Final Thought: Mission: Reaching a Post-Modern Generation With the Gospel.

By Lou Perez

     For better or worse, today’s Church lives in the postmodern era. When I first began hearing about postmodernism many years ago, I would always walk away with a foggy understanding of what it was. Then I looked at the term “Postmodernism”. “Post” speaks of what comes after. In this case, modernism, was the era we have been transitioning out of for the past 60 years.  What helped me to understand postmodernism is when I started to notice the things it reacts to. Postmodernism is a reaction to the age of Modernism that began during the Renaissance and focused on science and reason as the way to find truth. In modernism, Sunday morning Church was based on many hours of Bible study, apologetics, and exegesis, which although is important, does not always connect with postmodern seekers.

     Postmodernism is characterized in general by a rejection of objective truth. You might hear post modern’s say things like, “There is no such thing as one way to God”. They tend to reject a single definition of truth. In fact, for postmoderns, truth is based on each person’s own experience. Postmoderns take a wrecking ball to the last era of modernism and rebuild it with materials borrowed from every religion and philosophy the world has to offer.

Postmodernism has not been without impact on the Church. Here are some ways this has occurred.

Challenge of authority: Postmodernism challenges the authority of the Church and the revelation it stands on. This is all done in an attempt to discover truth for oneself - a personal “journey of spirituality.”

No Objective Truth. Since postmoderns don’t believe in “one truth fits all,” Christianity is seen as just another buffet line where you pick and choose what you like and then go to other religions and philosophies for the rest. 

The image has replaced the truth. Postmoderns tend towards a shallow understanding of truth. Because we live in a media saturated “copy and paste” society where ideas can be remixed and photo-shopped, there is a tendency for postmoderns to create their own image of the “truth”. To put it simply, an image has replaced what is real. This is no different that Aaron’s golden calf in Exodus 32:1.

The problem with postmodernism is that Christ taught a specific set of non-negotiable truths that are relevant for every age.

“I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”   

John 14:6 ESV

So how do we as the Church thrive in a post modern world? How do we reach postmoderns?       Here are six suggestions:

     We can continue to do what we have always done and see what the next age brings. It may be a while however. Or we can go to where the postmodern lives. Paul did this by “becoming all things to all men”.  

“To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.” (1 Corinthians 9:20–23 ESV)

     We can engage the postmodern person. We can do this by affirming what is right and challenging what is wrong. If there is one area where postmoderns are correct it is that intellect and reason is not enough to find truth. At the same time, we can lovingly challenge the postmodern’s notion that “there is no absolute truth”. The problem postmoderns cannot account for is that it’s impossible to make absolute statements when you don’t believe in absolutes.

     Let’s be sure that we are fighting for the right thing. We don’t want to contend for the “good old days” of modernism where people swooned at our insights. One of the faults of modernism is the arrogance and condescension that came from knowledge.

     Let’s change our methods without changing the message. In an honest effort to reach people, some postmodern seeker-sensitive churches have reworked certain Bible passages to soften their blow. It is a dangerous thing to amend what one did not write, especially when it involves a saving truth.

     Experience and encounter. Provide opportunities for people to encounter God. This brings them beyond just head knowledge and into intimacy with God.

     Use stories and metaphors to illustrate Biblical truth. One final thing we can do to reach postmoderns is to tell a story to illustrate a deeper truth. Postmoderns love stories and will respond to the truth easier when it is embedded in a story. This isn’t just postmodern, this is Jesus. Jesus used parables as a delivery system for eternal truths.

      The Church has a sacred responsibility to engage the postmodern world, and with the wisdom and discernment of the Holy Spirit, to bring people to the unchanging Gospel truths that are relevant in every generation.

   

Lou and Louisa Perez both grew up in New York City, and met in the first Church Lou pastored in Schenectady, NY. In 1999 they started Destiny Christian Church in Niagara Falls with the vision of taking Church outside the four walls. Find out more at www.destinychristianniagara.com.

