Postmodernism and Emerging Christianity

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A Now-Oriented Salvation, Part Two

I’ve noticed among emergent/postmodern Christian authors a consensus for a now-oriented salvation. Part One of this subject is here:  https://toddrisser.com/2013/11/06/a-now-oriented-salvation-part-one/

Last time I ended with these two questions that Nazarene pastor Dana Hicks finds more useful today than asking if someone died tonight would they go to heaven?

1”If you knew you were going to live another forty years, what kind of person would you want to become?”

2. “If you could know what God is doing in the world, would you want to be part of it?”

Regarding this second question, Dana says “I like this question, because it focuses evangelism on God’s agenda instead of our tendency to get God to focus on our agenda. I also like this question because it opens the door to talk about what Jesus talked about the most –the Kingdom of God breaking in to our world right now” (Dana Hicks, Postmodern and Wesleyan, 77).  Rob Bell’s ‘Nooma’ video called Trees highlights this postmodern search for a faith for today, not just my eventual salvation after death. My perception is that it would be accurate to say that, theologically, most emerging/Emergent/postmodern pastors have bought into the idea that the Kingdom of God was the thrust of Jesus’ message… rather than a judicial, legal approach to forgiveness.

When the 2004 Tsunami hit, I heard a Christian speaker on national television say “It doesn’t matter that they died, what matters is: did they know Christ?” The sheer lack of human compassion it portrayed, (ignoring, among other things, the thousands of children left utterly orphaned), the hyper-focus -as if the entire message of the Christian faith was just get to heaven when you die- horrified me, and most postmodern Christians share that sentiment.

I think this turn in the orientation of salvation to the here and now is a good thing.  It’s high time we made sure we aren’t making Christianity out to be just another gnosticism designed to help us escape the physical world of woe. Seeing salvation as akin to God’s shalom restoration is a return to biblical orthodoxy. While the emerging church needs to make sure they don’t under-emphasize what the Scriptures say about salvation after this life, they are, I believe, reacting to what they’ve experienced in many modern churches as an under-emphasis on salvation in this life. While you may feel that your particular church has achieved a good, solid, biblical balance of this dynamic, it is the obvious impression of the postmoderns that there’s been (in far too many churches) an overemphasis on heaven and a neglect of the call of Jesus to work for Kingdom realities here and now, as in the parable of the sheep and the goats.

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a now-oriented salvation, Part One

When I read 50 of the primary works by emergent authors a few years ago I noticed a growing sense of responding to the call of Jesus to follow Him because of what that following means for life here and now on earth for myself and the world around me, not simply because by doing so I can make it to heaven when I die. Emphasizing the need for salvation around the afterlife has created, in the modern church, far too many people taking on Christian faith as just another expression of selfish, me-oriented, consumeristic society – what THEY’LL get out of it. (And we wonder why there are so many immature Christians in our churches?)

A common trend running through emerging/Emergent/postmodern Christianity is the conviction that the Gospel is not merely a set of beliefs to get you to heaven when you die. Rather, it is an invitation to a new way of life right now, a call to participate in God’s new community here on earth, and a conviction that salvation, in the Biblical sense, is about a lot more than what happens after your funeral. This isn’t to suggest that the modern church was only ever concerned about getting to heaven, but most postmoderns feel that much of the modern church focused so much on after-death soteriology, that it drowned out most of the rest of the message of Jesus, and fostered a Left Behind view of abandonment of the world.

Nazarene pastor Dana Hicks has written: “Focusing evangelism on what happens to us after we die tends to create disciples who are not concerned with either whom they are becoming or the kind of world they will leave behind. Of course, we may die tonight. But it is much more likely that we will live a while longer – a decade or two or three or more. What happens in the meantime? Will we live an abundant life? What kind of legacy will we leave behind?”(Dana Hicks, Postmodern and Wesleyan, 77). Instead of the question regarding God letting you into heaven if you died tonight, Dana  finds the following two questions to be more helpful in speaking to people about Christ,

1”If you knew you were going to live another forty years, what kind of person would you want to  become?”

2. “If you could know what God is doing in the world, would you want to be part of it?”

