The Emergent Church Part 6

Darrill L. Guder advocates that the western Church see itself as a peripheral movement, engaging its culture as a missional movement. If the Church is primarily a missional movement, is it still the Church? Some descriptions of what some emergent churches are doing seem more like a youth evangelism enterprise than a church. Marva J. Dawn describes this as “dumbing down” the Church. If emerging churches are primarily missional outreach vehicles, how and where will believing Christians be raised to maturity in Christian community? The regular exposition of the Scriptures through preaching has been a vital element in the formation of the Church and Christian people.

John Wallis is on the editorial team for www.next-wave.org, an Internet magazine that is engaging the emerging community. In an e-mail he writes about his emergent acquaintances, "I wonder if any of them even preach anymore.  Most of the people I know are involved or leading missional communities, and I am not sure preaching as you are describing in your survey happens anymore. The first question made me stop.  Most of the people I know are in communites (sic) that are less than 30. I still attend a large suburban church and (sic) not sure why at times, (sic) hear preaching every week from a gifted speaker but there is usually something missing. I sometimes wonder if preaching will slowly die out. I think it is starting to in missional communities maybe not, or maybe it has just taken another form."

It is because of the shortcomings of a primarily “missional” church that Stan Grenz argues that there is

An insufficient understanding of the role of doctrine in Christian life, or in formation of Christian identity…being Apostolic in doctrine is crucial to Christian identity, both as a community, as well as each of us as individual Christians. In His 'Preaching and Preachers', D. M. Lloyd-Jones wrote, “Is it not clear as you take a bird’s-eye view of Church history, that the decadent periods and eras in the history of the Church have always been those periods when preaching had declined? What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or of a Revival? It is renewed preaching.” 

In his book, The Preacher’s Portrait, John Stott uses five biblical words to expertly examine the cross-generational attributes and responsibilities of a Christian preacher. He is a steward, a herald, a witness, a father, and a servant. The steward is the metaphor that best helps in examining the function of preaching in every age. A steward cares for another’s goods in trust. He does not own the goods himself. He dispenses the other’s goods as the other demands. He also serves the other’s guests. The owner’s guests have not come to visit with the steward; they have come to visit the owner and to be served by the steward along with the owner. The Word of God is entrusted to Christians. It does not belong to anyone. It belongs to God. Preachers in every generation must care for it in trust and dispense it with reverence and awe to those who gather to listen to his Word. Christians desire to hear the Word of their Master. Christians would be most disobedient stewards to serve the Master’s guests our own measly goods or our Master’s goods pretending they are our own. 

In 'I Believe in Preaching', Stott writes, "Preaching is indispensable to Christianity. Without preaching a necessary part of its authenticity has been lost. For Christianity is, in its very essence, a religion of the Word of God. No attempt to understand Christianity can succeed which overlooks or denies the truth that the living God has taken the initiative to reveal himself savingly to fallen humanity; or that his self-revelation has been given by the most straightforward means of communication known to us, namely by word and words; or that he calls upon those who have heard his Word to speak it to others."

One popular compromise with postmodern culture is the rejection of expository preaching because it is seen as too methodological. It is true that when any spiritual exercise in the Church – including the exposition of Scripture – is reduced to techniques, it destroys the authenticity of the Church. James Houston writes, "What is destroying Christianity is the marketeering of Christianity…Disciple-making is not about replicable, transferable methods, but about the mystery of two walking together. Methods treat discipleship as a problem to be solved, but mentoring treats discipleship as a relationship to be lived."

Whether it is mentoring or preaching, the authentic work of Church leaders is to do what they have always been called to do. But they must do it by the Spirit in the context of their present culture. Leonard Sweet argues, “Christians should not embrace a postmodern worldview; we must not adapt to postmodernity…but we do need to incarnate the timeless in the timely.” What would this look like in a postmodern context?

The Emergent Church Part 5

Douglas J. Hall is pessimistic about any attempt to retain any cultural control or relevance if the Church remains tied to the modernist worldview. Meanwhile, he remains hopeful for new opportunities for the authentic Christian faith to engage the contemporary, post-Constantinian western culture. To do this he underlines “four worldly quests” through which “Christians may engage their society from the perspective of faith and hope.” These “quests” are the search for “moral authenticity,” “meaningful community,” “transcendence and mystery,” and “meaning.” Yet his primary argument is for Christian pastors to regain their prophetic ministry of being pastoral poets who concentrate on proclaiming God’s Word, saying, “Ministers are recalled to the teaching office.”

Writing from many years of teaching about the mission of the church, and from his own observation of the direction of the church today, Eddie Gibbs offers many excellent insights. He gives concrete suggestions for how the western Church cannot only grow, but can turn the tide of history from becoming a marginalized, ancient institution of religion, to becoming an instrument of vibrant change in our culture. He describes how the Church can move from living in the past to engaging the present; from being market driven to being mission oriented; from following celebrities to encountering saints; from holding dead orthodoxy to nurturing living faith; and from attracting a crowd to seeking the lost. However, his lack of vision for a Church led by the proclamation of the living Word of God is disappointing.

