I‘m sitting here on a gray, snowy Saturday, looking out at flurries and longing for that warm, sunny time before we’d heard the word postmodern. It’s hard to remember now, but a decade ago, seminars were given on preaching, not on “Preaching in a Postmodern Age.” Books were written on plain ol’ youth ministry, not “Postmodern Youth Ministry.” Of course, we were all unenlightened, unwashed then, locked in a dead, Newtonian modernism.
How quickly we’ve learned.
Even six years ago, Leadership could publish “The Riddle of Our Postmodern Culture,” because the concept was largely unfamiliar to ministers. Now we all toss off words like “deconstructionism” and “abductive.” We’ve been blessed by conferences that are cool and collective, and we expect our websites to be flash-animated and our coffees dark-roasted.
Proponents of postmodern ministry (PPMs) have made important points for the church: We live in a time of transition from one worldview to another; Christianity must not be constricted by the prevailing worldview; the Incarnation is a central doctrine of Christianity that calls us to be incarnational in our culture; we need greater mystery, beauty, and experience in our worship of God. I agree. In fact, I think I did beforehand, but PPM writings have sharpened my convictions.
On other topics, I agree to a point. PPMs have called for metaphor, narrative, and surprise in preaching; after all, Jesus taught in parables. Good reminder. But the same Testament that gives us the elliptical parables gives us the straightforward exposition of Peter in Acts 2 and the dense argumentation of Paul in Romans 9-11, not to mention the name-by-name genealogies of Matthew and the linear history of Acts. Let us recapture indirection but not canonize it.
PPMs want us to listen to the postmodernizing culture, to enter relationship and accept our common brokenness. Who would argue? But while we love the relativist, let us hate the relativism. It puzzles me why postmodern theory has drawn such praise from Christians, when its essence (beneath the turgid prose) is that there is no objective truth. The “rules” of science or morality, pomo scholars contend, are as arbitrary as the rules of baseball. But as Dinesh D’Souza reminds us, “Postmodern theory suffers from the weakness that the postmodernists themselves don’t believe it.” When they get sick, they check into a modernist hospital, and when they fly, they step onto a plane built by engineers whose work must not be as random as the postmodernists claimed.
We’re told that “the world you and I were prepared to lead and minister in is over.” But modernism is proving to be a hardy old guy who doesn’t quite die, no matter how many obituaries are written. Just as pre-modern witchcraft and superstition flourished during and after the Enlightenment, so will modernist approaches survive into a postmodern world. Indeed, modernism will remain powerful (though interacting with postmodern ideas), since we live in what Jeremy Rifkin dubbed the Biotech Century. The postmodern movie-makers will be our bards, but the modernist gene-splicers will be our wizards.
Until recently, PPMs have overlooked (or sometimes, delighted in) the fact that, as J. I. Packer writes, postmodernism is parasitical: it lives off the achievements and failures of modernism but offers nothing positive of its own. Its only construction is deconstruction. True, some edifices need to be demolished, but architectural awards are not given to wrecking crews.
Thankfully, Brian McLaren, an author of several books on postmodern ministry, writes in his latest that he has “a desire to move beyond a critique of modern ministry (a hobby that can be dangerously preoccupying).” And he and others are beginning to offer something creative and generative. Soon we’ll know what it’s like, really like, to live and minister in the pomo church. We will have enjoyed the candles and icons and warehouses and begun to answer what you do with children, how you deal with conflict and leadership failure, and how you finance it all. The entire church will benefit from those lessons.
I’m fully prepared to admit that when we boomers were young, we faddishly embraced church-growth ratios and sociological analysis; we praised these modern tools as the salvation of the church. So it’s poetic justice for us now to sit in the back of the room, the balding and befuddled, as the next generation praises the postmodern matrix as the salvation of the church.
But we’re both wrong. We’ve already got a salvation for the church, and he will not share his glory with any current cultural form, no matter how valuable or necessary it may be. If the church uncritically embraced modern culture, the solution is not to uncritically embrace postmodern culture.
So, PPMs, let’s make a deal. I’ll stop saying “seeker sensitive” if you stop saying “ancient/future.” I’ll accept that you’re trying to engage a culture you know and love, if you’ll accept that I’m trying to engage a culture I know and love. You’re not a heretic; I’m not a Luddite. I’ll declare a moratorium on modernism if you will declare nomo pomo. Let us hasten the day that PPM McLaren longs for, when “we can use ministry and gospel and neighbors and grace and other words we love, never needing to use the ‘p-word’ again.”
Kevin A. Miller is editor-at-large of Leadership and yes, he’ll be attending the Emergent Convention (http://www.EmergentConvention.com), a postmodern gathering that runs concurrently with our National Pastors Convention in San Diego next month (http://www.NationalPastorsConvention.com).
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
