By: James Sherk

28 March 2005 Reinventing the Church?: Today's Church can embrace postmodern suggestions without abandoning the truth of God's Word.

The postmodern movement has advanced through academia, society, and now, increasingly, is making its presence felt inside the Church. Some, like Brian McLaren, author of "The Church on the Other Side", welcome and embrace this development, and believe that the Church needs to be radically reinvented to continue to function in a new, postmodern era. Is he right?

The hallmark of the postmodern worldview is the belief that individuals, fundamentally, cannot know the truth. A postmodernist holds that the concept of absolute truth lacks meaning because no individual can grasp that truth in all its complexity. Postmodern Christians extend this uncertainty to religious truth. To the postmodern, every Christian's message of faith remains out of sync with God's vision. McLaren states his belief that "Christianity is true, but I do not believe that my version (or yours, for that matter) is completely true" (1). From this disbelief in anyone's ability to know anything with certainty stems an impetus to radically rethink and reinvent the Church.

However, Christians should have difficulty reconciling this skepticism with the notion of God's revealed word. A sinful, fallen, and depraved man undoubtedly has great difficulty grasping truth, but God has the ability to make His truth clear to our sin filled hearts. The fact that the Bible gives us an imprecise vision of heaven, or that we have difficulty wrapping our minds around the concept of the Trinity, does not mean that all religious truths are open to interpretation. God would have his servants give to the needy, honor their parents, love their neighbors, and shun sexual immorality. God is loving. He is merciful. Sin and Hell are real. God sent His son Jesus to die for our sins. "There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (2). These facts are true, and no context they are placed in changes their meaning. McLaren and other postmodernists fall into the trap of believing that uncertainty extends, to some degree, to all areas of faith. For the Christian, it cannot. Our minds may be fallible, but the Word of God is not.

This flawed assumption does not, however, mean that all the postmodern movement's criticisms of the contemporary church are off base. Starting with the assumption that the church needs to be radically overhauled, postmodernists take a critical look at the existing church - and discover many ways that it can be improved. Churches throughout America can and should consider the applicability of these suggestions without embracing the unsound theology of the postmodern movement.

McLaren, for instance, has important insights about the importance of the adaptability of a church's structure to the changing needs of the congregation (3). The responsibilities of a pastor and those in church leadership differ greatly between congregations of 40, 400, and 4,000 members. Smaller churches usually need staff that can handle many areas of the church's ministry, such as education, music, and outreach programs. Larger churches usually desire staff with fewer general skills, but who excel in their area of responsibility. The governing board of a new church often consists of unpaid pastors and volunteer administrators. Larger congregations often find that they require a board that provides more strategic planning, budgeting, and organizational management, closer in spirit to the boards that govern non-profit organizations. Driven by the conviction that the church must frequently change and adapt, postmodernists correctly argue that as a church grows, it needs to be willing and able to change it's structure, and if necessary, personnel, to meet its changing needs. A church's organizational structure is merely the framework used to spread the gospel, not the gospel itself. When necessary, congregations should freely modify it their structure so it most effectively spreads God's Word.

Postmodernists also highlight an important problem when they argue that modern Christians need to live out their faith in works and not just words. Convinced that no one can live in complete harmony with God's vision of the Christian faith, they observe that even those who claim to know the truth rarely live it. Brian McLaren writes that Christians "deserve to be trampled when we claim a faith of such power and show so little of it in our lives" (4). The fact that Christians still stumble and fall does not invalidate the truth of the gospel, indeed scripture warns us that no one on this earth has any claim to perfection, for "there is none righteous, not even one … for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (5). Yet as Christians, we have an obligation to flee sin and live by the spirit, and the postmodernists are right when they say the Church must do better. Prominent televangelists preach the gospel on Sunday mornings but do not live it the rest of the week, and they are not alone. Study after study shows that even church going Christians engage in pre-marital sex and divorce at rates virtually identical to, if not greater than, their non-believing peers. Government programs have replaced Christian charity as the safety net upon which the poor depend. Christ's Church can and must do better than this. The behavior of far too many Christians harms their relationship with the Lord and greatly weakens the effectiveness of their witness to nonbelievers. God has called us to abandon sin and walk in the light, and postmodernists do the Church a favor when they point out its shortcomings and admonish it to do better.

McLaren also argues that many churches' current mission practices do not accomplish their goals and require an overhaul (6). He has several good points. Often churches send off missionaries with no clear-cut goals to accomplish, and so despite impressive starts they wind up not leaving a lasting mark in the communities they witness too. Churches can and should overhaul their mission efforts so that both the missionaries and the congregation have clearly established goals, with progress markers and accountability for achieving them. If the missionaries do not progress towards these goals, the congregation should consider redirecting their efforts to an area where they can accomplish more. The objective of a mission trip is not for foreigners to continually spread the gospel in distant lands, but to plant a church in non-believing communities that then serves as a light in the darkness. Ultimately, missions should become self-sustaining with a set end date where the local church can take over, and the church and missionaries time and resources and be utilized elsewhere.

Post-modernity is not a force of nature, or a fact of life for the church to adjust to. It is simply a philosophy of how to view yourself, and your place in the world, and it is a philosophy that Christians ought to reject. Yet despite their flawed epistemological premises, postmodern Christians have some valid insights into the shortcomings of the contemporary church, and congregations across America should consider their suggestions about how to spread Christ's gospel more effectively.

(1) "The Church on the Other Side," Brian McLaren, Zondervan Press, © 2000 pg 172.
(2) Acts 4:12, NIV.
(3) "The Church on the Other Side," Brian McLaren, Zondervan Press, © 2000 pgs 95-107.
(4) "The Church on the Other Side," Brian McLaren, Zondervan Press, © 2000 pg 31.
(5) Romans 3: 10, 23 (NASB)
(6) "The Church on the Other Side," Brian McLaren, Zondervan Press, © 2000 pgs 121-43.