Gibbs’ suggestion that the Church needs to move from “dead orthodoxy” to “living faith” is suspect. Can orthodoxy be dead? This is the crucial question as one is constantly tempted to alter the truth, or right-thinking (ortho-doxios), to suit a postmodern palette. It is unpopular to adhere to the regular obedience and instruction of God’s Word. One would rather listen to the latest instruction on marriage enrichment or stock tips or self-improvement plans. Gibbs’ definition of “church” seems to focus too much on the Sunday morning service, and his definition of “worship” on the singing during that service. He does offer some helpful suggestions for proactive strategies for western churches. But he lacks an emphasis on the ministry of preaching as the prophetic leading of the people of God and the communication tool for outreach to the lost.

            

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch offer what is fast becoming a benchmark for how the Church can authentically represent the Christian message to a postmodern context. They argue for a contextualization of the Christian message, and for the Church to be a missional body. Yet they offer no clear explanation or demonstration for how that message is authentically proclaimed in the regular practice of the Church.

Christian futurist Leonard Sweet calls for many new and innovative ways of expressing the Christian faith in this postmodern context. He argues for the western Church to rediscover its meaning, mission, and purpose by forming new methods for doing church by using some old methods. This “ancient future faith” is “a faith that is both ancient and future, both historical and contemporary…and attempt(s) to show the church how to camp in the future in the light of the past.”

In his many popular books, Sweet expresses a commitment to the Bible as authoritative and important to authentic Christian spirituality. Yet he offers very little to describe how authentic biblical exposition can actually be practiced in postmodern churches. His many books merely offer critiques of modernist approaches to Bible teaching. Likewise, Pete Ward argues, “The theology and values of the Church are not up for grabs.” Yet he gives us little clarity for a theology or value of biblical exposition that transcends the age. George Cladis offers a list of nine characteristics of postmodernity. Yet he gives us no explanation for how this new social paradigm calls for a new kind of proclamation in our churches.

David Hilborn declared that a modernist style of “expository preaching” is a prisoner of modernity; being “rationalistic, elitist, authoritarian, and unbiblical,” but an emergent compromise with postmodern culture can be a prisoner to our youth-oriented postmodern culture. Duffy Robbins writes: "I’m concerned that our youth ministry culture has the same kind of adolescent arrogance that thirty years ago led to the maxim, “Never trust anyone over thirty,” except that now it’s “Never trust anyone who doesn’t define himself as postmodern.” Unfortunately, that kind of narrow chronological and ideological landscape leaves us vulnerable to momentary fads and fashions.”

The Emergent Church Part 4

Does preaching have a vital place in the future of the western, postmodern Church? Is expository preaching the authentic approach to public proclamation? Hadden Robinson says, “When you talk about expository preaching, you’re not primarily talking about the form of the sermon. You are really talking about a philosophy.” What is the authentically biblical philosophy that undergirds the public practice of preaching in the life of the Church? Is expository preaching a prisoner of modernity, being “rationalistic, elitist, authoritarian and unbiblical”? What should authentic Christian preaching look like in the postmodern context?

There is a need to understand what is happening in the broad emerging church scene in the West, especially in the area of the weekly practice of public proclamation. There is much that can be learned from a postmodern awareness and reaction to modernism that may lead western churches towards a more authentic practice of faith expression. What will be the place of biblical proclamation in that authentic practice? Is there a postmodern style of preaching that is authentically Christian, which authentically preaches the formative logos of God in the contemporary ethos of western culture? If so, what will authentic Christian preaching look like in the postmodern context? Is there a biblical model of the ministry of preaching? How are emerging church leaders responding to the challenge of engaging a contemporary culture that disdains preaching?

In the book Mastering Contemporary Preaching, Bill Hybels, Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson have attempted to investigate the issue of preaching in this postmodern context. But they fail to penetrate beyond a discussion of mere preaching styles and miss the opportunity to discuss what the essential nature and purpose of preaching ought to be in this and every age, the proclamation of God’s formative Word. This can also be said of David Henderson’s book Culture Shift. Though the book provides excellent ways to address important, contemporary topics, it does not answer the underlying questions of why preach at all, or what role preaching plays in Spiritual formation.

Likewise, Richard Esling’s book, A New Hearing, alleges to be a serious investigation into five “effective” contemporary preachers. However, Esling does not give any kind of theological or theoretical criteria for comparing these five preachers, or for answering the question of why these five preachers should be considered “effective” at all. The reader is left wondering what the essence of preaching (the proverbial “baby”) fundamentally is, how one can objectively evaluate what is “good” preaching as opposed to what is “bad”, or what authentic preaching ought to look like in this new postmodern western context, as opposed to what it should not be (the proverbial “bathwater”).

Writers have articulated the reality of the monumental shift in our western church context from a modernist worldview to a new postmodern one. The western Church has been so associated with the modernist paradigm of culture and belief that it is no longer seen as relevant. History shows that this is a struggle the Church has faced during each epochal change in its social context. Walter Truett Anderson writes, 

This situation continues to lead the Church further away from her missional purpose. Alan Roxburgh writes, “Unless…leaders recognize and understand the extent to which they and their congregations have been marginalized in modernity, they will not meaningfully shape the direction of congregational life for missionary engagement.”

