Pastor netfriend:

Sorry for the delay on this one, but I’ve been catching up on some old posts and couldn’t resist this one from Rowland. Very suscinct, and enjoyable, and it does raise a few issues that I think we pastors need to think about, so I was surprised that nobody had commented on it so far!

I’ve heard pastors and church leaders make comments about postmodernism which indicate that they are sure it is all intellectual posturing at best, and nonsense.at worst, as if we aren’t really in the early stages of a revolutionary change from the modern worldview to something else!

I think this attitude mistakes postmodernism for postmodernity. The words are not interchangeable – postmodernity is a time, the era in which we live, while postmodernism is one response (usually negative, like most “isms”) to the changes happening in that time.

I am a postmodern because I choose to engage with the world of the time in which I live, and not live in the past, and am convinced that modernity is on its last gasp. Not believing in postmodernity is a bit like not believing in February. On the other hand, I am also forced to believe in postmodernism because I’ve encountered it face to face, but I don’t like it in most of its manifestations. It is a philosophy which I choose not to adopt.

The criticisms I’ve heard about being postmodern seem to centre around this confusion. It seems to go something like this: “Everything is falling apart. Things are not like they used to be – people seem to believe anything these days, they accept any old nonsense. It’s not like in my day, we accepted the truth of the Gospel, and the authority of the Bible, and lived moral lives – unlike these young people today!'”

The implication seems to be that it is the young people that caused this falling apart – as if they chose it, against all the advice of their elders and betters. But in fact pomo is a response to what is already happening, and these things are the inevitable result of the direction that much of modernity took. It is modernism, and in particular the infatuation of the church with modern ideas – as if they were the gospel – that has driven Christianity off the Western world’s radar. All this in a world where interest in religion and spirituality is increasing as never before. The answer lies not in castigating postmoderns, or, like King Canute, rejecting the changes, but in getting aboard the new bus and steering it to where we believe it should go.

As Rowland’s post expresses it towards the end:

~~~ ” … I want you to remember something. There is a grain of truth in postmodernism. Postmodernism thinks that everything is in pieces, that nothing hangs together. The grain of truth is that without Jesus Christ, everything does go to pieces, nothing does hang together – not truth, not life, not anything. You can’t fight storylessness unless you remember that He is what makes the Story true.”

~~~

I’d be very interested to join in some discussion about how we, as Baptists, are responding to these changes.

How can we best take advantage of the unprecedented interest in Jesus, while at the same time overcoming the almost universal loathing of Christians and Christianity?

What shape should the church take today?

What initiatives are being taken by others?

What are the pitfalls to avoid?

What are the opportunities to embrace?

If for no other reason, I’ve found it worth studying the advent of postmodernity for the endless fascination it provides, and the need to rethink so much of what we’ve unconsciously taken for granted. I’ve read a large number of books about these things over the past 10 years or so, by various philsosphers, social commentators, church leaders and theologians like Stanley Grenz, Leonard Sweet, and many others. All were thought provocing, and useful to a greater or lesser degree, but I’m now half-way through Dan Kimball’s “The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations” (Zondervan, 2003). This could be one of the most accessible places for someone new to pomo to start, and it is also full of insights about how we might attempt be an authentic church for the 21st Century.

What have others been reading/doing?