Thoughts from a Postmodern Perspective: Engaging Postmodern Culture

I have to open with transparency: I am a Gen-Xer raised in a postmodern educational system in the midst of a post-Christian culture. How I was raised has affected what I read, how I view life, and, most importantly, how I look at the Bible and God. I try to be aware of my “blind spots,” and I know that stating the above sounds very postmodern.

However, I often get concerned at the criticism of postmodernity in the conservative Christian community. Christianity does not fit within the framework of current philosophical and intellectual studies, but Christianity never fit within the framework of any human philosophy: Christianity is not supposed to fit in a worldly mindset (John 15:19; John 17:14). Still, God’s truth can and should overcome any human mindset, so we come back to concerns about postmodernism . . .

Here is my feeble attempt at defining modernism and postmodernism; these definitions are gross simplifications, but they are a place to start. Modernity, which has been the prevalent mindset for the past 500 years, attempts to reach truth through reason, often achieved by scientific experimentation or debate. Postmodernity, which is obviously the reaction to modernity and has been emerging in the past 50 years, realizes that reason often fails to reach a satisfying conclusion.

Modern thinkers will discuss, argue, debate, and then discuss, argue, and debate some more to try to reach a conclusion. The pro is that there is an answer, there is a truth somewhere. The con is that discussion, argumentation, and debate are often poor tools in reaching non-believers; ultimately, Christians might win a debate at the cost of turning away lost souls.

Postmodern thinkers will discuss ideas, leaving the conclusions to the individual participants; all those in the discussion might reach different conclusions and walk away satisfied. The con is that this line of thinking can lead to relativism: what’s right for you is right for you, what’s right for me is right for me. The pro is that postmodern thinking is really the concept of individual faith: from what I see, I believe something to be true.

Critics say that postmodernists believe that there is no truth; however, a better perspective is that postmodernists believe that you cannot know if you have the truth. No truth and not knowing if you have the truth with complete certainty are subtle, but important, differences. Ultimately, if you try to argue with a postmodern thinker, you can make your best case, and he or she can shrug it off as being your conclusion from your experience. His or her conclusion might be vastly different, because he or she has had vastly different experiences.

Then, a modern thinker often elevates the argument, becoming (what postmodernists consider) arrogant and judgmental: you might win the argument but you’ve lost the chance to impact a non-believer. Postmodernism hinges on faith; from what you’ve heard (from God’s Word) and experienced (by the Spirit’s leading), you’ve acknowledged as truth. The core discussion with a postmodernist is faith: ask them to look at God’s Word, ask them to pray, ask them to be open to the possibility of God. Then pray yourself: pray that God will open their eyes and He will lead them to Him. Be there to listen to their questions and concerns without passing judgment: you won’t argue them into heaven, but you might get to see God’s working.

Postmodernism underlies our academics, our religious beliefs, and our culture. We can complain that postmodernists are not modernists; we can argue that they need to change their way of thinking; or we can try to reach people. As a Christian with my truth rooted in faith, I’ll pour my efforts into reaching people.

-Michael Windsor

Blessed by the Tithe that Binds

After trusting Christ as Savior, Angie and I would have said that we had given to our churches fairly regularly.  But, several years ago in the middle of a message on tithing that we heard at our new church, we turned to look at each other, searching.  When we got home, I looked at every Scripture passage that I could find on giving.  I found that the idea of concept of tithing, giving ten percent off the top of our income, flowed through the Old and New Testaments.  I thought that Christ had done away with tithing; I was wrong.  Angie and I talked about our fairly regular giving and determined that it was neither fair nor regular.  

                How could we not give generously to the work our Savior?  How could we afford to give ten percent with three young children?  How could I face Christ in eternity realizing that He gave His all for me but I couldn’t give ten percent for Him?  How could we meet our bills with less disposable income?  I have to admit that the second and fourth questions were mine, and the first and third were both Angie’s and mine.  We repented and moved toward Christ holding out our checkbook for Him to take.  We have never regretted making and keeping that commitment to Him.  It changed our purchases, our vacations, our savings plans, our dedication to serve in our church, our appreciation of Biblical promises, and our love for Christ.  We talked about it just a year or so ago, and we never even noticed the first three changes listed in the previous sentence.  The funny thing was that we, our kids, our families, our church family, and our neighbors noticed the last three things. 