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Environmentalism: A Significant Theological and Ethical Concern

Because Earth is not detention hall, because postmodern Christians are abandoning End-times theories of abandonment, because this world is the world of God’s redemptive activity, because man is steward, not owner, of Creation (the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it); because this earth is the one being renewed and restored (Matthew 19:28; Acts 3: 21, Romans 8: 19-25 etc), because this earth is where the resurrection will occur – a trait of postmodern/emerging Christianity is a concern for the Creation, the environment, this place. Recycling is an ethical issue for  postmoderns. Endangered species are part of a theology of creation, an issue of biblical proportions for them. This may sound ludicrous to some modern Christians. If it does sound ludicrous then we are at a point of departure between modern and postmodern Christianity, and I suspect future generations of Christians will look back and consider those modern Christians to be the ludicrous ones.  Postmoderns do not walk around with the primary view of Christian faith being getting me to heaven when I die. The world around them, the Creation here and now, figure large. In fact, if push comes to theological shove, some modern Christians may want to call ‘hippie tree-hugger’ but the postmodern Christian will respond that they are embracing a Hebraic biblical worldview while the modern Christian is a dualistic Gnostic, denying this world and focused on blasting off to a purely spiritual one, implicitly denying resurrection.

Some may not believe modern evangelicalism has been outright anti-environment. It may be that the impression comes from particular political positions evangelicals have been known for. However, pop modern evangelical theology has factored in: an inventor friend of mine, when asked about the environmental safety of his invention, actually said “well, it’s all gonna burn, so who cares?”

When postmodern Christians hear evangelical leaders decry this concern for Creation and the environment it sounds to their ears suspiciously like a Republican defense of big business or Left Behind theology or both. While it is true that this environmental concern is a reflection of societal awakenings that began in the early 1900s with individuals like outdoorsman/ nature lover President Teddy Roosevelt and his crowd, what the postmodern Christians have done is take that concern for the environment and look into the Bible and come to realize “hey! this is part of our mandate!” So while movements in the broader culture may well have sparked the most recent Christian look at the issue, what’s been discovered is that our Scriptures indeed have a direction for us on this subject, and our history has many resources as well.

Bloggers and other de-criers of the Emergent boogeyman hear postmodern Christians speaking about their profound concern over creation and their deep interest in being good stewards of the world God made, and accuse them of being New Age Earth Mother worshippers.  In reality, this is the ‘greening of the evangelical conscience’. It isn’t going away. And it’s in line with a biblical theology of creation. A creation God cares about, evidenced in his discussion of birds, mammals and plant life throughout the Scriptures, especially the Wisdom literature. So: good.

 

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Emergent church book titles that sum it up

The “Emergent” conversation within (mostly Western) Christianity has believed for quite some time that we are in the midst of a massive rethink, the coming of an end to one era in Christian thought and practice, and the beginning of another (which has happened several times before of course). This often makes some people who are deeply invested in the current institutions and doctrinal systems of modern Christianity very apprehensive, and even calls down accusations of heresy. But this was the case each time one historic era of Christianity died and a new one was birthed. Look at the titles of these books. Do they give you a feel or sense or idea of some of emerging Christianity’s themes?   These are by no means the only excellent books on the subject out there, but these have titles that are indicative:

 

Signs of Emergence: A Vision for Church That Is Organic/ Networked/ Decentralized/ Bottom-Up/ Communal/ Flexible {Always Evolving} (Kester Brewin, Baker, 2007)

Post-Modern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21st Century World (Leonard Sweet, B&H, 2000)

A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey (Brian McLaren, Josey-Bass, 2001)

The Search to Belong: Rethinking intimacy, community, and small groups (Joseph Myers, Zondervan,  2003)

Jesus Brand Spirituality: He wants His religion back (Ken Wilson, Thomas Nelson, 2008)

The Radical Reformission: reaching out without selling out (Mark Driscoll, Zondervan, 2004)

Church Re-Imagined: The Spiritual Formation of People in Communities of Faith (Doug Pagitt and the Solomon’s Porch Community, Zondervan, 2003)

The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity (Carl Raschke, Baker Academic, 2004)

Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A manifesto for the church in exile (Rob Bell and Don Golden, Zondervan, 2008)

Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations about God, Community, and Culture (Spencer Burke, Zondervan, 2003)

The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Dan Kimball, Zondervan, 2003)

and last but not least, and getting the award for longest subtitle, of course:

