Some of you may have feared for my safety, since I wrote “A Postmodern Rant” and then attended the Emergent Convention, the party for all things pomo. Despite Chris Seay’s dire prediction, I came back tattoo-free, enjoyed many hallway conversations (thanks, Jim, Doug, Mary, Ray, Spencer, et al.), and gained greater understanding of postmodern ministry.
I also came home with more questions—which, in the postmodern world, means the convention was a success. Here are 10 points I’m pondering.
1. Hispanics and African-Americans tell me: “I have been a born-again Christian (of the Pentecostal type) for 18 years and thought I was pretty well informed on things. However, I had never heard of ‘post modern’ until I attended an Hispanic Baptist Convention in San Antonio, Texas on Feb. 3 [2003]” and “I am African-American and I read Christian literature, periodicals, etc., daily and I had never heard of ‘postmodernism’ until I read Kevin Miller’s article. This must be primarily a Caucasian or mega-church term.” My question, then: What accounts for the overwhelmingly white, middle-class makeup of the postmodern-ministry conversation? Is it simply a lag in communication between and among different cultures? Or is one of postmodernism’s greatest appeals—disillusionment with modern culture—not equally appealing to people who never had any illusions about that culture?
2. The Emergent Convention and this e-mail both exist because they assume the shift from modernity to postmodernity is important for the church. My question is, How important? In the overall development of Christianity—if we were to do what moderns love to do and make a list—where should we place that shift? Is it, say, more or less important than the shift from Northern Christianity to Southern Christianity, which Philip Jenkins has documented in The Next Christendom? (Briefly, using Terry Mattingly’s words: “by 2050, there will be 3 billion Christians in the world and only 1 in 5 will be a ‘non-Latino white’ … [and] the heart of Christendom will be Africa, not Europe or North America”?) Is it more or less important than the shift from a Physical World to an Imaginational World, described by Melinda Davis in The New Culture of Desire?
3. Can PPMs help figure out something that the modern American church generally has not: How do we live faithfully as Christians in a consumerist culture? Eugene Peterson lamented years ago that “pastors have turned into shopkeepers” and little progress has been made on that front, though Doug Pagitt’s report gives me some hope.
4. One strength of postmodern ministry is its emphasis on listening, really listening, to postmodern nonChristians. Can PPMs listen equally well to the modernist Christian?
5. In one of his books (I forget which), C. S. Lewis makes the offhand comment that people in the medieval era were fascinated by light. In contrast, moderns were fascinated by size. I wonder, What are postmoderns fascinated by? (To join a conversation on that question, go to EmergentVillage.com and click on Interact > Bulletin Board > Articles > What Fascinates Postmodern People?)
6. At this point, postmodern ministry is not a “movement” (say McLaren and others) but a “conversation.” How big is the conversation? Can it include people who consider themselves postmodern but who are not fond of the Emergent expression of that, who favor less-institutional forms of church life (house church, organic church, missional church, etc.), greater continuity with what has come before, and more-recent aesthetics? Wonderfully, the conversation welcomes artists back into the church; does it equally welcome the business people and engineers?
7. When some PPMs call for the modern church to “give up its affair with certainty,” does this mean, “give up a view of Scripture as providing certainty” or merely, “proclaim a certain Scripture with humility?”
8. Postmodern worship services embrace struggle, doubt, and difficulty. Can the new worship also embrace confidence, assurance, and joy? Can Psalm 51 and Psalm 150 live together?
9. When a PPM calls for an end to preaching, what does that mean?
10. In a postmodern worldview, how do people determine which things to be certain about (such as, apparently, the need to give up certainty) and which to be relative about? One answer is “the marginalized decide.” Andy Crouch explains that postmodernism is “not relativist across the board, because it actually has a certain perspective, the perspective of the truth-claims of the marginalized, who are given quite a lot of validity in the postmodern epistemological scheme.” What are the implications of this answer and other ones?
Ten questions from someone who has been described by a PPM as a blend of “engagement and caution.” Ten questions that I hope will lead to deeper conversation for all Christians who want to reach today’s culture.
Kevin A. Miller is executive editor of www.PreachingToday.com.
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