Postmodernism and the church

Gathering some thoughts on postmodernism:

My first exposure to postmodernism had been with a church plant I was a part of in Texas, and on its leadership team. We started out (long story on how this happened) as consisting about 40% early-30 somethings with kids and another 40% early to mid 20-somethings, around 1998. The larger church culture was just discovering the need to rethink itself in reaching postmodern influenced thinkers.

A few years later, I was initially on the launch team for Vintage 21, now located in downtown Raleigh NC. Vintage 21 targets postmoderns there and in the greater Research Triangle area. I ended up leaving V21 when the launch team moved its meetings, and later its initial services, to Sunday evenings – I had prior commitments to honor then.

Another few years later, from 2004-2006, I was around a top postmodern thinker and author at his church in Burtonsville MD. Though his theology tended toward liberalism, I found it good to be about challenging thinking that I disagreed with. He eventually left his post at that church to focus on writing and so he could accept the numerous speaking requests he was getting.

So, postmodernism is not a new concept to me.

A “feature” of postmodernism has been a fracturing of our culture. Those who study culture have noted that over the centuries, especially into the 19^th and 20^th century as transportation and communication speeds increased, the number of distinct cultures fell. But in the late 20^th century to now, the number of distinct cultures, especially so called “sub-cultures” have been multiplying. Postmodernism is one reason, aided by technologies such as cable and satellite TV (more options mean less “unifying” cultural features, like back when we only had three TV networks), and the internet.

Many in the church (universal) have realized the need to change that which we can change around our unchangeable core truths in order to reach the world that is increasingly postmodern. Common techniques include switching the old emphasis on forgiveness of sins (not that it isn’t a part of the message still) to the emphasis on impacting the culture and world about us (John 14:12, et al), changing the “feel” of our spaces, and other changes of the facades we have. And this has had some success, typically among those postmoderns who grew up in the church.

But what of those postmoderns who didn’t grow up in the church? Ralph Winter, a pioneering missiologist (a person who studied missionary techniques and methods), a few years ago introduced the concept of cultural distance. It is a measure of how far a people-group (a culture) is from a meaningful engagement with the gospel. A cultural distance of 0 means a person can be brought to a meaningful engagement without removal of a cultural barrier. A distance of 1 would mean the need to navigate past or remove one barrier. A different language, for instance, adds 1 to the cultural distance score.

Those who grew up in the church may typically only have a cultural distance of 1. Thus the common techniques churches use, such as a special service for 20 somethings, may remove that barrier. But these common techniques are limited to those whose cultural distance is typically 0 to 1, maybe 2.

So how can the gospel reach those with higher cultural distance? We must realize that most of our thoughts on how church is done are themselves cultural adaptations, and not core to being “church”. Sadly, many have bought into various prooftexting arguments (isolating a single verse without full context, or combining several verses from different contexts) to make the case for these cultural adaptations. George Barna and Frank Viola have written an excellent treatise on this entitled Pagan Christianity. Once freed from these biases of church, we must realize that church is merely meant to be a community of disciples engaging in corporate activities on behalf of the kingdom of God, led by the Holy Spirit. So rather than trying to attract those in the subcultures to our current churches, the key seems to be to inject Christ into the subcultures and redeem that community to be a community for Christ.

What does this look like? There are numerous examples around the world of this (see The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch for a discussion of these). The common elements seem to be to have high expectations of those who become disciples, and a low cost to planting a church. The result is disciples on the fringes of one subculture scatter seed into another subculture, and teach and train the disciples there, giving birth to another church. These small communities are typically 8-20 in size, and often network with other fellowships in the same or nearby (geographically and cultural distance wise) subcultures.

The traditional church as we have known it is limited in its ability to reach these various subcultures. The high cost (in time, staff, and money) and limited ability to cross cultures from the “central” target culture (typically no more than a cultural distance of 2) handicaps the old methodology of church planting for kingdom growth. The emphasis needs to be on disciple making, and let the churches emerge from that effort. This requires a change in our “services” and meetings, as the passive nature of most in attendance fuels a heretical “consumerist” version of Christianity. This probably looks like more small meetings, and rare large meetings, with the expectation on those present to participate, not too unlike we see in I Corinthians 14.

Not unlike redemptive communities.