Monday, October 11, 2004
The Modern, Postmodern debate.
I find it kind of amusing that people debate about ministering to "post moderns" as if postmodernity is somehow something we may or may not have to deal with. It's like debating whether or not we will have to deal with gravity. It's amusing to me to hear people speak as if we can somehow magically program postmodernity out of people rather than embracing this group of people, meeting them where they are and trusting God to use in them what He wants to use and changing what He doesn't like. The following is response I wrote to a recent posting on a list I belong to.
I am probably going to sound as if I am terribly oversimplifying this issue but we need to approach postmodernity in a missional way. Were we going to go out into the mission field, we would not expect the people we were ministering to, to first embrace our culture, we would take the unchanging message of the Gospel to them in a format that was consistent with the way they experience the world. That's how we must approach the Post Modern generation, they have been trained to experience truth as experiential rather than absolute, so we must allow them to experience Jesus first. A lot of that comes from love. You are ministering to a culture other than the one you grew up in, there are similarities, but there are also vast differences. Remember that at least to some degree, the Post Modern generation are our children and grandchildren. We raised them and to some degree our generation allowed this to happen. We have given our children a much more complicated world than the one we grew up in.
Secondly and much more simplistically, who does the real work of reaching anyone and convincing them of the truth. Isn't it really the Holy Spirit working on hearts? Is the Holy Spirit any less powerful than He was when you came to Christ? No, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What we need more than anything is prayer. The Spirit is able to reach people of any mindset. I know because he reached me. Oh wait that's experiential isn't it. lol.
At our recent district conference meeting, we were challenged to read a Gospel a month up until annual conference. Why? To reconnect with Jesus, to stop asking what would Jesus do and remind ourselves what Jesus did. You see one of the big things in ministering to this new culture is to realize that people are still interested in Jesus, they're just not all that interested in Christians. (There is a difference and, at least to some degree, we are to blame for the disconnect.) As we reconnect with Jesus, we strip away all the stuff that we added to Christianity and we start to deal with people as He did, meeting people where they are, serving them and showing them something better. Once people experience the love of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of the Gospel will become abundantly clear.
I find it kind of amusing that people debate about ministering to "post moderns" as if postmodernity is somehow something we may or may not have to deal with. It's like debating whether or not we will have to deal with gravity. It's amusing to me to hear people speak as if we can somehow magically program postmodernity out of people rather than embracing this group of people, meeting them where they are and trusting God to use in them what He wants to use and changing what He doesn't like. The following is response I wrote to a recent posting on a list I belong to.
I am probably going to sound as if I am terribly oversimplifying this issue but we need to approach postmodernity in a missional way. Were we going to go out into the mission field, we would not expect the people we were ministering to, to first embrace our culture, we would take the unchanging message of the Gospel to them in a format that was consistent with the way they experience the world. That's how we must approach the Post Modern generation, they have been trained to experience truth as experiential rather than absolute, so we must allow them to experience Jesus first. A lot of that comes from love. You are ministering to a culture other than the one you grew up in, there are similarities, but there are also vast differences. Remember that at least to some degree, the Post Modern generation are our children and grandchildren. We raised them and to some degree our generation allowed this to happen. We have given our children a much more complicated world than the one we grew up in.
Secondly and much more simplistically, who does the real work of reaching anyone and convincing them of the truth. Isn't it really the Holy Spirit working on hearts? Is the Holy Spirit any less powerful than He was when you came to Christ? No, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What we need more than anything is prayer. The Spirit is able to reach people of any mindset. I know because he reached me. Oh wait that's experiential isn't it. lol.
At our recent district conference meeting, we were challenged to read a Gospel a month up until annual conference. Why? To reconnect with Jesus, to stop asking what would Jesus do and remind ourselves what Jesus did. You see one of the big things in ministering to this new culture is to realize that people are still interested in Jesus, they're just not all that interested in Christians. (There is a difference and, at least to some degree, we are to blame for the disconnect.) As we reconnect with Jesus, we strip away all the stuff that we added to Christianity and we start to deal with people as He did, meeting people where they are, serving them and showing them something better. Once people experience the love of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of the Gospel will become abundantly clear.
Comments:
Post a Comment
