I've been thinking a good deal lately, which is nothing new. But the subject of many of my thoughts is one which I thought I would never give much consideration to. The source of many of these thoughts is the book 'A New Kind of Christian' by Brian McLaren. The subject of my thoughts is the postmodern church and postmodern Christianity. See, I was raised in the modern world (most, if not all, of us were). And as an evangelical, Protestant, conservative Christian with an evangelical, Protestant, conservative worldview, I have always been taught to believe (as long as I can remember) that postmodernism and Christianity are two mutually exclusive ideas. Something like: postmodern = bad; Christianity = good. Because of this, I never thought there were any alternative possibilities. But now, I'm starting to see that maybe, just maybe, postmodern doesn't
always mean bad. Maybe postmodernism is a philosophy is severely flawed. But that doesn't mean that postmodernism as a culture has to suffer just because it takes on the banner "postmodern".
I mean, during the medieval times, "modern" was probably hailed with about as much enthusiasm by the Church as is "postmodern" today. I mean, look at Galileo, Copernicus, Columbus, the revolutionaries of their time in their fields -- they were nearly (if not completely) labeled as heretics for proposing ideas such as a heliocentric universe as opposed to the traditional "church" view of a geocentric universe, or that the Earth is a sphere as opposed to the traditional "church" view of a flat "disc" earth. Yet after a few decades, the church found out how wrong it really was and ended up accepting these ideas as true. Or Martin Luther, John Calvin, the great reformers of the sixteenth century. Their ideas about church practices were revolutionary, radical, and unorthodox to the general population of Christians. But in retrospect, we can see that their revolutionary ideas became the overarching standard for religious practice in the world, and have been for the last four hundred years or more.
What if it's the same now? What if we're leaving the modern era of culture and entering the age of postmodernistic culture? Is it really that bad? I mean, we have about three options. We can dig in with our heels in a futile attempt to keep ourselves from flying into the postmodern world, which will do us no good, and will ultimately leave us rolling in the dust of a new era. Our second option is to sit by and let the postmodern world 'happen' as it will, slowly creeping in one aspect of life at a time, until one day we wake up and realize that our culture is a completely different world than it was last we checked. This is not altogether a bad option, and I think the vast majority of people will fall into this category. Most people do. They don't want to stir up the waters or make a splash in the river of culture for fear of what others will think, or because they're afraid of opposition (many times, overlooking the fact that Jesus didn't sit by and "let things happen" around him; he was a revolutionary; he stirred up the waters, regardless of the opposition). The vast majority of church people in the sixteenth century fell into this category. There are only a few people we could consider "revolutionaries"; people who were actively making splashes in the culture, stirring things up, bringing about a change. Which leads me to the third option, the one I personally want to be a part of. The last option is to stir things up--make an impact on the world's culture. But don't do it just to do it. Change is coming; why not be a catalyst to bring about that change. To help the church transition into a postmodern culture. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the church adapting to a new culture, as long as our lives show there is a difference between "us" and "them". We are told to be "called out" and "set apart"; our lifestyle is one of holiness before God
and man. But we cannot become out of touch with the culture, or our witness will become largely ineffective.
So the decision is up to you -- will you be one of the few to help push us toward a new church culture? If so, you are taking on a
huge responsibility, because balance is the most important key; the way of "doing" church needs to change, but we must do this very delicately, with the utmost care and accountability, because we
must not compromise the message of the gospel in the process.
Matt