-David C.

Desperate in Kiev

I remember visiting Romania just after the Iron Curtain fell. The churches were packed. Christians were rejoicing in their new freedom to worship God without persecution. Also, the economy was so desperate that people were eagerly looking to God to survive. I wonder if one of our problems in modern America is that we are not at all desperate. We are way too comfortable in a land of relative plenty and security. We desperately need to be desperate. To seek God with all of our hearts because we know that we need Him (Jer. 29:13).

This quote from Malcolm Muggeridge reflects that desperation that he found in a church in the Ukraine:

“In Kiev, where I found myself on a Sunday morning, on an impulse I turned into a church where a service was in progress.  It was packed tight, but I managed to squeeze myself against a pillar whence I could survey the congregation and look up at the altar.  Young and old, peasants and townsmen, parents and children, even a few in uniform – it was a variegated assembly. . . . Never before or since have I participated in such worship; the sense conveyed of turning to God in great affliction was overpowering.  Though I could not, of course, follow the service, I knew from Klavdia Lvovna little bits of it; for instance, where the congregation say there is no help for them save from God.  What intense feeling they put into these words!  In their minds, I knew, as in mine, was a picture of those desolate abandoned villages, the hunger and the hopelessness, the cattle trucks being loaded with humans in the dawn light.  Where were they to turn for help?  Not to the Kremlin . . ., nor to the forces of progress and democracy in the West. . . . Every possible human agency found wanting.  So, only God remained, and to God they turned with a passion, a dedication, a humility, impossible to convey.  They took me with them; I felt closer to God then than I ever had before, or am likely to again.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (New York, 1982), pages 258-259.

-Pastor Paul

Pray for the Whole World in 2012

You might ask how do we do this and what do we pray for? Probably the first verse we learned as little children was John 3:16 “For God so loved the world….” If God loves the entire world so should we, and one of the best places to start is in prayer. Also, it brings great glory to God that there are those added to the Christian family from every people group, language, and nationality. We obviously do not want to see any person go to hell and we want everyone to go to heaven, but think about the fact that as people all across the world hear of Christ and put their trust in Him, they are given the capacity to praise God by their lives and worship Him. In Matthew 9, Christ told His disciples to pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into the field. He could have told His disciples to minister directly to those in need, or to pray that these needs would be met, but instead Christ commanded them to pray for other Christians to minister to these needs. This is an early hint of the church worldwide being mobilized to reach the entire world for Christ.

One suggestion on how to pray for the entire world, especially those of us at High Point is to: begin with the High Point missionaries, then pray for the countries they represent, and then the entire continents where they are located.   Use your pictorial directory or the church website www.hpbchapel.org during your personal/family devotions and pray daily for at least one of our missionaries.  Use the mid-week prayer reminder that highlights a missionary and remember their specific needs in prayer.  We have cross-cultural ministers on five of the seven continents.

There are some online tools to help with this expanded prayer model. One is a website called www.operationworld.org that can be used as a resource to help know what the needs of these countries are and what is happening there in advancing the gospel. Put a map up in your home, so you see it everyday and be reminded to pray.  Also another suggestion is to take your children to the local library and check out books, magazines, and DVDs about the countries that you are praying for. You can even look for VHS and DVDs that tell a story about people living in those different cultures.  Expand their little worlds from revolving around themselves or their favorite video games to revolving around the concept of the entire world for Christ.

These are just a few suggestions worth exploring.  Make praying for the whole world a habit in 2012 and see what God will do!