New Book

You can now order the E book version of my book for only $10.oo

just click on the book below

The Emergent Church Part 3

What kinds of experiments are being done in these emerging churches, and which of these experiments will best reflect an authentic expression of the Christian Church in contemporary society? Eugene Cho, lead pastor of “Quest,” a postmodern church in Seattle, writes, "There are several things that we do know about the future of the church: 1) the future is uncertain, 2) there will be many changes, and 3) it will not be an easy journey. But as the world changes … we must be proactive in our desire to engage the culture with the love and truth of Jesus Christ. Some things that need to be understood clearly is the fact that we no longer live in what sociologists call a “Christian dominant” culture. Whereas the Church existed and thrived throughout the majority of the United States history, they are now in a very crucial stage as we enter this new century. Statistically, about 70,000 of the 350,000 churches that existed in the US have closed their doors in the past 20 years. 30% of churchgoers today are over 60 years old and perhaps, more alarmingly, the generation that comprises the 18-35 age group has fallen sharply in their church attendance – from 36-27% in the past 10 years. Furthermore, 80-85% of mainline churches are in “serious” decline. Even despite the fact that there are waves of churches being planted throughout the United States, for every church that is being planted, three churches are being shut down. The hard and cold fact is that the church has lost its relevance and ability to communicate to a fast changing and postmodern generation."

Cho recognizes that there is a paradox today; there is a profound “spiritual” hunger in the emerging generation, while the Christian Church continues to shrink in the West. In her research and interviews with over 500 Christian young people in the United States, Colleen Carroll found a widespread embrace of the “orthodox” Christian faith among this generation. Carroll states, “I was surprised by just how widespread this trend (towards embracing orthodox Christianity) was, how deep it runs in the culture.” 

This is especially surprising in an age in which any authoritarian dogma is denigrated. Yet one must ask: What is this “orthodoxy” that is being embraced? Orthodoxy has traditionally been forged in the Christian Church through the exegetical study and public exposition of the Bible. How are emerging church leaders using preaching in their provision of theological foundations for Christian formation for this next generation?

            

Doug Pagitt, pastor of “Solomon’s Porch” in Minneapolis, told the 1,100 participants at a conference on emergent churches in San Diego that “preaching is broken.” He warned that people today are distrustful of authority figures “with overarching explanations of how the world works.” He called a sermon “a violent act” because “It’s a violence toward the will of the people who have to sit there and take it.” He said that such preaching “creates an artificial distance with the congregation.” It is fair to criticize the ways that preaching practices are held prisoner to a modernist or a premodernist paradigm. But does Pagitt offer an alternative way to authentically do the vital work of exposing God’s people to his Word in a postmodern way?

 

The shift from a modernist worldview in western culture to a postmodern one has been so seismic that western churches are left grappling with unstable ground. The choice seems to be between the shifting uncertainties of a vision for what an authentic postmodern Christian Church will look like and (as some would argue) the irrelevance of continuing to function as a modernist Church. These two scenarios represent a crisis in the practice of preaching in western churches today.

As contemporary pastors, congregations, and denominations grapple with the radical cultural impact of postmodernism on western churches, there are basically two dominant responses in the practice of preaching. On the one hand there are those who are entrenched in a modernist approach to classical expository preaching, while on the other hand there are those who are experimenting with new, purely postmodern forms of public proclamation. 

"Entrenched" churches assume a level of commitment and understanding from their members, while the experimental churches assume that their members are transient and unaffiliated. The former group tends to be from an older generation that is more loyal in its church attendance. The latter group tends to be from a younger generation with a shrinking or non-existent church attendance tradition. Some churches in the former group are trying to engage the postmodern world by augmenting their regular church services with some emergent methodology. True emergent churches, meanwhile, see themselves as completely breaking with modernist church methodologies altogether. Os Guinness warns, “This desire to be fashionable is exactly why Christians are now becoming marginalized.”

There have been many publications on the subject of preaching, and many on the subjects of the paradigm shift from modernism to postmodernism in the western world. Yet there is very little that has been written on the subject of what authentic Christian preaching looks like in this postmodern context. Very little has been written, which takes the authenticity of Spiritual formation through preaching to the historic faith community seriously, and which also takes the unique demands of this contemporary western context seriously. 

There are few critical publications that discuss contemporary theory and practices of expository preaching as central to our congregants’ lifelong Christian formation. Instead, there is a plethora of books, articles, journals, and conferences encouraging churches to be more “seeker sensitive” or “missional.” In The Missional Church, Darrill L. Guder argues that the Church in the West has moved from being the formative institution at the center of society, to being a missional movement that engages culture on the periphery of society.

John Van Stolten of New Hope Christian Reformed Church in Calgary, Alberta, has a church of 300 postmoderns. He gives topical talks on contemporary issues, illustrated with scenes from popular films or episodes of The Simpsons. He says they’ll “never do a series on the Book of Revelation.” Why not? Are churches trying to reach out to a new generation through “dumbing down” the message and practice of being Church? If emerging churches in the West are merely missional outreach vehicles, then where and how will the lifelong theological formation of God’s people happen? This has traditionally happened through the regular exposition of the Scriptures through preaching. Peter Adam writes, “Christian gospel ministry involves explaining, preaching, applying and interpreting this sufficient Word so that people may be converted and congregations may be built up in faith, godliness and usefulness.”

How are believers being theologically formed in emerging churches? In the face of shrinking traditional church numbers, and growing disdain for preaching in contemporary western society, what is the philosophy and practice of preaching among emerging church leaders? Are the leaders of emergent churches rejecting what may be a style of institutional speaking, which is merely a product of the modernist age? One must ask: What is it being replaced with? If the modernist approach to preaching is being scorned, what is an authentically Christian approach to public proclamation in the postmodern church context? What part of the modernist approach to preaching is the proverbial “bathwater” that must be tossed out, while the Church keeps the “baby” of authentic biblical exposition?

The Emergent Church Part 2

The “emergent” metaphor is one of evolution. Are emergent churches a legitimate evolution of the authentic Church of Jesus Christ, or are they illegitimate compromises with their embedded cultural context? Vincent Donovan, Roman Catholic missionary to Africa, argued for a kind of evolution when he wrote, "In working with…people…do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, as beautiful as that place might seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have ever been before"

Are emergent church leaders going with their people to an authentically Christian place the Church has never been before? What are the implications of this to the regular practice of biblical exposition in Spiritual formation? Stan Grenz describes an e-mail he received from an acquaintance who is establishing an emergent church in Reno, Nevada. The church leaders have “five values” they will use to guide their new emergent community. These are:

1. Mystery – We’re learning that there can be fewer answers and more questions when it comes to God, life, and life with God. And, we’re OK with that.

2. Beauty – We celebrate artistic responses to a passionate, creative God.

3. Conversations – We value every person’s story because every person’s story is valued by God.

4. Organic – We are real people living in a real world trying to make a real difference with no strings attached.

5. Chicala (sp.?) – a cool Indian word for past, present, and future; a merger of ancient or historical Christian faith and our emerging culture.

This list does not include any clear affirmation of solidarity with the timeless authentic practice of raising Christians to maturity through the regular exposition of the Holy Scriptures. There is a great divide in the western evangelical Church. Two extremes seem to vie for legitimacy in the practice of preaching in the contemporary evangelical Church in the West. On the one extreme are those who would champion what has been known as “biblical (or expository) preaching” as the authentic approach to Christian proclamation, whether people will (or can) listen or not. On the other extreme are those who have rejected what they see as a modernist paradigm, and are attempting to craft a truly postmodern approach to Christian Spiritual formation. This emergent movement emphasizes the need to change the style of public, weekly church proclamation to make it more listener-centered and palatable, sometimes whether the message of God’s Word is heard or not.

Tom Sine asks, “Is it possible the church is in crisis and no one noticed? Is it possible God is raising up a new generation to re-invent the church?” There is a movement of young, postmodern, emergent churches growing in the West, led by 20-30-year-old Christians. These churches are forging new communities with unique expressions of Christian faith. The young leaders of these emergent churches are rejecting the modernist, rationalistic paradigm inherent in contemporary western churches. Meanwhile, they are attempting to craft truly postmodern approaches to Christian Spiritual formation. This is especially true of their attitude towards and practice of preaching. They are emphasizing the need to change the style of public, weekly church proclamation, and to make it more palatable to a postmodern audience. But what will this new approach look like, and will it be an authentically Christian expression?

The Emergent Church Part 1

There is a growing phenomenon in western Christianity sometimes called “The Emergent Church”. This term was first coined by Brian McLaren in his essay “They Say It’s Just a Phase” to describe a loose association of postmodern congregations being led by young neo-evangelical pastors. McLaren is described by Robert Webber as one of the leaders of this phenomenon. Emergent churches are affecting monumental influence upon contemporary Christianity. One of the greatest areas of impact upon church life is the practice of biblical exposition. As these young leaders toss out the proverbial “bathwater” of modernism, they are in danger of also tossing out the “baby” of authentic Spiritual formation through biblical preaching.

         

Brian McLaren is “hailed as the leader of the emergent church.” Time Magazine listed Brian McLaren as one of the 25 most influential evangelical leaders in the United States today. Speaking of preaching in the postmodern context, he writes (quoting Walter Brueggemann), "What is needed, (Bruggemann) says, is a new kind of preaching, preaching that opens “out the good news of the gospel with alternative modes of speech,” that is “dramatic, artistic, capable of inviting persons to join in another conversation, free of the reason of technique, unencumbered by ontologies that grow abstract, unembarrassed about concreteness."

Daryl Johnson responds, "That’s biblical preaching. That’s what we’re trying to do; taking a text, living in that text, inviting other people into that text, and allowing the text to speak its Word to us as unencumbered as possible by our distortions. It would take as many forms as there are personalities, and rhetorical skill sets. On the one hand (McLaren) is saying something new because of homiletics in the last century, but nothing new in terms of what the Church has been trying to do."

Brian McLaren has been a target of criticism, and has been unfairly labeled a “liberal”. McLaren is personally committed to his understanding of orthodox Christianity, expressed in a new way because it is now found in a new cultural setting. His first book challenges the reader to “reinvent the Church.” This, he argues, comes from the necessity of the emergence of this culture into the postmodern mindset. This can make conservative critics very nervous. They may ask: How must the Church “reinvent” itself? The real task for each generation is to guard the true Church from its compromise with culture. The Church is not anti-culture. Yet the Church stands as a prophetic voice of truth into every culture. The Church is God’s covenant community in every time and culture, confirming and engaging God’s presence and truth while correcting and rebuking the lies inherent in every time and culture. Rather than “reinventing” itself, the Church is to be what the Church authentically is in our generation. The Church needs to throw over the cultural baggage of the last generation, but there is always the danger of picking up what could be worse baggage from our own generation. 

            

Brian McLaren’s second book is written in the form of a novel. His fictional characters interact with the hard issues of emergent faith. This gives him the ability to explore these ideas without the burden of having to own them. A church pastor (Dan) meets a Christian high school science teacher (Neo), who has embraced the postmodern worldview. Neo is trying to reconcile this emergent paradigm with his own evangelical beliefs. Pastor Dan represents the Christian mind “emerging” from the prison of modernism. Neo takes Dan on a journey of both friendship and philosophy as he challenges Dan to examine his own belief structure to determine which of his beliefs are truly Christian and which may be purely and only modernist heresies.

In a panel discussion of McLaren’s book, “Generous Orthodoxy”, Stan Grenz (whom Robert Webber called “the theologian of the new Evangelicals”) said, "Like my colleagues, I am a little concerned about Brian (McLaren)’s use of the concept of “emergent.” And I’m concerned about it for two reasons. First, I’m not really sure that what we get in the outworking of the book (A Generous Orthodoxy) is in fact what emergent theory is really saying…There seems to be, at times, a Hegelian dimension, rather than an emergent dimension. So, I question whether he’s true to emergent theory. And secondly, with respect to that, I’m not convinced that “emergent” is in fact the best metaphor to use to speak about the Church’s embeddedness in its culture and the trajectory of the Church. I think more in terms of how each generation must seek to embody the one Church of Jesus Christ in the context of which it finds itself. Which is quite different I think, than the “emergent” metaphor."

The Postmodern Worldview (Part 3)

Lesslie Newbigin’s seminal book on missiology, Foolishness to the Greeks, discusses the matter of realizing and articulating the authentic, historic Christian kerygma, in the midst of our contemporary culture. He brings his vast experience of cross-cultural evangelism to bear on examining the essential good news of the Christian faith in contrast to the culturally bound trappings of western Christianity. From his vantage point of being a virtual stranger to western culture after being in the foreign mission field for so long, he distinguishes between contextualizing the true gospel to our western mindset, and indiginizing (or adapting) the message to that mindset. He insists, with al-Ghazali (the Muslim theologian and mystic), that Christians must distinguish between the true signs of transcendence and the false ones through sober rational assessment.

Newbigin argues that the authority for distinguishing between the true and the false signs of transcendence is the Christian Scriptures. He contrasts the authentic approach to the Bible from several historic, popular approaches to it. He dismisses the “fundamentalist” approach to treating the Bible in a wooden literal sense. He rejects the popular Gnostic approach to the Bible where it is used as a personal spiritualist text that merely confirms one’s esoteric experiences. He also spurns the use of the Bible as an encyclopedia of morality. He refuses the neo-orthodox view of the hidden, divine story behind the story of the Bible approach. Instead, he embraces (with Frei, Lindbeck, and others) the approach to the authority of the Bible that sees in this document of divine origin the true witness that “renders accessible to us the character and actions and purposes of God.”

Newbigin investigates what the true witness of the Scriptures has to offer in its dialogue with science and politics. These two pillars of modernist, secular ideology are dealt with clearly and definitively. Newbigin makes a great case for the Christian’s confidence in the midst of opposing views. Here, Newbigin does what Alister McGrath commends us to do, challenging believers to “rattle their cages,” rather than seeing themselves as being “in the cage getting rattled.”

Finally, Newbigin challenges the postmodern Church of Jesus Christ to continue to be the authentic faith community it has always been within the context of every culture; influencing our culture as agents of profound relatedness in bonds of mutual love and obedience that reflect the mutual relatedness in love that is the being of the Triune God himself. This is done, Newbigin says, by being communities of transformative truth and grace, and by being led by the Holy Spirit into all understanding. In this way, Christians can boldly engage in dialogue with science and politics (or any other ideology of any age) with confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and the knowledge of his revealed truth found in the Scriptures.

The Postmodern Worldview (Part 2)

Much of postmodern revolution has been seen as a threat to biblical Christianity. It must be stressed, however, that everywhere postmodernism has judged modernism to be wrong, it is right, and everywhere the Church has replaced biblical faith with modernist faith, it is wrong. Placing faith in natural science or human rationalism is idolatry. Reducing the revelation of God to “principles to live by” is flawed. Placing the self at the center of reality, independent of a distant God, over others and creation, is erroneous.

The Church must not conform to the patterns of its day (Rom. 12:2); it must vigorously engage the imagination of its contemporary setting. It is a postmodern world and the Church must engage the milieu of its environment as the missional agency of God. Premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism are all active and observable in the contemporary Christian context. One can observe a kind of active premodern faith in sectarian institutions and their superstitions in some forms of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. One can observe a kind of active modernist faith in the rational, principle-based approaches of various fundamentalist and evangelical traditions. One can also observe a kind of active postmodern faith in the spiritualism found in certain experientially based, neo-pentecostal movements. All forms of Christian expression must be evaluated against the biblical paradigm revealed by God, while every cultural context must be engaged with the Bible’s message. One can utilize what is positive about each culture’s contextual paradigm and connect it to Spiritual formation through authentic contextualized preaching of the Word of God.

Lorne Wilkinson sees the rise of this new, proud, and popular philosophy in western culture as a throwback to ancient, earthy cults, while at the same time, is a hip, eco, pseudo (post-quantum physics) science-loving, postmodern, marketing-savvy religious phenomenon. Wilkinson lives in Vancouver, which is the Mecca of Canadian left-coast ideologies, and boasts a historically low church attendance of 2 percent of the population. In a recent survey of adolescents, 75 percent of British Columbian teenagers reported having no religious affiliation whatsoever. Wilkinson is aware of these statistics and lives amongst the people who embody them. One could despair over the lack of commitment to the historic, biblical, Christian faith of a generation ago. Wilkinson, however, sees great opportunities for the gospel to be heard in new and fresh ways. He also demonstrates, through his understanding of these throwback ideologies, something of authentic, Christian spirituality, which has been lost through Evangelicalism's ties with the modernist agenda.

Over the last 400 years, the western Church has identified too much with the Newtonian paradigm of the universe. The collective realization of God was lost. Wilkinson argues for a rescuing of this respect for the earth and a capitulation to the “spiritualities” of neopaganism where they have got it right. Here is common ground for introducing people to the Creator of the earth, the God of the universe. Wilkinson argues that Christians do not need to be afraid of these people. They have more to fear from us. In the past, rather than seeing where God may be revealing himself to them through his creation, Christians burned many of them at the stake.

The Postmodern Worldview (Part 1)

Just as modernist philosophers began to question premodern assumptions long before the modernist Enlightenment took hold of western civilization, postmodern philosophers and artists began to challenge the ideas and mores of the modernist paradigm. Near the turn of the 20th Century, Virginia Woolf wrote scandalous stories that challenged the accepted mores of human sexuality. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity challenged the accepted ideas of Newtonian science. Karl Marx challenged the rightness of western capitalist commerce. Ideas like these took time to sink into the popular imagination.

One event, however, shattered the entrenched optimism of modernism in western civilization more than any other. At a time when it was assumed that with enough good western science, education, medicine, government, and religion, modernism could conquer every problem and virtually bring heaven to earth, the two nations that had the best western science, education, medicine, government, and religion went to war in the most horrific conflict the world had yet witnessed. Germany and England (and their allies) fought across Europe, devastating a continent and a generation. Following WW1 was a global influenza pandemic, a global economic depression, and a second world war. By the 1950s, western optimism was replaced with a new pessimism that precipitated the revolutionary postmodern paradigm shift.

As modernism was in every way a reaction to premodernism, so postmodernism is in every way a reaction to modernism. Every way that postmodernism judges modernism as wrong, it is right. Unfortunately, though, postmodernism sets up a just-as-wrong alternative to biblical revelation.

The optimistic secular worldview of modernism has been replaced with a pluralistic worldview. David Henderson writes, "Postmodernism is a rejection of Enlightenment thinking, the rationalism and optimism of the modern world. Purpose, design, objective truth, absolutes, and any idea of overarching “metanarratives” or “totalizing discourses” are thrown out the window. Instead, postmodernism embraces the nihilism of and perspectivism of Nietzche and the existentialism of Sartre. Life is pointless. There is no inherent meaning or purpose in life and there is no truth."

The politically correct liberalism of postmodern western civilization accepts all opinions as being pluralistically “true.” The concept of “truth” itself has been deconstructed and is now popularly understood to be a perspective, and only one piece of a pluralist mosaic of opinions. Therefore, contradictory ideas can be held to be mutually “true” in that they merely represent differing perspectives.

In the post-Einstein world, human reason was found to be an unreliable arbiter for understanding reality. Postmodernism has replaced rationalism with sentimentalism. Human experience and feelings have replaced reason as the most trustworthy, final authority. If the truth about life and faith is relative, one can rely on personal experience and personal revelation to be as – or even more – authoritative as the Scriptures.

Life, then, is governed not by principles, but by personal preference. There is a post-liberal idea in postmodernism that suggests that Jesus and the Bible may be true for Christians, but not necessarily for others. In the smorgasbord of religious ideas available to the western postmodern person, the individual’s personal preference is the final governance for life and faith practice. The highest form of religious freedom is the liberty of each individual to make personal choices in every area of life and faith.

The place of God in the imaginations of postmoderns has been replaced by a myriad of spiritualities. This contemporary western generation is religiously sophisticated. It is exposed to a plethora of religious traditions and ideas, which are being picked over, accepted, and combined with pluralistic zeal to create new, relativistic, personal religions. John Stackhouse Jr. writes, When it comes to ultimate matters, then, many of our North American neighbors have resorted to a secularism that frees one from all religious authority to a hyper-individualistic “religion a la carte.” Indeed, our society’s tolerance of do-it-yourself religion is, itself, a manifestation of secularization. For in leaving questions of the reality of God or the gods up to each individual, this attitude implies that there really aren’t any such supernatural entities."

The highest value for postmoderns is tolerance. The least tolerated notion from modernism is the idea that one religious expression is better than another. It is interesting that angels, demons, ghosts, and miracles are more prevalent in popular postmodern culture than they were in the modernist context. American movies and television, capitalizing on the religious milieu of the nation and the surprising popularity of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, are addressing issues of the supernatural and religious. Meanwhile, mainline churches in North America are losing adherents at an alarming rate.

The place of the self in the postmodern context is “unanchored” and responsible to no one. There is a fixation with the freedom of the adolescent lifestyle in popular western culture. Staying young, fit, and active are the highest of values, while responsibility, wisdom, and maturity are abhorred. The place of others is seen in terms of their value in serving the self. Others are there for the self to use. Relationships become means to an end in the service of personal fulfillment. The self exploits the relationship to get what it can from the other and then discards the other when it is of no more use to the self. This is a disposable culture. Marriages, churches, friends, and business associations can all be discarded when they no longer serve the perceived needs of the self. No-fault divorce is an invention of the postmodern western world. It is simply a symptom of a wider throwaway society.

