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A Primer on Kingdom Opportunities in a Post-Modern Culture
Emphasis on Participation over Spectator Mentality
Order is always birthed out of chaos. When chaos surrounds us, the Holy Spirit broods over us...and God is creating a new masterpiece. Graham Cooke, A Divine Confrontation
Postmodern gatherings will look chaotic to most modern leaders. In fact, in a postmodern gathering we may wonder who the leaders are.
Where traditional gatherings are leader centered, postmodern gatherings tend to be community centered. Furthermore, where traditional gatherings tend to be ordered and linear, postmodern gatherings tend to be non-linear, painting a picture rather than building clearly toward an end. They rely more on spontaneous connections and serendipity than on control and planned outcomes.
Strangely, this sounds a lot like a Spirit led gathering, or like the description of the meeting outlined by Paul in 1 Cor. 14. (For an argument that this outline is normative, see Gordon Fee, Paul, the Spirit and the People of God.)
If the "medium is the message," (McLuhan may be the first post-modern writer of the age), the postmodern gathering may do more to empower a sense of peoplehood than the information and leader centered gatherings we have commonly known.
In order to have a more participatory style of teaching, for example, the first thing that will go out the window will be the neat conclusions that we love to use to "wrap things up" at the end of each and every meeting. What if the Spirit's direction takes several weeks or months to complete the curve? Can we be comfortable with and even welcome a perpetual sense of incompleteness?
Isn't that more like "real life"? Life unfolds in a never-ending web of complexities, yet often our meetings/gatherings have more in common with a TV sitcom, where everything is presented, explored, and resolved in a half hour or less... until next week, when we do it all again. What kind of expectation of being a follower of Jesus would result from this kind of "modeling"? Margaret Wheatley remarks,
The interactive nature of postmodern gatherings can help us recover the understanding that everyone is a player, and that too much leadership is as bad as no leadership. We have tended to emphasize control and rational structure, which may appear efficient while actually causing us to limit participation and thus neglect body life as outlined in Eph.4 where "every part does its work."
Emphasis on Journey and Process over Goal
We have a church that does not understand process and growth, largely because the people who understand these realms are not in any place of authority or real influence. Reason has replaced revelation. Graham Cooke, A Divine Confrontation
While the general direction of kingdom expression is known ("to present every man mature in Christ" or "the summing up of all things in the Head"), perhaps we have been too sure about some of the other goals. Postmoderns are very comfortable with process. They aren't as concerned about measurable results and outcomes. It's tough to argue that our concern with clear goals has really produced a better world or a world more open to the Gospel.
Postmoderns question "vision statements" and "measurable goals." A saying that used to be invigorating -- "aim at nothing and you'll hit it" -- now invokes an uneasy feeling that something, somewhere, is not quite right. We intuitively recognize that we can't account for every variable in an increasingly complex world.
Furthermore, a preoccupation with the "product" (disciples) invariably leads to a zealous debate over goals and methods, but usually results in a performance-based program to which people are required to be accountable.
Our understanding of discipleship has been deficient. Disciples are persons, not projects, our brothers and sisters, not products. While it's useful to wrestle with the concept of maturity, to assume that there's a way to "package" the process naive and reductionistic. Is there a way to honestly wrestle with what becoming a disciple looks and feels like, without getting lost in mechanisms and programs?
In emphasizing the journey, postmoderns remind us that it isn't about what we do, but who we are and who we are becoming. Richard Rohr comments that,
"We give people who we are much more than what we do. The Latin saying had a clever ring to it: "Nemo dat quod nor hat." No one can give away what they do not have. And transformed people tend to transform other people-just by being who they are." (Radical Grace, July, 2001)
Furthermore, postmoderns downplay results, and remind us that character is critical. It's a good reminder, because our world has become so obsessed with production that stress is killing us at an alarming rate. The call to find God in the process is a good corrective to our performance orientation.
When we realize that the world creates newness in every relationship, we can only laugh at these studied attempts at control. We can't predict what we think we can; we can't know ourselves in isolation.
In the modern church we used careful measurement to predict and control outcomes. Efficiency was the watchword; a highly structured gathering and programs were the result. But as we realized that we could only plan for the future we saw, and not the future that would actually come, we began to question those plans as well as the outcomes. We learned that we weren't always measuring what we though we were measuring. We discovered that some of the best outcomes aren't easily measured. And we found that we never had enough information to accurately anticipate the future.
