Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Post-modernism (POMO) in Chicago

An account of a conference in May 1998 aiming to assist pastors in a post-modern age

This conference held on May 13-15 1998 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Chicago, aimed to encourage and equip pastors and other Christian workers in the task of evangelism in an age where post-modern thinking is increasingly prevalent.
It was organised by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, with sponsorship from the Bannock-born Institute (a centre for contemporary Christian thought, based at Trinity), The Navigators, Inter-Varsity and Campus Crusade for Christ.
It attracted pastors and many in student ministry, both because of the sponsorship by student organisations and the particular need for understanding of post-modern issues on the university campus. The plenary speakers were Ravi Zacharias, Roy Clements, Ajith Fernando and Don Carson.

Jesus and Peter Pan

Two clear trends could be noted in presentations orientated to understanding today's culture: many people's worldview has been influenced by the relativistic thinking of post-modernism and at the same time has become increasingly secularised. Secularisation means that we can no longer expect people to have any Christian knowledge, either in terms of biblical facts or Christian thought. So a seminar on the topic of 'Conversion' stressed the need for careful explanation of Christian terminology. This is perhaps an area which we in the UK are rather more familiar with, presumably because of an overall higher level of secularisation. I remember hearing similar seminars in this country about ten years ago. It is a point we overlook at our peril. We must expect the gap between what we think people might know of basic Christian facts, and what they actually know, to be growing larger. So, for example, the number of people in Britain who have never heard of Jesus, or if they have, classify him in the fairy-tale group along with Peter Pan, is increasing.

Conversions take longer

People adopting a post-modern mindset has a number of effects. Firstly, people's worldview is increasingly non-Christian. That means we cannot expect any component of Christian truth to be present, and so communication of the gospel has to begin with the 'big picture' e.g. explanations of God's presence and creation, so that the concept of sin might be understood. We used to be able to talk of 'truth' and not expect to have to explain ourselves. Today the relativistic nature of truth is seen in the increasingly common response: 'That might be true for you but it's not for me.'
A closely-related issue is the post-modern's hatred of those who announce incontrovertible facts which apply universally: given their understanding of 'truth', such an announcement is the height of arrogance. To announce the universal claim of the gospel is tantamount to waving a red rag at a bull. While we will obviously continue such announcements, an awareness of post-modern thinking may well modify our approach so as to duck under such defences, rather than prompting a reaction of anger straight off. Don Carson illustrated this by an exposition of Acts 17, looking at Paul's approach to the Areopagus. We have to engage in 'worldview evangelism' where nothing can be assumed. We expect, therefore, the process of conversion to take place over a longer period of time because it requires a greater change in worldview, as can be seen by the recent reduction in the number of professions of faith at university missions.
Another challenge of post-modernism is language. Post-modern thinking impugns the ability of words to communicate effectively. The main proposal of the new hermeneutic (which is the literary manifestation of post-modernism) is that the cultural baggage of the reader so affects their interpretation that understanding of the original intent of the author is impossible.

Thinking with our feelings

Instead of rational language being a means of knowledge, post-moderns lay great stress on emotion and image. As Ravi Zacharias said: 'This is an age where people think with their feelings and hear with their eyes.' Therefore to think that evangelism will take place in the arena of logical debate is to expect too much for many people today. Instead, we enter the world of relativism and intuition. Some of this can of course be exploited in communicating the gospel: the gospel does after all have emotional appeal and multimedia presentations of the gospel can utilise appropriate images. But we proclaim a God who speaks in words to give an authoritative message, not in pictures which can be understood in multitudinous ways. We have a God who communicates a message we must understand and respond to as he asks, not simply have a strong emotional reaction to. We must therefore continue to communicate the gospel in the way God has chosen to communicate it to us. However, we must do this while being aware of the mindset of post-moderns and also without retreating into the opposite arrogance of modernism.

Model sermon

Such an approach was modelled at the conference by Roy Clements who was asked to give a couple of sermons that he had preached earlier that month at Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge as examples of preaching to a post-modern audience. These sermons were detailed expositions of passages of Scripture, and in that sense did not pander to the preferences of such an audience. However, the startling difference to a standard expository sermon (if there is such a thing) was the introductions. Almost a third of the entire sermon is often given over to the introduction, which seeks to begin in the listener's world and pull him or her into the Biblical world. So these example sermons began with current issues in the UK at a level that a post-modern mind would be interested in and then raised questions from those issues which the Bible passage being studied would answer. One took the form of sociological analysis on the emotional outpouring following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, which then led into an exposition of the emotion God feels over his people from Hosea.
Perhaps one of the best aspects of the conference was the networking and cross-fertilisation which occurred in the seminar question times and ample break times. The organisers purposefully attempted to bring together a wide range of groups, especially those involved in student ministry, so that this could take place. This was best seen in inviting Philip Jensen to speak on his experience in evangelism and especially in student work. While Philip is relatively well-known in this country, his ministry in Sydney is basically unknown in the US and his approach raised some eyebrows and sparked debate.

Graham Beynon
Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge