A friend sent me this email: Dear Gordon Recently, the term Postmodernity has come to my notice as something of importance

in the church and society today. Traditional concepts of truth and belief are discarded in favour of freedom, freedom to devote ourselves to any values we please. Postmodernity seems to lead to a brea down of society, where truth is decided by the individual. !f we claim to hold ultimate truth in "hrist, we are perceived as na#ve, stupid or arrogant. $rom my e%perience, this leads to a lac of commitment among many people, manifesting itself in the wor place, in church, and in families and marriage. The freedom to do my own thing, to be my own person, irrespective of the conse&uences, seems to be ta ing root deep within our society and our churches. 'ould you be able to ta e a loo at the issues please and ma e some suggestions of how we can ma e the Gospel and church of significance to a Postmodern generation. (ours sincerely, Ric $o%ley, District )anager, The *eprosy )ission +ew ,ealand

Dear Ric 'hen you drive through "anterbury you cross a number of fast-flowing, braided rivers rushing to the sea. !f you stop at a vantage point on the river-ban and glance up or down the river, youll see that one or two streams within the river-bed may carry most of the water, supported by a number of smaller streams. .ut the main streams are always changing as smaller ones brea off and others /oin them as the river flows to the sea. 'estern civilisation is li e those rivers. Till recently modernity, with its emphasis on reason and logic, has dominated the 'est 0 and has done for over 122 years. .ut since the 32s and 42s another strongly-flowing stream 5i.e. emphasis6 has appeared, called postmodernism, and unli e the "anterbury rivers we dont yet now where this stream will finally lead. .ut a glance at our recent family stories shows the influence of modernism and postmodernism again and again. 7 friend who is a researcher analysed his recent family history and found his parents generation stayed involved in their church streams throughout their lives. .ut none of his eight cousins, who were brought up in their mainline denomination, and married members of other mainline denominations, have been involved in church since their student days. 8f the 92 cousins who were brought up in conservative evangelical churches 5many of whom married outside that stream6 only three have remained involved in church since young adulthood. The drop-out rate in the 32s and early 42s in his family was :;<. Percentages vary from family to family but from the 9=32s on, the drop-out rate in the +, "hurch has been enormous. !n particular, by9=32 changes were appearing in the way many 'estern people thought about faith and life 0 changes we call >postmodernism?. .ut to get a better feel for the sub/ect we as some basic &uestions.

1. What is Postmodernism? 8ne friend says that defining postmodernism is li e bottling fog, or nailing /elly 0 its so difficult to pin down. .ut at the end of the day postmodernism is a different way of seeing life and faith 0 although some see postmodernism as simply modernity e%tended to a new level. @o to ta e our first friends familyA his parents generation all stayed active in the institutional church because they believed in the things this church stood for. .ut all his >mainline? cousins abandoned the institutional church because they felt it didnt have anything to offer them for the lives they wanted to live. !t was a similar story with the 92 cousins from the evangelical stream of the church 0 most also wal ed away from the beliefs and practices of their parents, adopting other views of life. .ut wal ing away from the institutional church didnt necessarily mean they all stopped being >religious?A many people who left the church from the 32s on, stayed religious, and some even stayed strongly >"hristian?. They /ust went about their religion in different ways. Postmodernity, then, is a different way of seeing life. To a casual observer, modernism says there is such a thing as ob/ective truth, that if you analyse the world youll discover truth, and that nowledge is good and will lead to a better society. 8n the other hand, postmodernity

seems to say that truth is sub/ective, that you create your own truth because there are many truths, and that nowledge is only good or bad according to its result. @o modernism and postmodernism are different ways of seeing faith and life 0 although the differences are sometimes more apparent than real because some postmodern emphases may /ust be modernity ta en to a new level.

