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His use of these works flows from his critique of the captivity of the evangelical church to modernity and from the hermeneutical key that he finds in postmodernity. His use of these works also flows from his own rootedness in ministry. Many teachers of the church who are rooted in the academy struggle to make their writing concrete and particular. Many pastors of the church struggle to make their writing and practices more than pragmatic survival techniques or programs for success (usually defined by modernity, as Fitch demonstrates).

For Fitch, the thinkers on whom he draws give him critical perspective on the church. The practices of ministry in which he is constantly immersed allow him to be concrete, particular, and practical. One side guards him from floating abstractly above the practices of ministry, the other side guards him from captivity to pragmatism and the tyranny of the immediate.

Thus, Fitch not only offers a stringent critique, he also immediately answers the "so what?" question. And he does so with specificity and realism. If the doctrine of the church is rooted in the practices of the church as those practices are rooted in the grace of God in Christ, then Fitch's book provides an ecclesiology that is responsive to evangelicalism and to the modern and postmodern condition.

But here, once again, a significant weakness remains, one that replays the problem with Fitch's dependence on postmodernity as hermeneutical key and ecclesiological guide. In Fitch's constructive ecclesiology, as in his critique of the cultural captivity of the church, he depends too much and in the wrongs ways on postmodernity. Even as he describes reclaiming the church's mission, I long for him to say "the gospel calls us to … " or "the gospel illuminates … " or "the gospel guides us to a recovery of" faithful evangelism, preaching, moral education, or some other practice. But too often "the postmodern" appears to be the benchmark.

This weakness is evident in his discussion of the movement from "modern" preaching to "postmodern" preaching. Here postmodernity is the critic of modernist preaching and initiates the correction. Does not the gospel provide an even more trenchant critique of modern maladies than does postmodernity? To Fitch's credit, he moves quickly from postmodernity to theological corrections of modernist approaches to Scripture and preaching. But again that turn does not include any warnings about postmodern maladies that may co-opt the church's preaching.

Because Fitch is rooted in faithful ministry and learns from teachers who are faithful to the gospel, his ecclesiology is not as dangerous as I may have made it sound. Nor does it verge on unfaithfulness. However, one responsibility of theology is not only to avoid heresy in one's own theology, but also to know where that theology may be misread by others and to guard against such misreading. I am concerned that Fitch does not guard his way of working sufficiently. Today's postmodern evangelical could become tomorrow's postmodern liberal. Let us take care to prevent that insofar as it lies within our power to do so.

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March (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50