The Post -Modern Church

I read an article in Christianity Today that really fleshed out some of my observations about and dissatisfactions with the current church. You are welcome to read it in its entirety here But the comparison of the worldview of Evangelicals (which I equate with Modernity) with that of the Emerging church (Post-modern) is very eye opening. So, let me summarize the two views first, and then make some observations.

Evangelical Worldview

Fundamentally, the Evangelical Model is concerned with getting yourself “saved” or improving your life. The Christian life first focuses about you and your needs. Once your needs are met, then you think about how you can serve the church. Then, if there is anything left over, you ask how the church might serve the world.

“One of the greatest enemies of evangelism is the church as fortress or social club. It sucks Christians out of their neighborhoods, clubs, workplaces, schools, and other social networks and isolates them in a religious ghetto. There it must entertain them (through many means, many masquerading as education) and hold them (through various means, many of them epitomized by the words guiltfear). and This Christians are warehoused as merchandise for heaven, kept safe in a protected space to prevent spillage, leakage, damage or loss until their delivery.”

The Emerging Church Worldview

In this view the gospel and evangelism is not primarily informational but relational/missional. That is, imparting information about how to be individually saved is secondary to inviting people into relationship with a King and with members of a Kingdom whose foremost concern is wholeness for a broken world, rather than an insurance policy for eternal destiny.

It’s not about the church meeting your needs. It’s about you joining the mission of God’s people to meet the world’s needs.

When it comes to Salvation and Election, it is not about who gets to heaven; it is about who God chooses to be part of His crisis-response team to bring healing to the world. The gospel starts with God’s concern for the world (“For God so loved the world that He sent His Son”), in which God creates a community called the church, comprised of persons who stop (repent of) being ‘part of the problem’ and choose instead to join God as ‘part of the solution’—thus simultaneously entering a mission and a community in which one is accepted by grace, through faith in Jesus. Church is not a place one attends but a community to which one belongs. The church is God’s people chosen to demonstrate that love to the world.

I suppose what intrigues me is the shift of focus from self to the world. As a minister, if the world is my focus, I will refuse to limit the focal point of my preaching and teaching to the "needs" of saved and elect insiders, but instead keep the cries of the least, the last, and the lost alive in the ears of the “insiders.” Songs too have a different tone to them. Instead of thinking of how I am in a great relationship with God, we should sing songs of justice and compassion, of mission and hope, of the glory of a God who loves, not just me, but the whole world. In so doing, sermons and songs concentrate not on a self-centered gospel but on a world-blessing gospel. This concentration reminds me of God’s covenant with Abraham. It is not just blessings for Abraham for his benefit, but so that he and his descendants can return the blessing to the whole world.

And though many might agree with this sort of church, how we go about “reforming” our churches is often skewed. If we are a self-centered church in America, it is because our programs and theologies are perfectly designed to produce such a church. It has been said that the greatest obstacle to the coming of the kingdom of God is the church, preoccupied with her own existence. I am not saying we should do away with the church, but the Kingdom is bigger than the church. And until bringing healing and restoration to the world takes prominence over our own selfish preoccupation, the Kingdom will remain an ideal.