A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/Calvinist + anabaptist/Anglican + Methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN (Brian McLaren, Zondervan, 2004)

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Orthopraxy over Orthodoxy

For those of you still trying to sort out the “Emergent Church” or “Postmodern Christians,” here’s a piece I wrote a couple years ago:

        A nearly universal commonality “Emergent/postmodern” congregations share is that the Gospel is more lived by the life than believed in the head. Emergents believe that living the way of Jesus is better than having all kinds of accurate doctrines about him stuffed in your brain. They value the accurate living of a Jesus-formed life a greater good than accurate parsing of sectarian doctrine. Postmodern Christians feel that an over-emphasis on doctrine (and proving my church is right – not yours) took up too much of the modern’s church’s time in the twentieth century – at the cost of teaching people to actually live out the way of Jesus.

 “…believing that healthy theology cannot be separated from healthy spirituality” is a characteristic thought from EmergentVillage’s website.

Perhaps Dean Blevins sums this up well:

“Modern churches embrace a set of propositional statements (e.g., articles of faith, a confession, or a creed) that serves as the main gateway into the church. One must “believe” before “becoming” and “behaving” as a Christian.  Emerging churches seem more interested in Christian community and daily living as the beginning point. These churches do not oppose theological or biblical guidance. Often these churches openly discuss core Christian convictions… and engage in open theological reflection. However, established doctrines do not define them as much as Christian living does. ….Emerging church practice seems to model the message, ‘Religion is not what you say you are, but how you live your life.’  “ (Dean Blevins, Postmodern and Wesleyan,103).

In A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren contends that orthopraxy is the POINT of orthodoxy. (Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 31)

This might be a good place to draw attention to a distinct emphasis in postmodern, emerging Christianity: an emphasis on the teachings of Jesus rather than doctrines about Jesus. Modern Christianity, born in the fires and debates of the Protestant Reformation and the scientific revolution, focused a lot of energy in getting the right answers nailed down, science style, to every doctrinal issue they thought might pertain to individual salvation. In the modern framework, since everything is built in a logical framework like a scientific experiment, you have to get all the doctrines correct or the whole contraption starts leaning over, eventually falling down.

Postmoderns, leery of claiming to perfectly understand overly much, replace Correct Understanding with Correct Relationship as the key issue. This is blisteringly upsetting to some evangelicals, who demand a list of correct doctrines before they will admit you are among the saved.

Nevertheless, postmoderns do not believe a mistaken point of theology is going to keep people out of salvation. That is because they believe that it’s not the accurate answers on a theology exam that saves, it’s Jesus. Therefore you will find a strong emphasis on the living of the Christian faith, rather than whether you have all the right doctrinal points nailed down.

I’ve already stated that trying to argue your denomination’s historical theological distinctives to postmoderns  is most likely going to fall on deaf ears. They’d rather serve in a soup kitchen or talk with their heroine-addicted neighbor than sit and argue with another Christian. They wonder: If you believe all the ‘right things’ (according to your church, of course) but aren’t doing anyone any good, aren’t you missing the point?

Postmodern/emerging/Emergent Christians also wonder: can a community so focus on maintaining its orthodoxy that it stops reflecting the character of God? Can love, justice, mercy and humility get left behind somewhere in the iron-grip of maintaining a theological grip on something? This seems to be just what the Pharisees did.

 

 

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Why SOME older, Modern Christians are encouraged by Postmodernism or ‘Why Postmodernism is a good culture for the church to evangelize in’

  Quite a few Christian leaders are actually encouraged, seeing the postmodern world as one where Christianity will fit in much better than it did in the modern, rationalistic, science-as-god worldview. No one needs to prove that the dominant modern secular worldview was utterly skeptical of ‘spiritual experiences,’ or ‘religion’ for that matter. While spirituality fell out of vogue in the modern world, except as sort of an upscale hobby for people into that sort of thing, the postmodern world is unapologetically spiritual. Have you noticed? Name a type of spirituality  and it’s probably growing.

