Postmodernism- Good or Bad?

I decided to hit the Saturday, 8AM seminar with Duffy Robins and Tony Jones, moderated by Dan Kimball. As from the title, this seminar was designed to be a softer, more positive discussion than the one set up a few years ago with a panel (of which Tony, Duffy, and Dan were on) that was called “Crossfire.” That experience was exhilarating, but left too many loose ends for youth pastors still trying to get their arms around modern-postmodern debate and the implications for their youth ministries.

Today’s dialogue was much more constructive and in some ways enlightening. Kudos to both Tony and Duffy for their thoughtful, provoking, and kind words to each other. Thanks to Dan for always bringing it back to the pragmatic (and I mean that in the best sense).

As I thought about the exchange, there was one statement that came out that probably (in my mind) captured some of the tension/confusion/misunderstanding/angle on the modern-postmodern dialogue.

The statements came out of a question. And the question asked by Dan was, “How would you define the Gospel?”

Duffy commented on Jesus’ words, “The Son of man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” (Lk 19.18)
Tony said, “I can’t give you one.”

I understand Duffy. I resonate with Tony. I’m waiting for Dan’s follow up question.
Let me explain…

I understand Dufffy…
More specifically, I understand where Duffy is coming from. I do not believe that Duffy is trying to be a reductionist. Rather, he is using this statement as a basic starting point from which people can start to understand Christianity. He regularly said throughout the seminar that current constructs do not need to be overhauled, but merely modified because the foundational assumptions still stand. I respect his position and understand it, but I’ve seen too many people simply stick with a foundational assumption as the total truth and never move from square one.

I resonate with Tony…
Tony explained that there was no way he could (or would) fall into the modern trap of reducing the gospel to a one-word sentence. How does one reduce the gospel to… a statement? The gospel is experienced, discovered, and grown into through community, relationships, through life. Thus when people attempt to reduce a complex belief to a statement, it’s meaning is distorted (at best) or it’s statements are used as litmus tests for “orthodoxy” (at worst). I don’t belief that Tony is saying that the Gospel is immaterial. I think he’s saying just the opposite and I couldn’t agree with him more.

This leaves me waiting for Dan’s follow-up question…
Dan has a way of bringing discussions back to the every-day youth pastor world. He did a good job moderating today. I think he’d ask next, “now what?” And actually, the last question was asked by a youth pastor (I’m paraphrasing), “I’m in a modern church yet a resonate with a lot of the emergent thinking. How do I live in both worlds so as to be consistent with my beliefs and respectful to my leaders?” (Interestingly, a similar question was asked at the McLaren, Wittmer, Dobson panel a few weeks ago (see earlier post)).

With the evident conversation/conflict in many of our churches, is the conflict over semantics, or epistemology, or a about a different theology? Semantics can be ironed out, epistemology challenges our approach, theology forces us to re-think our assumptions, re-visit our metaphors, and re-define our terminology.

Lest we think this is an esoteric exercise. We are faced with more teens than ever unable to articulate their faith and rising percentages of teens and adults leaving the institutional church. However we process the preceding paragraph is probably how we’ll attempt to respond to the concerns in this paragraph. We can protest existing churches or fire emergent leaders, call modern and postmodern good or bad, but the questions will remain and the problems won’t go away until we address these central issues.