Hi Rowland,

Phyllis Tickle in her book “The Great Emergence’ states that every five hundred years the Church finds itself going through a ‘reformation’ the author says, “every five hundred the church has a giant rummage sale” now this can never be described as a practise as such, but more an ‘awareness’ this word is foreign to most Churches because its far to confrontational, but I think the church needs to develop an ‘awareness’ this was best demonstrated in the book of Acts this has been called the “Mars Hill discourse” Paul demonstrated a cultural awareness and understanding that the church needs to adopt, if you combine this with a contextual understanding of scripture, Leads to ‘intelligent orthodoxy’ and this brings up the real problem…modernity. There are good and bad things about modernity, the not so good things are bad, the propensity for absolutes will not endear any church to consider our new post-modern culture, because it refuses to fit into any absolutes. It lends itself more to a ‘web of belief’.

The church pulls up ship at the first sight of land and then declares it as absolute truth, there is now no need for further exploration. Of the 500 churches I have visited less than 5% have come to terms with the issue of postmodernism and the rest are still stuck somewhere between the seventies and mid eighties, the attractional model (against all odds)still works in some places but in most places it doesn’t. I’m not suggesting that churches embrace postmodernism, because this to has its problems, but at least if they attempt to understand it, that would be a great place to start. So my point is this; churches should consider developing awareness this is the opposite of insularity. Coming to terms with post-modern cultural would be a good place to start

Regards Bob