My favorite summary of why postmodernism could be a good thing for Christianity comes from Baptist Reggie McNeal in his book The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. If I can sum up his description, drawing from some of his colorful turns of phrase, it is this:  ‘God took a beating in the modern world’, relegated more and more  to the edges of the universe. Church leadership migrated from being about otherworldy insight and spiritual rites to being a scholar of antiquities and eventually a CEO with organizational science being the chief qualifications. Science and technology increasingly  shifted the modern practice of Christian faith to focus around head-knowledge. As a result ‘the North American church is largely on a head trip’. ‘We have a rational faith. The test for orthodoxy typically focuses on doctrinal stances, not character and spiritual connectedness to God and others.’ Consequently, most modern discipleship is heavily unbalanced: revolving around acquiring facts rather than following Jesus.

Just about the time the (evangelical, in this case) church had thoroughly imbibed everything modern, the culture went looking for God. We scrubbed sanctuaries of religious symbolism while the culture started searching for sacred space. About the time we adopted business models the culture is searching for spiritual communities. After we erased the mysticism that was at the heart of most of Christian history for a head-oriented fact finding mission, the culture rediscovered the deep human thirst for spirituality. And so, McNeal contends, much of the modern church is less spiritual than the culture around it! We need to get back out in the culture, he says, because room for God is growing in, (and increasingly even central to), the postmodern worldview. We no longer have to argue that there might be value to spiritual life. Postmoderns already get that.

One of the laments of the church in the modern world was that people were obsessed with materialism and consumerism and not interested in matters of the spirit. But in postmodern culture we find a renewed desire for meaning and purpose beyond materialism and consumerism. Methodist Robber Webber saw these shifts as well suited to Christianity and welcomed the responses emerging from the church (see his books The Younger Evangelicals and Ancient-Future Faith).

So some older evangelicals are heartened that the ancient Christian faith finds itself once more in a cultural milieu where it thrives: surrounded by other gods and competing faith claims, Christian spirituality can point people already interested in ‘spirit’ to the one who made their spirits:  Jesus.

New Testament Scholar NT Wright has said it like this:

“We Western Christians mostly bought a bit  too heavily into modernism, and we are shocked to discover that it has been dying for a while… the answer to the challenge of postmodernity is not to run back tearfully into the arms of modernism. It is to hear in postmodernity God’s judgment on the follies and failings, the sheer selfish arrogance, of modernity and to look and pray and work for …  Christian mission in the postmodern world… and enabling our world to turn the corner in the right direction.” (NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 168).

In the postmodern worldview which deconstructed, and no longer buys into, the meta-narratives modernism had sold, Wright (one of e/E/p folk’s favorite theologians) calls us to living out the true metanarrative of Scripture’s story of God, Israel, Jesus and the world.

Part of the point of postmodernity under the strange providence of God is to preach the Fall to arrogant modernity. What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed…. And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear, and suspicion. (NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 183-184).

Many Christians believe the cultural milieu of postmodernity is fertile ground for people to hear the gospel – more fertile, in fact, than the modern era was.  Which brings us to the subject of what street-level postmodernism is NOT.

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Theological assumptions of the Emergent church’s critics

Here’s a selection from my book-length treatment of the Emerging church: 

One day in 2010 I sat at my computer perplexed. What, exactly, I wondered, is behind all this vitriol against the emergent church?  Who, exactly, are the critics, and what are their theological assumptions?  So I started backtracking references and links on the websites out there who were against “the emerging church.”

What I found, if I understood them correctly, was that the emerging/emergent church’s critics fell into the following categories:

– hard core 5 point Calvinists – I don’t mean Calvinists who see themselves as one of the branches of the Christian family tree; I mean those who believe that if you don’t ascribe to the 5 TULIP points, you are dangerously deluded, and/or (some of them will say) aren’t actually a Christian at all. I am talking about Calvinists who don’t believe there IS any other legitimate form of Christian faith.

– 6 Day Creationists – I don’t mean the folks who simply believe Genesis 1 should be interpreted to mean 6 literal, 24-hour days; I mean folks who think that if you don’t think that, you also are not allowed to believe in Jesus, and you can’t be a Christian

– hard core anti-Catholics – these are folks who believe that Catholics are not Christians, and any appreciation for any Catholic practice or thought,  interaction with Catholics, or use of any practice pre-dating the Reformation is unchristian. Quoting a contemporary Catholic gets you ejected from the game. Quoting any Christian thinker before the Reformation is very questionable.

