Church in a Postmodern Culture

A lot of people are becoming concerned that many churches are yielding too much to our contemporary culture. Their concern, I think, is that when we combine the church with culture, the gospel becomes watered down or ineffective. I heard an interesting response to this dilemma from a guy named Doug Pagitt the other day.

He impishly agreed with the fear. In fact, he imagined a world in which the church took on the power systems of corporate America so that pastors were required to wear power suits and ties.

Or if we adopted the teaching philosophy of the 16th century, where people stood behind elevated lecterns to deliver their teaching.

Or what if we took on the view that there is 1 person who “knows,” and the masses that don’t and so you lined people up in rows so that they sat still and quiet while the “knowledgeable” person could impart their wisdom to the masses.

Or what if we took on a medieval European understanding of the world so that we built our churches to look like cathedrals?

The point is that the church has always taken on aspects of the culture it’s been a part of, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We can repaint the Christian faith and make it relevant to a postmodern generation without sacrificing the Gospel. In fact, I might argue that we MUST make Jesus’ message relevant to them – it is our responsibility.

So instead of fighting to keep them separate, maybe it’s time to begin looking at what Christianity can add to Postmodernism and what it can add to us. Regarding the latter sentiment, I think it can give us a whole new picture of what faith looks like (flexible, dynamic, changing, ebbs and flows). I think it can reintroduce art back into the church. It can help us understand our own cultural presuppositions and biases which prevent us from looking at Jesus through another lens. I think it can open our minds and hearts to a God who is too big for any box we attempt to contain him in (and be ok with that).