Mission: Every Man, Woman, and Child Hear and See the Gospel

     Two years ago, I had just finished a series of interviews for a tenure-track faculty position at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. I was finished with my doctoral work at the University of Buffalo and was working on my post-doctoral appointment. In a series of events transpiring afterward, I found myself in a ministry position in Buffalo, with the hope of cultivating church partnerships and who knows, maybe even some church plants (something that had already gotten underway over a year-and-a-half earlier). Ultimately, the goal that was set out, was to give every man, woman, and child a repeated opportunity to hear, to see, and to respond to the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. From that, what is now known as the Renovation Network was birthed, with particular emphasis on the Northeast and the Midwest (more particularly, The Rust Belt). Such geographic intentionality has stemmed from that, because Buffalo represents a city that straddles both domains of influence. It possesses Northeast composition along with blue collar living. It’s part of why I love this town so much.

     What has transpired since that time has been encouraging, but it has also provided me with a stark reminder, that the journey that we are on is not in the 3-5 year timeframe. Granted, we have seen some great wins along the way, and we have been encouraged during that time. But what we are truly looking at, in my belief as a social scientist, is the next 30 years of our lives. The United States has Europe in its foresights if something does not happen with the church in the west. Sometimes, followers of Christ are overrun with the reality of what we are facing here domestically, and it slips their mind that God is doing amazing things all throughout the world. Africa, Latin America, Asia—the Gospel continues to move forward in ways that leave many of us pining for that to happen here. However, after the overwhelming feeling of the task ahead of us sets in, there are a couple of things that we can do. First, we can evoke myopic thinking. In essence, we can pretend that it’s not all that bad, keep our head in the sand, and go about doing things methodologically the way that we’ve always done them. Or, second, we can awaken to the challenge ahead of us. We can start to look at our view of Christology, Missiology, and Ecclesiology (see Hirsch, Forgotten Ways), and examine them under the guise of where culture situates us today. It is my opinion, that the second approach would suit us well.

     But here is where the rub lies. We have to methodologically examine where it is that we should start. Missiologist Dr. Dwight Smith proposes two questions that have been the foundation for Renovation Network: 1) What does God want? and; 2) What would it look like if God did what He wanted? These two questions have driven the desire for churches to partner and work with one another, primarily because, they have helped us to arrive at two key answers to the proposed questions. First, God wants relationship with His creation—more specifically, He wants to give every man, woman, and child, the repeated opportunity to hear, see, and respond to the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. Second, it likely is going to take multiple expressions of the bride to make that happen (e.g., high church, low church, seeker church, etc.). Given that being the case, what could happen if churches started working together to fulfill the mission of giving every man, woman, and child in Niagara and Erie County, that repeated opportunity for a relationship with Christ?

     Transitioning from theoretical to practical, this journey has been fun, but difficult as well. Working with other churches on a variety of initiatives has been incredibly exciting for our churches within the Network. While it is simply not just about planting, God has allowed some church plants to be birthed, and the stamp on some of these churches has been that they were planted by multiple expressions of the local church in Buffalo (e.g., Northgate Church—approximately 15 churches representing seven different denominations planted this particular expression of the bride). While that has certainly generated pause for excitement and enthusiasm, it is also clear that we have so much to learn about working together with one another. There are clearly things that challenge us as we partner: geography, methodology, denominationalism, prior and/or existent ecclesiology, to name a few. That being said, what has been encouraging to me in particular, has been that churches have remained open to the idea that, even though we may not know how to work together well as of current, we’re willing to dialogue and not give up on the key hope that drives us in Renovation Network—saturation of our geography. Certainly, we want to see men, women, and children come to know Christ. But that is not the exclusive mark that we’re working toward. In addition to that, we want to see representatives of the local church (lay people) building intentional relationships with unbelievers (what we would identify as presence). We want for those people to also be available to share their grace story as well, talking about how God brought them to faith in Christ (past) and how that decision has continued to shape them day-by-day, and in future days to come (what we would identify as proclamation). As our people do these very things, we then begin to saturate our geography with the Gospel and opportunities for a response to it. As we focus on saturation, a natural by-product is that some of those very people will come to know Jesus Christ.

     Yes, this is a 30 year venture. But even in writing this and reflecting upon what has been happening, I’m thankful for what God has been doing in and through this conscious effort to partner with other churches within the Church at Buffalo. I can only hope for more and pray that God would continue to develop and cultivate partnerships around the mission of every man, woman, and child.

Ryan Kozey, PhD is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for The Renovation Network. In addition, he is an adjunct professor of Organizational Communication for Canisius College. He and his wife and children reside in Buffalo, NY.