writes with an eye for how emerging trends affect the lives of ordinary persons -- "pew people," he calls them. But his books bear enormous insight for "pulpit people" as well.

The project is the work of a journalist, not a theologian or social scientist. Chandler does not rely upon a formalized theoretical framework for the course of his survey. The book reads like a series of well-documented feature articles, held together by common threads and bolstered by an array of authorities, statistics, and citations.

The book begins with a survey of major trends and patterns in emerging American life. If "demography is destiny" in some sense, then Chandler's survey indicates just how massive the tidal wave of social change now underway will be.

The rise of the baby boom generation, the aging of America, and the emergence of well defined focal groups will bring about radical changes in church life. Like the rest of society, the church must now talk about YUPPIES (young urban professionals), BUPPIES (black urban professionals), and SITCOMS (single income, two children, outrageous mortgages).

Whatever their designation, Americans all feel the impact of fast-paced changes which now occur in economics, the media, high technology, politics, education, and family life. Chandler provides a review of these mega-shifts, providing a bird's eye view of emerging patterns.