2. How Does Postmodernism Affect Us? Postmodernism affects us in different ways 0 although its often most obvious in younger 5Gen-B6 people. .ut it affects us in ways li e these - which often overlap one another. 9. @ince the 32s, theres been a growing trend towards individualism 5which can sometimes be very altruistic6 and waning support for the church 0 illustrated in the huge e%odus from the mainline churches in the 32s, 42s and :2s. @ome who left the mainline churches went to other churches, but far more left the church altogether, never to return 0 li e the friends story above. .ut those who left didnt necessarily turn their bac s on >religion? itself. They /ust believed they no longer needed the church to sustain their faith or even to be good "hristians. @o the first mar of postmodernism is the increasing distinction people ma e between their own interest in spiritual things, spirituality, and the organised religion they associate with the church. 1. @ince the 32s, people have been moving away from supporting public institutions, to a more private view of life. @o whereas the church once had &uite a dominant and unifying role in society, its now become /ust one of many unconnected institutions which each have their own beliefs and values. 7s a result people tend to eep their own personal views about faith and life to themselves 0 removing religion from the public arena. 'hen ! started ministry in the 32s, non-attenders felt obliged to support the church because they owed it to the churchA now people only support the church if it helps them in their private lives. !n todays society people live their lives less in public and more in private. ;. @ince the 32s, society has been moving away from one general world view to many different world views 0 as people from all over the world move into our towns and cities, changing some beyond recognition. @o when ! started ministry we lived in communities where most people had similar beliefs and values even though people went to different churches. 'hen we moved to our present home 93 years ago, all the people around us were Curopean Pa eha li e usA and the community of several thousand was itself li e us, with most people sharing similar values. Today were surrounded by people from other parts of the world who spea different languages, have different views about God, follow different customs and live by different values. 8ur once uniform community, where communication was easy, has become a collection of micro communities where we may not even be able to communicate with one another at all. D. @ince the 32s, and especially recently, people have been searching for some ind of common ground that will enable us all to live together in harmony 0 despite our different cultures, lifestyles and beliefs, and different ideas about truth and falsehood and right and wrong. !n this new situation there are problems when one group claims that it is right and others are wrong. @o tolerance becomes the glue that holds the different groups together, and in this new society many "hristians have to rethin how to share their faith in such a diverse world. The old approach of saying, >The .ible says,? no longer wor s with many people. E. @ince the 32s, people have been moving away from commitment to churches - and from clubs and other once highly-valued institutions of society. 7s weve noted, this showed up first in the tumbling church attendances of the 32s and 42s. .ut the trend hit other institutions, and the waning support for service clubs and volunteer groups has become more noticeable in recent years. 'e still need institutions in societyA but increasingly we feel that those institutions should serve us rather than us serving the institutions. 'e see this at the church level as denominations move away more and more from centralised authority structures to structures that help churches >do? mission in their communites.

3. Evangelism Harder !ow" #r Easier? .ut how have these massive changes in society affected our mission to unchurched +ew ,ealanders - is it harder now, easier, or whatF 'ell, our tas has certainly changedA but in many ways it has actually become easier 0 and again, the different trends overlap one another. 9. @ince the 32s, people have become more and more interested in >spirituality? so that it has now become one of the catchwords of our time. !n this new environment we can tal &uite openly about life and faith in our newspapers, boo s and magaGines, on radio and TH, in advertising, and in wor place training and conversation. 8nce, if we wanted to tal about these things, we had to pic our way through a minefield of modernist hostilityA now we can tal about them &uite easily because of the new openness to spiritual things. 1. Iowever, being interested in spiritual things is not the same as being a traditionally >religious? person. .efore the 32s and 42s, peoples interest in spiritual things was wor ed out through the local churchA today their interest may not have any connection with the church at all. .ut because people are on a /ourney of discovery they may be very open to e%ploring the ne%t stage of their /ourney in a small group or church service where these things are tal ed about. 7gain, the e&uation has changed since the 32s and 42s.

;. The new interest in spiritual things is more sub/ective than ob/ective 0 more about peoples inner world than accepted standards of right or wrong. @o people are now more prepared to try out a range of different answers for personal problems 0 be they problems with their health, wor , physical fitness, and so on. This new openness to solutions means we can also invite people to pray about their life concerns and turn them towards God as the creator, redeemer and sustainer of their lives. !ts the line Paul too in 7c 94.14b, when he said that God is >not far from each one of us? 5which is /ust what many people are waiting to hearJ6. .ut its a very different approach from Peters with the devout Kews of 7cts 1. D. Peoples interest in spiritual things now tends to have more to do with their feelings than any interest they may have in great spiritual ideas 5although, as well see later, many others are still interested in the great &uestions modernity has raised for generations6. @o people may be very interested in e%ploring the things that trouble them in the inner world of the heart, but they may not be so interested in developing beliefs for their mind. This again impacts on the way we do mission. !n the new, more postmodern environment, sharing our own e%perience of God may be more effective than trying to convince people they ought to believe in God, Kesus or the .ible.

