"I'm glad it had a happy ending..."

Remember last summer I had a little hoo-hah with V, the proprietor of Rasputin's nightclub?

(Don't worry if you don't, Although I'm not going to link to it and open old wounds)

I went into the club last night for the first time in several months. And late in the evening V called me aside for a little chat. It seems that while Googling her club's name she found my post, and the responses. And was none too thrilled.

Which actually has led to something good.

With the benefit of hindsight, and several months of cool down, we have now made our peace; and the ladies loo is available to me as long as I ask.

Job's a good-'un.

Po-mo-ecclesiology

I received a comment with regard to a previous post which included this question:

...I will take the bait and ask: Will, would you share with us your general views and perspectives on the postmodern church?

*Cough*, ahem, a good question - and one that relates well to the Connections project, although here I will give my general $0.02 worth.

Firstly - the term "postmodern church" needs unpacking. Unlike other adjectives which speak to the nature of the church (e.g. "holy church" or "church of God"), this adjective should more properly (or perhaps firstly) be used to refer to the situation of the church (e.g. "The medieval church"). The postmodern church is the church that exists in the context of postmodernity and deliberately engages with that context.

And that's important because that engagement has two sides - parts where the church and the context are "in phase" and parts where they are "out of phase." In other words, the postmodern church is sometimes cultural and sometimes counter-cultural when it engages its postmodern context. The debates, views, and perspectives that surround the "postmodernity & church" issue in the end come back to an argument as to how the cultural/counter-cultural engagement needs to be balanced or expressed.

Let me seed my thoughts by considering some "tenets" of postmodernity which I have abridged from Millard Erickson's Postmodernizing the Faith. This is not an exhaustive or precise list.

• Knowledge/truth is subjective/experiential
• Abstract knowledge is uncertain
• All-encompassing theories are impossible and inherently evil (all “metanarratives” “totalise”)
• Better knowledge ≠ Better life
• “Progress” is rejectable: Ancient is good.
• Truth is discovered in/through relationships
• Science is questionable.

And let me launch into my thoughts by referring firstly to the issue of "knowledge and truth" - that the postmodern context asserts that knowledge and truth is subjective/experiential, and that abstract knowledge is uncertain.

The postmodern church is in-phase with this notion because the gospel has always been _more_ than just doctrine, and salvation has always (meant to have) been something different to passing an exam, or agreeing to a sequence of propositional truths. The gospel is meant to be experienced - salvation is about rebirth, regeneration, attaining the blessings of being in Christ by the grace of God the Father - these truths are not meant to be examined but met, embraced, grasped, and enjoyed with conviction, joy, trembling, thanksgiving etc. etc. etc. The postmodern church does not shy away from the experience of the gospel. In fact, it's something that the postmodern generation is crying out for. When trying to explain this to pre-postmodern people I often tell this story (link).

Of course, the church speaks counter-culturally, as well, in regard to the issue of knowledge and truth. We remain insistent that the truth we experience is not a purely subjective truth but a truth that is grounded in reality, in history - and is therefore exists outside of our agreement or disagreement with it. Someone once asked me - "Will, do you actually believe in Jesus, or just in the idea of him?" We actually believe.

Similarly the church is "out of phase" with postmodern culture when it comes to "all-encompassing theories" (or "metanarratives" in the jargon) - we do not and can not reject the all-encompassing reality of God and his work in the world.

However, the postmodern church is "in phase" when it recognises the postmodern rejection of "metanarratives" is based on a framework of assertions of power. And the church is therefore sympathetic when it recognises how the lies of this world have been used to assert the power of sin and human rebellion. Pick an "ism" and the church will at least have a critique of it - capitalism, communism, humanism etc. etc. - all are or have been used by a sinful humanity to assert a view and lend power to a few.

Many would assert that the church has been guilty of the same thing. And we must ask the question - Do we assert a worldview so that we can have power over people? The sad fact is, that when the church loses the gospel, we have been guilty of this - systems of sinfulness and sacraments are set up so that the church has power of life or death, membership of society or not - the Christian metanarrative has been used to "totalise" - i.e. to assert the totality of reality and so force people to submit to powerful "ministers" and "mediators" of salvation.

But the gospel, while universal and objective and indeed a "metanarrative" for history and human life is, in truth, unique in that it does not work on the premise of power assertions. It's easy to get lost in weird and wonderful philosophical analogies, but the call of Christ is not so much "match your narrative to mine, submit, submit!" but "see how our narratives interact?" The gospel is the interaction between two people in the end - God made man, and the ones to whom he calls - and so is a transaction based on relationship, not assertion of power.

It is at this point that the postmodern church faces it's greatest difficulty. The postmodern generation (in its search for experience) is one of the most spiritual generations in history. Yet to suggest that spirituality can be found and expressed in church just simply doesn't compute. Church is about power, not about spirituality, in the popular postmodern mindset.

In the end, the postmodern Church, is the post-Christendom church, the church that exists without any power and status except that of the gospel alone. And because of that dependence on the gospel, the postmodern church excites me.

There are many places where postmodern culture resonates with the gospel - or at least provides a means of communicating the gospel. Let me finish with a couple of points:

• The postmodern church engages the cultural value of "Better knowledge ≠ Better life" because God has chosen the weak and foolish to show that he is God. And the knowledge we are to grow in - a knowledge of God - is relational.
• The postmodern church engages the cultural value of relationship and "authentic community" as a valuable means of engaging with truth. The communal and collegial nature of Christianity is obvious in Scripture.
  
• The postmodern church engages the cultural rejection of human optimism - that human progress is not always good (in fact often idolatrous), that science cannot give all the answers - because we all have a need of Christ.
  

EPIC epochs

When Connections first started one of the things we had to interact with was how we arranged/targeted a Sunday gathering to engage with and be accessible to the younger generation we were trying to reach. This wasn't about the content of the gathering - expounding the ever-relevant truth of God's Word is the never-changing root of Christian spirituality - but about the style.

"Back then" (an ironic statement really - we're talking only two or three years) the whole "postmodern thing" was starting to be accepted and talked about - with varying degrees of insight. I was reading books like Ancient-Future Faith by Robert E. Webber and had already engaged with books like Postmodernizing The Faith by Millard Erickson. I was particularly moved by Gerard Kelly's RetroFuture and had attended a seminar of his in Launceston where, after a number of months of being stuck in post-war-church-of-england-curate-land, I felt like someone had given me a glass of sweet ice water in a very dry desert.

Remind me to blog about postmodernity in general some other time - the point for now, is that after engaging with the "postmodern thing" we picked up a little catch-cry for creating the style of our services: Our services were to be EPIC - Experiential, Participatory, Image-driven, and Communal (or Connected). I can't remember where we picked up the phrase - it's certainly not original to us, and a quick google shows its use is widespread now. A brief glance indicates that that the article at this location (link) is a good summary. Briefly, from my point of view, the essence is this:

• E = Experiential. For the postmodern person truth is determined primarily from experience (not argument or logic etc.) If you can experience it - it is true. An experiential service engages all the senses - the "primal pathways" as I have been known to call it - either directly through having something tactile, auditory, olfactory etc. in the service, or through narrative and creative words etc.
• P = Participatory. The postmodern person is dialogical - that is, they want to be engaged in dialogue and debate, not passive listeners to a monologue etc. Discussion times, non-rhetorical questions are a part of that, as is high-involvement of people in the running of the service.
  
• I = Image-driven. Previous generations have found that the prayer-book speaks to their heart through the use of wonderful, engaging words. The postmodern person engages more readily with images, received in parallel (all at once) - not words received serially (one after the other). Images don't need to be explained, they simply evoke.
• C = Communal/Connectedness. Religion used to be a very private thing - you came to church in silence to give each other space to be alone with God. Now communal gatherings are just that - gatherings of community - and we learn together, engage with each other, and help each other grow. (I think Hebrews 10:24-25 might support this one).

And so we embraced "EPIC" as a stylistic framework: lots of images on the screen, dialogical sermons, emphasising "authentic community" as a missional strategy, having lots of people involved in leading the service, using old and new things in an engaging way etc. etc. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't - but it was and is a good framework.

There's a couple of issues that relate to it, however. Firstly - it is very easy, when energy levels go down, when time pressures go up, to construct a service so that it is "EPIC" only in ways that you (the service leader) engage with. It takes time and energy to think through and implement what other "learning styles" or "primal pathways" exist in the congregation, and engage with them. Personally, in recent months when I have been stretched so thin with two half-time jobs, I have slipped down this slope somewhat. Now I am full-time at Connections this is something I want to address.

Secondly - the growth of a congregation necessitates a change in how an EPIC framework is applied. We are moving to a different "epoch" - we were an embryonic sized church three years ago and then we were a family-sized church (around the 40-50 mark including children) recently, and now/soon it is the community-sized church (theoretically the 70-100 mark) that we are becoming. Implementing the EPIC style in a larger sized church is different to a smaller one. Dialogue is more difficult, "experiential" elements are harder to implement and manage, the community is a number of smaller groups (rather than individuals) and so not as easily tapped into - perhaps the only thing that doesn't change so much is the "image-driven" bit as we still make use of the data projector in some reasonably creative ways.

What we need to do now is put some work into re-considering and re-applying the EPIC framework. It is possible to do things differently - a case in point is Mark Driscoll (of Mars Hill Church fame) who despite giving hour-long monologues as sermons (you can't easily field questions on the fly and to-and-fro dialogically with a 1000's strong congregation) does participatory things like using SMS and Internet polls to shape what topic he speaks on etc. - I'm not saying we should do that, but we can just simply note that we can be more creative.

What doesn't work is a hard-and-fast absolute application of a "style." Sometimes a didactic sermon is required. Sometimes the experience needed is visual and auditory silence. Sometimes people need to simply sit and receive from God rather than get up and do.

We are in something of a state of flux. I'm sure we will have new service leaders and preachers over the next few months as newcomers grow into the Connections community and through the necessary (but slow) proceedings of safe ministry accreditation and other formalities. Every new member is a new "input" into the service (whether leading it or not). And so we will be figuring out, again, what it means for us to take the Word of God and express it in EPIC fashion.