Postmoderns have reason to question the 'efficiency' of modern churches. The World Evangelization Research Center (www.gem-werc.org) has come up with some frightening statistics on evangelism.
Christians spend more on the annual audits of their churches and agencies ($810 million) than on all their workers in the non-Christian world.
The total cost of Christian outreach averages $330,000 for each and every newly baptized person.
All this throws postmoderns back to an "I don't know" position, one that isn't radically different from Abraham's position when he went out, "not knowing where he was going." That place of blind faith can be a radical dependence on God.
Desire for Experience over Knowledge
We are only now emerging from a long ice age during which an undue emphasis was laid upon objective truth at the expense of subjective experience. A. W. Tozer
We were in trouble as soon as the Gospel entered the Greek world. We lost the Hebraic perspective on the integration of being and act, and the wholeness of truth in life.
The separation of sacred and secular led to the objectification of truth and thus the scientific revolution, and finally the technological revolution. While the benefits are countless, the long term impact on humanity and our world has been staggering.
Moderns became obsessed with knowledge and information. Some of the results have been confessionalism, fundamentalism and many other 'isms" that have distorted the Gospel. When truth became objective and propositional, we lost the connection with covenant and transformation. It became possible to identify with the facts of Christianity while not allowing those facts to transform our lives or connect us to the Christian community.
Those who know don't have the words to tell;
According to a recent poll, 66 percent of Americans believe there is no such thing as absolute truth. Furthermore, 53 percent who identify themselves as "evangelical Christians" believe there are no absolutes.
Where moderns believed in objectivity, postmoderns do not. Postmoderns maintain that objectivity is a myth, that the observer always becomes part of the equation. Furthermore, postmoderns are not content with confessions and creeds. They want to experience the truth to which the creeds are confessions are pointing. They are hungry for reality.
At the same time, the ancient creeds of the faith have become for many an "anchor" in a turbulent society -- a forum in which to connect with a timeless community and a sense of mystery. What marks a significant difference for postmoderns is that "mystery" -- with it's inherent lure of "discovery" -- is invigorating, not unnerving. The paradox of seeking experience yet embracing ancient creeds and symbols is a postmodern characteristic.
Many who identify themselves as pagan or neo-pagan lay claim to "recovering" the truths of ancient spiritual groups. How is that functionally different from Christianity and our creeds? If we let go of the neurotic need to "have all the answers", where each conversation becomes a contest to enforce the "rightness" of our belief system, and approach our conversations as fellow seekers-of-truth, sharing the discoveries of the journey, would we discover more openness to our message?
Truth was always meant to embrace both "objective" and "subjective" by becoming incarnate in life. Truth was meant to be personal. Thus when Jesus said "I AM the way, the truth, and the life," He was giving us the heart of the Gospel.
Is the couplet from Bruce Cockburn above so different from that found in St. John of the Cross?
This knowing that unknows
While modern Christians have emphasized the objective nature of truth, we need to recover the learning of the mystics. We need to embrace the tension between the objective and subjective dimensions of faith. Paul's desire was that we become ministers of the new covenant, "Not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor.3:6). Evangelicals tend to be well anchored in the word, but not always so open to the Spirit.
Yet God loves to love on us. No marriage is complete which exists on paper alone. The Father draws us to a real and intimate relationship because love moves toward union.
As in the lover the loved-
Spontaneous order over rational structure, webs of connection and meaning
Fancy upsetting the clock-like, mechanical perfection of a great service with an outpouring of the Spirit! The thing is unthinkable! Martyn Lloyd-Jones, "The Sovereign Spirit: Discerning His Gifts (1985)
Lloyd-Jones tongue in cheek comment on revival versus the lovely and efficient progress of a typical Sunday meeting is perhaps unfair in opposing the supernatural activity of God to the natural. But it is worth remembering that Lloyd-Jones saw the evolution of a technological culture at its height, and while the knowledge of clergy and laity increased, the church grew increasingly wealthy and spiritually cold.
The de-centralized, non-linear experience in the context of face-to-face community is strikingly different than the institutional setting. In a home meeting, for example, an "order of service" seems out of place.
In contrast, the highly structured and linear program of a Sunday public gathering has troubled me. Why?
The order that Paul describes in the New Testament (1 Cor. 14; Eph. 4) seems spontaneous and controlled by the Spirit. It is highly participatory. Any time we rely heavily on structure and preparation, we risk losing something important.
In virtually any formal Sunday service participation is highly limited, and the order is linear and predictable: intro, call to worship, worship and praise, announcements, the sermon, blessing and dismissal. And we say we aren't liturgical!
In the post-modern setting, even as groups get larger than a couple of dozen, things are much less linear and much less predictable. For some time I feared that this would obscure the center - the purpose of our gathering. In fact, the center becomes clearer, but it's a different center.
The linearity of the rational and structured model gives way to something much more difficult to define. Where modern Christian gatherings have a machine quality (though participation is severely limited) postmodern gatherings are more like a participatory art form, where everyone is a dancer or a painter. The center is defined in the process, and not by the end product, and "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."
In the postmodern gathering, it's no longer clear whether the center is "worship" or "word" (listen and learn) or just being together. The designated leaders may not be easily identifiable, though they are still present. This is a very helpful direction in terms of the real work of the church and the purpose of our gathering, if we pay attention to Ephesians 4 and the dynamic Paul describes.
In a modern meeting, events proceed smoothly. There may be multimedia presentations. There may be space given to spontaneous participation with testimonies or exhortations. Spontaneous elements can be integrated even in a highly structured modern context.
But what about spontaneous connections? What about unplanned outcomes? The greater the structure and the greater the need for predictability, the more the outcome is limited by our own ability at engineering. Are we really SO confident in ourselves?
In any gathering, particularly in a gathering where the Holy Spirit is participant, there are many more possibilities than one or two leaders can envision. These will often be excluded. But what if the Lord had a different outcome in mind? What if it had been His intention to engineer events or connections that we did not imagine? Margaret Wheatley comments:
This simpler way to organize human endeavour requires a belief that the world is inherently orderly. Life seeks organization. It does not require us to organize it. Wheatley, A Simpler Way
As I reflect on the last year of our meeting with the church in our home, I realize that when we left behind the traditional center (the functions of word and worship and formal structures of participation) the center changed to the people themselves. We all became players, and the whole world was our stage (apologies to the Bard).
While we gather on Sunday afternoons, our relationships continue through the week. We bring groceries to one family. We meet in small clutches over coffee. We connect via phone and email. We pray with one another when a need arises. We gather a gift for someone who needs help with rent. We have a spontaneous gathering at a beach and spend time playing together. We have a complex network of relationships, but the center is love for one another and for Jesus.
Remember Robert Girard's community? They gave their building back to the denomination and started meeting in homes… "The only structure holding us together is relationships; if we fail at love, there will be nothing left."
"Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God's active presence in their lives. Hence, the question that must guide all organizing activity in the church is not how to keep people busy, but how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence." Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p.63
When we rely less on formalized roles and structure, something interesting happens. Information flows along unexpected pathways instead of from the top down. Individuals who we thought lacked leadership gifts suddenly take responsibility in unusual ways. Where we worried things were becoming chaotic, a new order arises. The model of a neural net is more appropriate than the machine model.
Truth in Paradox, Images and Story
The THIRD email of Paul to the Corinthians
This is the third e-mail I am sending to you. Did you receive my other two? I have had no reply from you yet, and a "fatal delivery" error message for the second e-mail, in which I wrote about love, faith and hope. I will send it again, just in case.
I sent my second message to the congregations throughout the whole of Asia Minor, but my service provider considered this to be spamming and closed down one of my accounts. To those who are using Web based e-mail accounts, I will send Timothy to you with my message on foot. It will get there quicker.
Philemon and Titus send you their love. I found their e-mails amidst a flood of junk mail and get-rich-quick messages, in which there is no real profit.
Even though I recently upgraded my aging Pentium 90, I'm still getting an unknown WINDOWS error.
Look - I hope you don't mind, but I think I'll stick with the parchments next time.
While we are becoming comfortable with mystery and paradox, we also need to reconnect to the imagination.
Every preacher knows that simply reading from Paul and then summarizing the main points makes for a quickly forgotten message. Instead, preachers and teachers make good use of metaphor and story to anchor their message in a living example.
Picture Jesus on the shores of the lake of Galilee. Can you see the water catching the reflection of the sky, while the seabirds wheel overhead? The crowd gathers by the shore as he steps into a boat and begins to tell a story.
Jesus used stories from everyday life, describing common events familiar to his readers like a sower sowing seed, or a fisherman casting his nets. Story continues to be a popular method for framing truth.
Tell the truth but tell it slant
CS Lewis wrote that "the imagination is the vehicle of understanding." The reason that story is so useful is that images impact the brain at a level different from mere propositions. Pictures communicate on a variety of levels, and appeal to a variety of audiences. Stories from real life capture our attention by appealing to both heart and mind.
Where the modern world tried to escape images in favor of "pure" truth in propositions, we have learned that the old methods were the best. Many moderns were "iconoclasts," trying to purge the faith by reducing it to the bare facts. Unfortunately, facts that are divorced from life are only facts. Jesus taught us by his incarnation that truth embodied in life will enter in at places that facts alone cannot reach.
The rediscovery of image based forms is powerfully impacting our culture. Movies are the new vehicles of culture. Multimedia presentations are common as vehicles of the Gospel. The current generation was raised on images and the Internet is not only shaping the way we communicate but the way we understand ourselves and our world.
Worship is increasingly anchored in the physical world, with images, dance and drama. The only danger here is the professionalization of worship. While no one wants to watch untrained dancers or listen to unskilled musicians, the pursuit of excellence has a way of taking us back to a passive spectator mentality where 95% of us watch while 5% perform.
In the modern world the watchword was "balance," a Greek ideal. In the postmodern context the watchword is paradox, truth in dynamic tension. Sometimes apparently opposing truths must be held in tension. Jesus is both God and man. God is three in one. These concepts were boggling to moderns, who worked out elaborate formulas to explain the inexplicable. But the tension is not a problem to postmoderns.
While 66 percent of Americans believe there is no absolute truth, nearly three out of four Americans believe that "the Bible is the word of God and completely accurate in all that it teaches." Holding mutually inconsistent ideas is not a problem for postmoderns.
God is both immanent and transcendent. The kingdom is now, but not yet. God chooses us, yet we have free will. We are both spiritual and physical.
Is light a particle or a wave? It depends on the observer, according to the new physics.
Where moderns looked for the resolution of such tensions, often emphasizing one side of the truth while minimizing the other, postmoderns are comfortable with mystery and paradox. They recognize that truth is often multi-faceted, and they recognize that our knowledge will remain limited. "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, says the Lord."
One of the well known experiments that demonstrated the limits of our knowledge was performed nearly fifty years ago. Scientists attempting to measure a particle needed to know both its size and its speed in order to understand its reaction with other particles. When they stopped the particle to measure its size, they could no longer know its speed. When they measured its speed, they could not measure its size.
This is important, because the mystical journey of union with Christ often brings more questions than answers. Furthermore, personal knowledge has characteristics that differ from scientific knowledge. While we may describe someone in startling detail, and even offer a psychological profile, it is not possible to truly know someone apart from love. The truth may not always be apparent to our mind, when it may be transparently clear to the heart.
"The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know." Pascal, Pensees
Conclusion
"In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Al Rogers
Many leaders are failing to engage postmodern culture because they have not understood the opportunities. Others have confused postmodernity as an intellectual movement and postmodern culture with its particular value set, like tolerance and moral relativity, and then tossed out the baby with the bathwater.
The purpose of this article was to clarify some of the points of contact between postmodern culture and the Gospel. While it is critical that we hold on to biblical values and purpose (function) it is equally important that we don't idolize the old forms. Forms change, the message remains the same.
If we view the Kingdom as transforming culture (a process that will only find its full expression and completion with the return of Jesus), then we are not only free to explore culturally relevant ways of expressing our faith, we are actually compelled to continually re-evaluate, re-imagine, and re-tell our Story in ways that our listeners can understand and embrace.
The challenge is clear: to effectively engage our culture while maintaining our biblical identity as the people of God. Our failure to do this, and to explore new ways of faithfully expressing the biblical call to discipleship (in both edification and evangelism as missional communities), will result in our becoming increasingly marginalized and irrelevant. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, has the last word.
Len Hjalmarson, Kelowna, BC
This article is available in expanded format in PDF by clicking HERE
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• © 1999-2002 Len Hjalmarson.•
Last Updated on July 17, 2002