 -anti-mystics – to these folks, the use of any spiritual discipline, or practice such as meditation (Genesis 24:63 , Psalm 1:2),  contemplative prayer, lectio divina, the Quaker Richard Foster’s writings, … anything that sounds ‘mystical’ is Eastern spirituality/New Age shamanism and demonic.   Quoting an Eastern Orthodox Christian is probably not going to fly- they aren’t Protestant and they are mystical. Quoting a monastic from Christian history or renting a monastery for your youth groups’ retreat would mean you are  not really a Christian.  These folks  somehow fail to  see that Christianity is an eastern religion, and the bible calls us to meditate in many places. Somehow the mystical nature of  baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the presence of the Holy Spirit do not occur to them. They somehow imagine Christianity to be some unmystical, modern rational thought system.

-hard core fundamentalists – theologically and culturally: the kind who believe only fundamentalists are Christians: the King James Version is the only legitimate Scripture translation, contemporary music is bad, Karl Barth and neo-orthodoxy was a bad thing, C.S. Lewis was not a Christian, Billy Graham is out or at least questionable, discussions such as Could any form of evolution be part of God’s design, discussions of what Scripture means by hell other than a literal endless burning, the possibility of some sort of a wideness in God’s mercy for those who never heard of Christ – all these and more get you put outside the camp, as a non-believer.

These are the 5 categories of people I found who are against “the emerging church.” If you are not in one of these categories, it may turn out that postmodernism and the emergent Christians are not nearly as heretical as you’ve been told.

 I am not saying that there are no legitimate critiques of emerging churches, postmodernism or Emergent Village (as a matter of fact, there is plenty of dialogue and critique from within).  Every branch of the Christian family tree has it’s stuff that needs straightened out, including my own, of course. However, it is my contention that the outlandish accusations and claims made by many websites fail the test of Christian kindness and simply do not paint an accurate picture of emerging, postmodern Christianity. 

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Broad Assumptions of Postmodern Christianity

   A few years ago it become apparent to me that “postmodernism” and “the Emergent church” were getting some pretty loud, bad raps among evangelicals. Since I hadn’t seen much to be unhappy about from a Wesleyan perspective, I spent a month-long sabbatical and the following year reading 50 of the primary books written by emergent authors, and then writing my own book-length summary and analysis. I called it “40 Good things About Emerging, Postmodern Christian Faith.”  The publisher who had encouraged me to write the book and I came to a disagreement regarding the publishing details, so it never saw the light of day. Here’s a spot where I list some characteristics widely common to postmodern Christianity.

 

Postmodern Christians hold these truths to be self-evident:

 That the church in the modern era, while it accomplished many wonderful things, has gradually become less and less effective at drawing people in our changing culture to life-changing experiences with Jesus.

That the modern scientific worldview focused the church’s approach to spiritual life to the mental side, learning data and doctrines, to the neglect of other aspects. That our culture’s hunger for spirituality and connectedness to the Divine is not being effectively met by a head-oriented, institutionalized Christianity that spends far too much of its energy, time and money on internal (inside the church walls) maintenance ministry, to the neglect of the world around us.

That something new is required to meet the call of introducing people in our culture to Jesus. That modern Christianity’s assumptions, theology  and worldview are just as intertwined with the modern worldview as the medieval church’s assumptions, theology and worldview were intertwined with medieval culture, and new strides in theology and practice will be required to answer the questions of this new culture. In worst-case scenarios modern churches have even become monuments to upper-middle class values, rather than radical, subversive-of-this-world-order communities following Jesus.

That the message of Jesus (and the Bible!) is about more than getting my soul to heaven.

That God is interested in all of me (body, soul, mind, relationships) and all of His Creation (Col. 1:22,

That far too much of the evangelical church has hidden in its own subculture bubble, Christian ghetto, ‘hunkered in the bunker’,  for far too long, and Christians need to be in our communities, in our culture (not withdrawn from it), engaging, loving, interacting, dialoguing with the people all around us.

That conservative Republican politics are not the equivalent of the message of Jesus.

That no one church (Baptist, Methodist, Assembly of God, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Nazarene, Amish, Russian Orthodox, Presbyterian, etc etc etc) from any particular era (55 AD, 300s, 600s, 1500s, nor 1950) captures the whole fullness of the Christian faith; that only via the center common to all these iterations of Christian spirituality, enriched by the insights from each of them, do we find the full stature and beauty, value and essence of the Christian faith. That is, your denomination is not the only way to be faithful to Jesus.

