9.04.2003
You can tell from the new addition to the bookshelf that I've started another book. The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball is a must-read for anyone wanting to engage the culture. Even though I have just started it, I have found it engaging, thought-provoking and stimulating.
But not for the reasons you might guess.
I have been so far removed from the internecine squabbling among posturing ministers more interested in making a name than making a mark in the world that I have forgotton what all the fuss is about. I'm busy raising children in a postmodern, post-seeker sensitive, post-Christian society that I don't even have time to notice that it is such.
Francis Schaeffer told us in the 1970's that we are in a post-Christian culture and had been for years. 25 years later, the Culture Warriors are cluing into this fact with alarm.
Duh.
The "revelation" that we are a post-Christian country seems to profoundly shock those emerging from the near-Amish paridise of 1950's evangelicalism. They are waging a war on the wrong grounds, trying to defend the assertion that at one time we were a Christian nation and we need to get back to our roots.
Give it a rest.
We can't bring back the past no matter how hard we or the Amish try. We must move into the future. The question is whether we are going to engage it, dialogue with it, meet it on God's terms and be missionaries to the future or are we going to hermetically seal ourselves off in a Christian ghetto that embraces the 1970's, not nostalgically but as revolutionary? Seriously. There are churches today that consider themselves progressive because they have emerged from the 1950's and now have guitars, tamborines and drums (well, not drums) in church.
Even if they incorporated "modern" styles, they still miss the conceptual boat.
So what am I doing? Well, I'm reading what the emergent thinkers are talking about, shaking my head in wonder because these people are finding the changing world around them remarkable. Adventures in Missing the Point was the most instructive book in this series, especially the chapter on Missing the Point: Postmodern Christianity. It says if we sit around and talk about being pomo, then we've missed the whole point. It isn't about labels and categories.
It's about doing what needs to be done in a way that is effective.
But not for the reasons you might guess.
I have been so far removed from the internecine squabbling among posturing ministers more interested in making a name than making a mark in the world that I have forgotton what all the fuss is about. I'm busy raising children in a postmodern, post-seeker sensitive, post-Christian society that I don't even have time to notice that it is such.
Francis Schaeffer told us in the 1970's that we are in a post-Christian culture and had been for years. 25 years later, the Culture Warriors are cluing into this fact with alarm.
Duh.
The "revelation" that we are a post-Christian country seems to profoundly shock those emerging from the near-Amish paridise of 1950's evangelicalism. They are waging a war on the wrong grounds, trying to defend the assertion that at one time we were a Christian nation and we need to get back to our roots.
Give it a rest.
We can't bring back the past no matter how hard we or the Amish try. We must move into the future. The question is whether we are going to engage it, dialogue with it, meet it on God's terms and be missionaries to the future or are we going to hermetically seal ourselves off in a Christian ghetto that embraces the 1970's, not nostalgically but as revolutionary? Seriously. There are churches today that consider themselves progressive because they have emerged from the 1950's and now have guitars, tamborines and drums (well, not drums) in church.
Even if they incorporated "modern" styles, they still miss the conceptual boat.
So what am I doing? Well, I'm reading what the emergent thinkers are talking about, shaking my head in wonder because these people are finding the changing world around them remarkable. Adventures in Missing the Point was the most instructive book in this series, especially the chapter on Missing the Point: Postmodern Christianity. It says if we sit around and talk about being pomo, then we've missed the whole point. It isn't about labels and categories.
It's about doing what needs to be done in a way that is effective.