However, the place of creation in the postmodern context is over the self. Nature has come to be seen as practically a deity to be served. The virtues of ecological preservation are unquestioned by the majority of postmoderns, and the literal worship of nature through pagan religions is on the rise in the West, with significant representation of the “Covenant of the Goddess” at the 2004 Parliament of World Religions. Meanwhile, the United Nations Environmental Protection Agency names Christianity as a source cause of environmental problems in its 1995 document, The Global Biodiversity Assessment.

In the postmodern context, morality is governed by personal choice. The popular way of judging whether something is morally acceptable is whether someone’s rights are perceived to be in danger of being violated. Anything is permissible, then, as long as “no one gets hurt.” Each individual defines his own morality based on his perception and interpretation of individual, personal rights. It can be said that in the postmodern context, life is lived for “whatever.” If there is no objective truth, and morality is governed by personal choice, then the purpose of life is determined by the sovereignty of each individual. It is no longer asked, “Is it true?” Rather, it is asked, “Do I like it?”

The Modern Worldview

One can see that the 200-year-old experiment of western modernism (roughly from the mid 18th Century through the mid 20th Century) is in every way a reaction to what was western premodernism. During the age of liberation and the development of individualism in Europe, a revolutionary new “Enlightenment” in thought and practice transformed western civilization. With the rise of scientific discovery, new educational initiatives, world exploration, technological inventions, and medical advancements, a profound optimism gripped the West. This created a radically new worldview. Writers such as David Hume in England and Immanuel Kant in Germany published works that challenged the status quo and began to influence the popular western imagination.

No longer was the West a prisoner to superstition. Secular natural explanations for all of life’s experiences were being discovered and hypothesized. With the rise of individualism, rational thought replaced corrupt monarchs and Church despots as the final authority. No longer did an individual have to languish under the autocratic rule of tyrannical rule. Every individual could question “truth,” as it had been handed down to him by government and religious institutions. No longer did life have to be governed by fear. Rather, rational thought replaced institutional superstitious ideas with reasonable principles. One could reason out an individual’s rights, freedoms, and responsibilities based on the scientific method. Individuals were now democratically free to design for themselves a personal interpretation of truth for life and faith. The most popular form of entertainment in Western Europe and America became rational debates between famous orators.

The place of God, therefore, was seen not only as distant, but as absent. All moral questions of life and faith could be answered through the application of biblical principles, in the same way as all physical problems could be answered through the application of scientific principles. In a sense, a living God was no longer needed. He could be replaced by a rational deism. The place of self in the modern paradigm was no longer seen as under the right of church and state rulers. Rather, it was seen as at the center, under no one. Each individual self was his own authority, possessing his own personal rights. American cultural critic George Steiner writes, The arbitrariness of all aesthetic propositions, of all value judgments is inherent in human consciousness and human speech. Anything can be said about anything…A critical theory, an aesthetic, is a politics of taste…No aesthetic proposition can be termed either “right” or “wrong.” The sole appropriate response is personal assent or dissent.

The place of others was seen as existing for mutual benefit. An optimism for western government fueled European missionary zeal to bring “good government” to all people. Colonial expansion brought western law, morality, and commerce to all areas of the planet. The place of creation was seen as coming under the self. Nature was no longer seen as being an equal competitor with the self, but rather as a resource to be subdued, controlled, and exploited by modern people. Likewise, morality was no longer governed by the irrational dictates of premodern rulers, but by ethics, derived from the rational interpretation of biblical principles. Ethical principles were imposed on people and society from the outside to control moral behavior. Finally, under the modern paradigm, all of life was lived for the glory of human progress. The human being was sovereign and all that served human enterprise was considered good and right.

Everywhere modernism judged premodernism as wrong, it was right. The superstitious nature of life in premodern western civilization was oppressive. Individuals were often subjugated to corrupt rulers wielding unreasonable power. Natural pestilence and discomfort were a cruel experience. Modern advances in medicine, education, technology, and science have helped the entire world. Unfortunately, in reaction to the excesses of premodernism, western civilization established modernism as a just-as-wrong alternative to biblical Christianity.

The Premodern Worldview

The worldview of western premodernism (before the 17th Century and the Enlightenment) was dominated by superstition. The overarching popular imagination of the premodern person was one filled with ideas of supernatural causes for natural events. Meaning was understood through tradition and myth. The Constantinian age ushered in state support for the Church. The Church had later become institutionalized in the Holy Roman Empire. In this feudal world, with hundreds of European kingdoms vying for wealth, resources, and dominance, the final authority for life and faith was the Church, represented by the reigning monarch. Truth was officiated through the governance of church and state leaders. Papal decrees and kingly edicts were instantly and unquestioningly understood as supreme law. This was a time of the assumed divine right of kings to rule their servile people. Life was governed by fear-filled obedience to the reigning leadership. Order was kept through the rule of the state and church law.

