The New Normal for churches

October 25 – The New Normal – John 14:6

Our denomination and churches are struggling to engage a radically changing culture. Statistics show that Americans are desperately searching spiritually, but the church is not connecting with the people we are seeking to reach. The culture around us has changed. How we can build bridges and engage with those searching and seeking for things that only God can satisfy and answer.

Look at this picture of a bridge in Honduras that is now on dry land.

The river has changed course and is flowing to the side of the bridge, making it irrelevant. This may be an image for the church (bridge) and culture.

The reality is that the church must engage a world that is emerging into a postmodern, post-Christian, and image-based (and some argue, preliterate) culture. The culture is flowing right by the church as we focus on dwindling numbers and loss of influence, and fight over how we can

return to the good old days. The truth is that we can’t go backward; we have to look at what God is doing right now and at a way in which we should respond and engage the “New Normal” in which we find ourselves.

In his book, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity . . . and Why It Matters, author David Kinnaman interviews people outside the church, and he tells us honestly “what a new generation really thinks about the church.” The words and accompanying images that the unchurched use are: judgmental; hypocritical; homophobic; too involved in politics; out of touch with reality; confusing; not accepting of other faiths; insensitive to others; old-fashioned; boring; and irrelevant. We don’t just have an image problem; we have a problem connecting with and impacting those people God loves and wants us to reach with the gospel.

We don’t just need to do church better. Instead, we need to understand and listen to those we want to reach, and rethink the ways in which we can authentically, personally, and intentionally share the gospel of Jesus Christ in our words and actions. As author/speaker Reggie McNeal puts it, “The culture around us does not wake up each day thinking they would go to church if only there were a good one to attend” (Reggie McNeal, Present Future, p. 10). In fact, the truth is even harder to accept. Not only are we failing to reach those who don’t claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we are having difficulty keeping our own youth when they go to college, and even holding on to the members of our own churches!

Let’s think about this new world in which the church finds itself and the recent changes in our culture.

Post-Christian: Simply put, we have in a sense lost the home-court advantage in North America. Judeo-Christian background and belief are increasingly losing both influence and, in some arenas, relevance in the public sphere. For example, when formerly we used the word “God,” it would most likely take on the Judeo-Christian understanding. Now “God” could mean Yahweh, Allah, or a pantheon of many other gods. Many outside the church increasingly perceive the church as having no present effect in transforming the culture for good. In fact, many, including those being led by such New Atheists as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, see the church and religion in general as having a negative influence on society. Bono, the famous lead singer of the Irish band U2, has warned, “Faith and social action must go hand in hand; if the church doesn’t remember and reconnect with its roots, and its call to serve others, it will be

dismissed as another irrelevant social club” (Greg Garrett, We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2, pp. 108–109).

Postmodern: First, there is a deep-seated feeling of disillusionment among the generations following the Baby Boomers. Science, economics, education, politics, and religion have all failed to solve the problems of humanity. The result is a generation left with radical doubt, skepticism, and cynicism. A second feature of postmodernism is relativism. It is a belief in its most extreme form that asserts that there is no truth, just what one experiences and how

one interprets those experiences. It is the idea that there is no absolute truth. Therefore, what is true for one person might not be true for another; it is subjective to a person or a community. It is the embrace of the “both. . . and” instead of the “either . . . or.” This is an important hallmark of a generation that finds it difficult trusting others, that is suspicious of those claiming to have or know the truth, and that is repulsed by those they perceive as judgmental and exclusive. A third feature of postmodernism is, for our purposes, a culture of religious pluralism. It’s like when we were children and the first self-serve soda machines were installed in restaurants. We would fill our glasses with every variety of soft drink (and call that mixture a “kamikaze” because you had to be brave to drink that stuff)! In the postmodern world, people don’t commit to one religious belief system; they take a little Christianity, and mix it with Buddhism, Hinduism, New Age spirituality and paganism and create their own belief system. This endless number of options has led to the customizing of faith, which is different from having a personal faith. As Erwin MacManus writes in Soul Cravings: “What’s strange though, is that we seem more motivated to create our own truth rather than search for it . . . more is not always better . . . our souls are being spammed.”

Image-based Culture: Another feature of the changing culture and the influence of postmodernism is an increasing shift from a print-dominated culture to an image- and story-dominated culture. Some characteristics of a print-based and modernist view are individualistic, objective, abstract, linear, and rational. According to Shane Hipps in Flickering Pixels, “As image-based communication becomes dominant . . . it changes the way we think and determines what we think about. Images are not well-suited to articulate arguments, categories or abstractions. They are far better for presenting impressions and concrete realities.” This new generation responds far better to stories and personal illustration than to rational, linear argument/apologetic.

How does our perspective and even method of evangelism need to change in the “New Normal”? (adapted from Will H. McRaney, The Art of Personal Evangelism, p.166)

Look at John 14:6.

⁶ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me

How is this passage important in responding to the questions and spiritual cravings of a new postmodern generation. Pray as you think through how to share Jesus’ own claims in John 14:6 with others. Think through how you might communicate the gospel in your life and with your words.