That the postmodern world is not primarily wondering if Christianity is true, nor if it works, but is it good at all? It is this last question, along with ones of beauty, redemption, justice, community and wholeness, that the followers of Jesus need to be living a visible answer to.

 

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Building Bridges between modern and postmodern Christians

A few years ago it become apparent to me “postmodernism” and “the Emergent church” were getting some pretty loud, bad raps among evangelicals. Since I hadn’t seen much to be unhappy about from a Wesleyan perspective, I spent a month-long sabbatical and the following year reading 50 of the primary books written by emergent authors, and then writing my own book-length summary and analysis. I called it “40 Good things About Emerging, Postmodern Christian Faith.”  The publisher who had encouraged me to write the book and I came to a disagreement regarding the publishing details, so it never saw the light of day. Here’s a chapter One (the chapters are SHORT): 

Bridges aren’t something I usually spend much time thinking about, until there isn’t one.

I am interested in building bridges between the postmodern emerging/emergent churches and Christians and the modern Christians and churches. It makes sense to work together, learn from one another and partner, since we are all trying to spread the message and way of Jesus in the world. Friendship is a posture in which fruitful discussions can take place. Standing at a distance and calling out ‘heresy’ over microphones or in print is not an effective way to discuss theology with someone.

Have you ever noticed that virtually every time in the history of the Christian faith that a new expression, movement, or kind of church is born, the established church(es) attempt to abort it while it is birthing? Almost every denomination I can think of  has experienced attempted infanticide by the established church while it was being born. Chances are high that this is the experience your denomination had when it started. It seems that we don’t learn from history very well. Once again, here is a new expression of Christian faith and established churches (specifically, their leaders) are working hard to crush it out of existence before it can really get going.

We might do well to ask ourselves, what does the widespread appeal of titles like A New Kind of Christian mean?  Some rush to say the appeal is that people today don’t want to hear the good, old, hard truth of the Gospel. While there are certainly people to whom that would apply to, let’s ask ourselves: is it possible there is something else going on? Is it possible that the modern church and modern Christianity we have handed our children isn’t quite as satisfying as we think it is? Is it possible that the modern form of the Christian faith isn’t all we’ve cracked it up to be to someone who isn’t living with a modern mindset?  Are people today longing for an experience of the Gospel that we haven’t handed them?

Have you ever noticed that churches largely fixate on things that were issues when they were founded, even if those issues are hundreds of years ago? A character in Brian McLaren’s novel A New Kind of Christian says at one point “…most Protestant seminaries fight with vigor the battles of yesterday, largely oblivious to the issues of today, hardly thinking of the issues of tomorrow. They still preoccupy themselves with fighting the Protestant Reformation and the liberal-fundamentalist debates.” (McLaren, A New Kind of Christian, 145).

When evaluating the postmodern/emergent/emerging expressions of Christianity, I   believe a better question than “do they believe what my denomination believes?”   is this three-part question:

1)      Are people coming to faith/ coming to believe that Jesus is the Savior and Son of God and are they  repenting?

2)      are people being Christ-shaped more and more into the kind of person they are called to be by God,  and

3)       are people inspired to be the kind of people that God uses to bring about his redeeming, reconciling, restorative grace in the world?

I think the answer to all three of  these questions is yes. Drawing from their written testimonies and conversations with postmodern Christians,  I see this occurring in postmodern Christianity at least to the degree that it is occurring in our modern churches. If modern churches are not doing better than postmodern churches in ratio of people being conformed to the image and mission of Jesus, then how much room do we have to critique them? And, I would contend that the ‘yes’ to these questions is occurring among postmodern people far more in postmodern churches than it is in modern churches.

Dan Kimball, a conservative voice in the emerging movement, says this: “Hudson Taylor, a missionary to China in the late 1800’s, had problems explaining to his board in England why he wanted to ministry differently than the “English way.” He wanted to change everything, from his haircut and clothing to how he spent his time to his approach to missionary work.  But his board did not understand or approve of the changes. Eventually, he had to start his own missionary board. Hudson Taylor understood that he was engaging in ministry to a different culture and mindset, and God used him in incredible ways. I believe we must view the emerging culture in the same ways, taking whatever costly steps are necessary to build the emerging church.” (Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church, 65)