E. The drive to discover meaning, and to taste the transcendence of @omething beyond ourselves, is /ust an outwor ing of the way God has made us 5Ccc ;.996 - so were really winners before we even start sharing our faith. Carly in their search for God and meaning people may do biGarre thingsA but theyve been created for God, as weve been, and theyll be restless till they find their rest in him. Thats a great climate to share our faith inJ Iowever, we do need to be very sensitive in the early stages of developing a faith-sharing relationship with people 0 because its all a bit more delicate than years ago. @ome with modernist leanings, who also have postmodern tolerance, may actually thin were wrong about God and Kesus 0 even though they agree weve a right to believe what we do. .ut if were wise and humble and ta e our time to build trust and openness, some of them will come to trust Kesus as their @aviour and *ord. !n the new spiritual climate we dont give away our truth claims about God, Kesus, and the .ible. 'e /ust go about sharing them in a different way because the starting point of many people were wor ing with has changed from D2 years ago. 'ell consider how all this affects our church-based evangelism in more detail in the ne%t section.

$. How %hen &hall We 'row (h)rches? (ouve also as ed how we can ma e >church? meaningful to a postmodern generation, and it comes to thisL you must start with the people you already have 0 most of whom will probably have a modernist bac ground.

@tage 8ne is to bring your present people up to speed with the mission challenge were facing. @tage Two is to ma e any needed changes to the way we do church so were more effective in mission. 'e should ma e these changes 0 which often overlap one another. 9. To be effective in mission we should move our congregations from maintenance to mission. 8ur present way of doing church goes bac to "onstantines conversion in the fourth century 0 when the church became a ind of >religious department of the Roman Cmpire?. @o weve thought of mission as being especially about what we do overseas, while our tas here is to eep the church running well and support those doing mission overseas. .ut all thats changed in the last D2 years. 'ith the catastrophic decline of the mainline churches and a whole generation growing up outside the church, were now a mission field needing evangelising. 8nly >mission? churches can do that. .rian 'inslade, the .aptist +ational *eader 5from 'indsor Par .aptist6, says, >The tas of growing the church through conversion of unbelievers is our core business. 'here it is not happening, the church is rebellious and dysfunctional? 5+, .aptist $ebruary 12216. The biggest challenge we face today is to put our ailing churches on a mission footing. 1. To be effective in mission we should move from seeing our churches as collections of individuals to seeing them as relational communities. 7 good first move has been encouraging people to /oin small groups so they are part of small caring communities. .ut many will not or cannot /oin a small group, while others from a postmodern bac ground may be loo ing for more than scheduled small group time every wee or two. 'hat younger people especially are loo ing for, is sharing all of life together 0 as they did in 7c 1.D3. This is ta ing >church? a whole lot further than small groups. !ts building relational communities where mission can ta e place. ;. To be effective in mission we should move from /ust ta ing care of people to building transforming communities that change peoples lives. Till now weve tended to see mission as introducing people to Kesus so they feel better and avoid going to hell. .ut theres more to the gospel than /ust getting people >saved.? The hardest part is to get them >sanctified? 0 made personally holy 0 the discipleship &uestion discussed in ** 94;. 7s 8s Guinness says, mission is much easier in our ind of cultureA but discipleship is much, much harder. !n the postmodern world, as in the modern world, the big challenge is to ma e disciples 5)t 1:.9=-126. D. To be effective in mission we should move from a confrontational, >decide now?, evangelism - to an evangelism that builds on the >/ourney? aspect of peoples discovery of Kesus. 'hen .illy Graham was here in 9=E=, thousands responded to his invitations. )any fewer responded in 9=3= and fewer still at *eighton $ords and *uis Palaus meetings in the :2s. The methods that wor ed in the E2s no longer wor ed so well in the :2s, and wor even less today. Remembering our comments in the previous section, effective evangelism today has five features. 596 !t recognises that for most people conversion is a /ourney stretching over days and wee s and months and even years 0 as it did with Kesusown disciples. 516 !t accepts that people may initially be more concerned about how "hrist can help them with particular problems, rather than how much they learn about him 0 e%periencing "hrist before understanding much about him. 5;6 !t nows relationships are hugely important on the /ourney to faith 0 so that what happens after the service, perhaps in the church cafM, may be as important as what happens in the service. 5D6 !ts user friendly and accepting 0 recognising that when people start attending church and small groups, they may still do many things we find abhorrentA but we welcome them as they are, /ust as God welcomed us as we were. 5E6 7nd its an evangelism thats rediscovering the power of stories to inform the mind, touch the heart, and persuade the will. Restoring stories to their rightful place in evangelism doesnt mean we throw out our e%pository preaching and the other things we do in church. 'e can still do e%pository preaching but we give greater prominence to stories and testimonies and illustrations and e%amples in our messages. That is, we go bac to doing evangelism the way Kesus did it, with parables and stories - as the +!H @tudy .ible finely comments on ) D.;Da. +ote also Kesus stunning conclusion to the @ermon on the )ount in )t 4.1D-14. 'e too should >not say anything to? our hearers >without using a parable?. E. To be effective in mission we should put greater emphasis on people connecting with the transcendent 8ne that "hristians call >God? 0 because theres a new interest out there in the realm beyond our nowledge and observation. .arna found that in the @tates three-&uarters of church-attending adults dont e%perience the presence of God during worship 5** 9496, and whereas this is absolutely ine%cusable when were putting on services for "hristians, its downright absurd if were hoping to reach attenders who havent yet come to now Kesus. "huc @mith Kr says that the shallowness of our Protestant rituals in earlier decades came about because we didnt ta e them as seriously as we should. Ie suggests we need to move our rituals away from the intense light of reason, where everything has to be analysed and understood, and let our rational minds be transcended by the presence of the holy. Ies got a point. )any of our services have become so cut and dried and ritually bare, theres neither time nor opportunity to meet and feel the awesome presence of the Ioly 8ne. 'e thin that in church weve always got to be tal ing or singing or doing something, and we dont ma e time for forms and ceremonies that ma e the 'ord of God tangible and the inner wor of the @pirit visible. !nterestingly, its that section of the national church where service activity has been greatest, and ritual of least importance, thats now beginning to struggle with plateau and decline in many of its churches. Ritually bare services connect less and less with people.

*. &o What A+o)t Postmodernism? !ve been thin ing about postmodernism for a long time, but especially in recent months 0 as !ve read what the e%perts say and chec ed it against what ! see around the country. Part of our difficulty is that most of the research comes from the @tates, .ritain, or 7ustralia and there are differences, as well as similarities, between them and us. 'e do life and faith our wayJ 'e could therefore dismiss postmodernism out of hand as scholarly triviaA but that would be foolish because a profound shift in peoples thin ing has ta en place over the last few decades. 8r we could say postmodernism has so pervaded life that modernism is a spent force and we should all change all our churches and all our strategies for reaching the unchurched. .ut that too would be unwise because the issues arent that clear. These road mar ers helped me find my personal view. 9. .ill Iybels response to the postmodernist challenge. .ill says that when the discussion about postmodernism started, their staff read all the boo s 0 and even wrote some of them. .ut he feels the boo s overstate the case and that the generalisations of many authors dont fit the Nthousands ofO Gen-B people they wor with. !ve sometimes found the same thing here. 1. Kames Cmery 'hites comment that the music and worship styles of Gen-B people arent that far removed from those of younger boomers 0 and that their ministry needs grow more ali e as they get older, marry, and have children. ;. 8s Guinness comments re his marvellous recent boo for thoughtful see ers, *ong Kourney Iome 5!@.+ 9-E4:E3-D9:-16 0 that his apologetic is fle%ible enough to tal to a modernist, postmodernist, Iindu, or whoever. Ie says if we have good biblical apologetics we dont change the apologetics, we /ust adapt them to the person. D. )y own research and observation over many years. Recent graduates from 7uc land Pniversity who have tal ed about these things with many fellow students and staff, tell me modernity is alive and well on the university campus 0 more so in some departments than others. 7s one Ionours graduate put it, persistent modernity is often dressed up in postmodern dress so people seem to be postmodern on the outside at a superficial level but inside theyre still essentially modern people 0 as some of his friends are. This certainly ties in with what !ve seen around the country in the last 93 years. *i e the streams in the "anterbury rivers, modernity and postmodernity flow side by side in the river-bed of 'estern civilisation, feeding one another and brea ing off from one another 0 so theyre often found in the same person. @o postmodernism hasnt supplanted modernism 0 /ust /oined it as another option for people to choose from. Postmodernism is therefore a change of temperature, a wind shift, another way of seeing life and faith, but it shares the river-bed with persistent modernity. !n society, its not now eitherQor but bothQand 0 and the ratios differ from person to person, as they do from one university department to another. >)ission? churches rise to this new challenge, so different from the E2s, with great faith and enthusiasm.

,acing %he Postmodern (hallenge Ric, postmodernism is indeed >something of importance in the church and society today.? !t has brought enormous changes to the way many people see life and faith and commitment. .ut it also brings marvellous opportunites to reach people with the GospelA so ! hope these brief notes and Reflections help you do this. )ission is now easierA but discipleship much, much harderJ DiscussL 'hat steps should our church now ta e to reach more >postmodernish? type peopleF