-Pastor Steve

Emmanuel, God with Us

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. – John 1:14

Emmanuel, God with us!  This is what we celebrate at Christmas time – that God came into our world to show us the dazzling love of God against a black backdrop of man’s depravity. As a result, we saw God and knew the way to a life of truth and light. This is our calling as believers to enter into other people’s worlds and show them God’s love. We could call this the 925 window, that we enter into other people’s 9 to 5 lives or even their 24/7 lifestyle and communicate the way to God. Sad to say that we have developed a mentality that it is the church’s job or the pastor’s job to do this. It is the pastor’s/ church’s job to equip and encourage Christians to do this ministry. God has called all believers to a multiplying life called discipleship. If the original 120 believers would have gone out witnessing 10 hours a day and somehow could have kept doing this for 100 years, they would have told 43 million people. A low percentage would have accepted Christ and none of them would have been discipled.  Today it is estimated that there are 50, 000 evangelical missionaries at work worldwide and there are 600 million believers on the earth right now. But It has been said that if one believer, not the original 120, or 50,000 missionaries or even the 600 million believers worldwide, again, just one believer would reach and disciple one other person this year to the point that they could do the same and this pattern of multiplication would continue, that in only 33 years we would have reached more than 8 billion people, more than the estimated 7 billion living on planet earth right now. The key is not mass evangelism, not leaving the job up to the “professionals”. God has not called us to a life of addition or duplication, but multiplication. Will you, this year, 2012, enter into someone else’s world, into their culture, into their messy life, and show them Christ? Emmanuel, God with us – be Christ-like in 2012. (Taken from A Better Way,Making Disciples Wherever Life Happens Dale Losch, 2011 Crossworld Ministries, www.crossworld.org)

-Pastor Steve

Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember

¹⁰ “So it shall be, when the LORD your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, ¹¹ houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant—when you have eaten and are full— ¹² then beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”  – Deuteronomy 6:10-12

Fall is a time to remember – the harvest is ended and it is time to give thanks. This was also true of nation of Israel. When God’s people came into the Promised Land, He wanted them to remember that their life was truly miraculous, that He was a good God, and that they were blessed – “Hesed” in a covenantal relationship with Him. He told them to remember the widows, orphans, and poor because they were once living in slavery in Egypt. God also told them to be kind to traveling strangers, because they were wanderers in the wilderness as well. This covenant-giving God did not want them to forget where they had come from and the miracles that He had done for them. God also wanted to keep this before their eyes so He gave them three annual festivals to help them remember: the Passover in the spring, the Feast of First Fruits, and the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall. (There were several other feasts and holy days and some were connected to these three festivals – one was at the beginning of harvest and one was after the harvest was ended.) Although most of us do not live an agrarian lifestyle today in America, this has been passed down to us in our Thanksgiving holiday. It is a time set aside to reflect upon how we are living a miraculous life, God has blessed us, how God is a good God, and how we are the benefactors of a covenantal relationship with Him. This thankfulness should be reflected back to God and to others as well in this holiday time.

-Pastor Steve

Caught up with the Cunninghams: Entry 8

Back in the USA…As we praise God and ponder the trip to India now that we are back in the USA, we are thankful for our three Indian families who treated us as family for extended periods of time – THANK YOU PV and Aruna Joseph, Sana and Nancy Singh, and Nambi and Tomba Singh!  We also thank God for the many, many folks who prayed for our teaching, health, and safety across the continents.  Like God reminded Elijah, He reminded Angie and me again that He has choice servants around the globe, saints who hunger for the teaching of the Word so that they can glorify our Savior in their lives, marriages, homes, churches, and relationships.  We spoke, or attempted to speak, together through five different languages, and we look forward to real communication with each other some day in God’s plan for the future.

-David C.

Keeping up with the Cunninghams: Entry 7

 

The family conference in Imphal finished Friday.  On Saturday we travelled out of the city to remote area churches – “hill churches.”  All of these churches had special thanksgiving services to celebrate the rice harvest; we participated in two services and got to visit the pastors and some members in two other churches.  Many members of the churches participated in the celebrations while others had to stay in the fields to help continue the work.

 

David

 

 

Keeping up with the Cunninghams: Entry 6

We are more than halfway through the Christian Marriage and Home Conference at Imphal Baptist Church; the conference runs for four sessions each day from 9AM to 3PM, Tuesday through Friday.  Members from the church and pastors and members from other churches have enjoyed excellent fellowship and food together before, between, and after sessions.  Pastor Tomba and Pradeep have translated for me, and Pastor Tomba’s wife Nambi (Sana Singh’s sister) has translated for Angie.

David

Keeping up with the Cunninghams: Entry 5

We finished the two night Relationships conference at Sana’s and Nancy Singh’s church on Friday night.  Saturday morning we traveled to Jiribam in the neighboring state of Manipur for the Marshill Baptist Church building dedication.  Sana preached the dedication sermon, and David preached an exhortation sermon.  These good Baptists finished the celebration with a celebratory community-wide feast!

Angie