The place of God was understood in relation to the place of authority in the cultural context. Just as authority rested in the supremacy of distant church and state supreme leaders, so the imagined place of God was as a distant supreme being. Likewise, the place of the self was seen as fitting within the feudal hierarchy. One knew one’s place as each individual held a static station from church and state royalty down to the landless peasant class. The place of others was seen in terms of their place in the overall social competition for survival as cities and states vied for control of precious resources. The place of creation in the premodern mindset was on equal par with the self and others in the seasonal struggle for survival. People competed with animals, disease, and whether to survive. Morality was governed by the power of the ruler of the day through his rule of law. And the whole of premodern life was lived by individuals and their communities for the glory of sovereign human rulers and their state and religious institutions.

New Book Avaialable

My new book, "Hear the Word: Listening to the Eternal Word in the Eternal World" is available for order. Click on the link at the top right of this blog site to order a soft cover, hard cover or e-version.

The Biblical Christian Paradigm

First, the biblical worldview is a theistic one. One must begin with God at the center. He is radiating out from the center, his revelation of his character and will to his whole creation. This is the overarching imagination of the biblical Christian perspective. God is preeminent in all things. Everything fits together into his plan for life and faith.

Final authority in all matters of life and faith, then, is God. But the Church must be more specific and say that all final authority is in Christ, who is the visible revelation of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). God has given him all authority in heaven and earth (Matt. 28:18). Here the Church must be even more specific, for neither Christ nor his authority is known apart from his revelation, which is recorded for us in the Scriptures. These must all be put together for a proper biblical perspective. Final authority rests in Christ, revealed through the canon of the Holy Christian Scriptures. These Scriptures must be the arbitrator for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Next, it must be noted that life is governed by theology. Theology must be understood as “God (theos) understanding (logos)” rather than merely the ideas and philosophies of theologians, preachers, or religious leaders. How is “God understanding” gained? God has revealed everything his people need to know for life and faith in the Scriptures. Therefore, the Word of God must be studied to understand his character and will. This “God understanding” is proper theology, and it must guide all Christian thinking and living.

Following this, the place of God must be seen as supreme in all Christian thinking and living. He is at the center, not any individual or philosophy. Christians recognize him in both individual and collective imagination as the center of all things. It follows, then, that the place of self (personal opinions and feelings) is under God and peripheral to his revealed truth. The human cries of “who am I?” or “Where do I fit in?” are only answered as one finds one’s place in the periphery of God’s being.

As the place of God and the self is understood in light of biblical revelation, the place of others and of creation follows. The place of others is that others are there for the self to serve (Matt. 20:25-28). Christians are to relate to one another in light of God’s generosity to us. He has freely given. Believers can freely give. He has freely forgiven. His followers can freely forgive. He freely serves. Christians can freely serve. Likewise, it is understand from God’s revelation that all of creation is his, and humans are here as caregivers.

In the biblical Christian paradigm, morality is governed by virtue. Morality is something God does by his Holy Spirit in and through individuals. They are not under religious law. They do not perform good deeds for God. Their best efforts are as filthy rags to him. Rather, his Holy Spirit resides with Christian believers and he produces his fruit in them and through them (Gal. 5:22-23). His Law is written on their hearts. Finally, in the biblical paradigm, life is lived for the glory of God. He alone is sovereign. All things are by him, with him, in him, and for him.

The Clash of Ideologies

To understand the issues of the western, postmodern paradigm, one must see it in its juxtaposition with western modernism. Likewise, western modernism itself can only be understood in its contrast and reaction to western premodernism. Finally, all these patterns must be contrasted with the biblical paradigm. Below is a chart showing the differences between each of these paradigms when contrasted with each other in their approach to nine seminal issues.

The first thing to consider is the “worldview.” This is the overarching way of seeing the world, which dominates the imagination of culture. The second consideration is what constitutes the “final authority” for each era in question. This is the issue of how truth is understood and mitigated. The third thing to consider is the issue of what people see their “life governed by.” This is the issue of how social structure is ordered. The fourth consideration is the “place of God” in the social structure of each given era.

ISSUES	BIBLICAL	PREMODERN	MODERN	POSTMODERN
Worldview	Theistic	Superstitious	Secular / Naturalistic	Pluralistic
Final Authority	Christ in the Scriptures	Church / Monarch	Reason	Feelings
Life Governed by	Theology	Fear	Principals	Personal Preference
Place of God	Over All	Distant Ruler	Distant / Absent	Replaced by spiritualities
Place of Self	Under God	Within Feudal Hierarchy	At the Centre Under No One	Unanchored / Responsible to No One
Place of Others	There for Self to Serve	Competition	For Mutual Benefit	There for Self to Use
Place of Creation	To be Cared For	Equal to Self	Under the Self	Over the Self
Morality Governed by	Virtue	Law	Ethics	Personal Choice
Life Lived for	The Glory of God	The Glory of Rulers	The Glory of Man	Whatever

The fifth thing to consider is the “place of the self.” This is the question of where the individual fits within the structure of society. Sixth is the consideration of the “place of others.” This is the question of how individuals relate to other individuals and to the larger community. The seventh consideration is the issue of the “place of creation” in the governing of life in each era. Creation would consist of everything in the natural world besides humans and their social and technological structures. Eighth is the question of what “morality is governed by” in each era. This is the way that the rules of social interaction are understood and regulated. The ninth and final consideration is what “life is lived for.” This is how the purpose of life is understood and followed. This grid can help us understand the clash of ideologies. One must consider each of these issues in light of biblical Christianity.