Pastoring on the postmodern frontline (part 1)

Understanding postmodern ways of thinking and feeling.

Samir Selmanovic, Ph.D., is a teaching pastor at the CrossWalk Seventh-day Adventist Church in High/and, California.

Last summer I saw a photograph of a white stone bridge crossing over a Florida river. Before Hurricane Mitch, the river flowed beneath the bridge. After the hurricane the direction of the riverbed had completely shifted. A second photograph showed the river flowing parallel to the bridge.

This bridge could serve as a symbol of contemporary Christian ministry, with the hurricane representing postmodernism. The river may be seen as a collection of modern era questions about faith. In the last half-century the old riverbed, caught in the fallout of the hurricane of postmodernism, has radically changed its course; the bridge, symbolic of the ministry and our attempt to answer important questions, has stayed much the same.

Without a doubt, we must remain committed to speaking the "strange" truth of the gospel. Innovation in itself is not the goal. Yet it is precisely because we want to communicate the unchanging gospel that we need to change. We must change not only our methods but also our understanding of how people think and feel and thus how we are to think as we seek to meet their minds and hearts.

The truth is that in many countries of our world, the culture has not merely changed, it has morphed into a humanity with a worldview radically different from the past. The shift is away from the so-called "modern" worldview, which began roughly in the sixteenth century and was built on the Enlightenment values of reason, science, control, and conquest. The postmodern worldview questions all the assumptions, claims, and fruits of "modernism." Because contemporary people are committed to a vastly different way of thinking, a correspondingly different approach must emerge in our ministry to them.

The shift to post-modernity

Modernism began as a freedom movement. It sought to discard the Middle Ages worldview built on authoritarianism, superstition, and oppression. Like the builders of the Tower of Babel, the philosophers and scientists of modernism were no wimps. They thought in new ways. They dreamed of control over knowledge, control over nature, and even control over themselves. This dream trickled down from philosophers and scientists into the daily lives of ordinary people and became dominant in their outlook.

However, after centuries confined to such restricting banks the river of modernity became almost unrecognizable, producing blood and sweat for colonized races through slavery, wars, dictators, ethnic cleansing, urban violence, drugs, poverty, a growing gap between rich and poor, and threatening pollution. While some comfortable citizens in the West have had a hard time seeing the limits and downright evils of modernism, postmodern philosophy and science are rap idly trickling down to all of us, silencing modernism's chants of control, conquest, and consumption. The backlash to this is what has been called postmodernism.

Entanglement of the church with modernism

No question: postmodernism disturbs many in the contemporary church, and for good reason. It mocks authority, questions moral absolutes, and destabilizes the knowledge that we have accumulated over time. From the biblical perspective, postmodernism is seriously flawed, but so is the modernism that has shaped so much of our thinking. The problem is that we, as Christians, have bathed so long in the stream of modernity that we have learned to think, talk, and accept modernism as an integral part of our faith.

"We can hardly conceive," wrote Brian McLaren, "of a postmodern being able to become a Christian without becoming modern first (or immediately after); similarly, we can hardly conceive that our way of seeing Christianity is not the only way, but rather the modern way."1 One of the best illustrations of this reality is found in the way the missionary movements of the last century largely insisted not only on the acceptance of Christ, but of the modern Western world itself. Modernism used to be "a beast" that intimidated Christians, but over the centuries Christians worked to tame it like a household pet, so that it became peaceful and domesticated in our house as part of the household.

Christians can't pass judgment on modernity because it is so much of who we are, at least in the West! From Constantine onward, the church ceased to be the counter-cultural movement committed from its inception to turning "the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). Instead, it couched itself into the mainstream, first with in the Roman Empire, and many centuries later it amalgamated in a similar manner with the modernist dream. The Christian of today comes dangerously close to being the definition of a well-adjusted citizen of the modern world. We have formed our apologetics, structured our theology, and devised our church growth techniques based upon the paradigm of the modernist experiment.

Thus, to relate to people today, we have much that we must learn from the postmodern critique. In preparation for the second part in this two-part series (where we will deal with the practical ministry adjustments that are needed to understand and meet the postmodern mind and heart) here are three conceptual shifts we need to make to increase our understanding, respect, and compassion for postmodern people.

From triumphalism to humility

One of the early definitions of the postmodern worldview was "incredulity toward grand narratives."2 Postmodern philosophers have observed that every human system legitimizes itself and subordinates all other lesser narratives through an authoritative story named the "grand narrative." When first presented, each new grand narrative made sense, but it soon became a tool for power, con quest, and control. For example, as American society celebrated the 500th anniversary of the "discovery" of America by Christopher Columbus we praised "the grand narrative" of progress. But the party was disrupted by postmoderns insisting that the event of 500 years ago began a chronicle of cruelty, oppression, and genocide in America a large-scale ethnic cleansing (involving the virtual obliteration of many of the peoples then occupying the North American continent). These contemporary critics of modernity mourned, rather than celebrated, the anniversary of such a con quest.

It is becoming easier to understand why postmoderns have abandoned their search for "one true belief system." They have been burned and disappointed by ideologies, religions, and political ideas, and have ultimately lost trust in humanity itself. In their view, anyone who claims to possess "the ultimate grand narrative" lacks either intelligence or humility. For many Christians, including Seventh-day Adventists, this is disturbing to say the least.

Here are some questions we need to address.

  • Can we envision and describe our ministry in a language other than one of conquest and control?
  • Can we conceive of ministry as a two-way exchange where we both teach and are taught?
  • Is it possible that our present denominational configuration actually serves by acquiring personal or corporate power over others?
  • What would be compelling to a postmodern person? Our stories of superiority and triumph or the story of the humility and authenticity of One like Jesus of Nazareth?

From rationalism to mystery

The modernist dream was to enclose the world within a rational, absolute system that would be true at all places and in all circumstances. Modernists like Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel developed a version of Christianity that explained Christian faith in a logical, self-contained system. Building on Thomas Aquinas, who held that all faculties of humanity are fallen except the intellect, they believed that rational thinking can make sense of God. "A Modern Minister" was one who . . . promised to remove mystery through research, leaving only clean doctrines and sterile principles where there once were questions, pain, wonder, and longing. . . Performed in the study, not the lab, and with Greek and Hebrew, not test tubes ... [he would] tame the wildness of his subjects God and life through late Industrial Age know-how. But imagine: Taming God! And life!3

Seventh-day Adventist ministry (which began a mere century and a half ago) developed in the context of the modernist worldview and thus, predictably, relied heavily on proofs, reasoning, and structure. In contrast, the postmodern world is breaking away from an obsession with reason and is equally trusting of ambiguity and mystery. Today many Christian ministers continue to "rationalize" faith, while the vast majority of Western society has lost interest in that approach alone. And when these people don't listen to us, we incorrectly conclude that they have no interest in spirituality. Further, when we look at a biblical text or a life issue that does not seem to fit into our "complete" belief system, we do everything possible to "make it work." In contrast, postmodernism is not inhibited by the confining walls of rugged rationalism, it opens its doors to mystery, embracing it as an integral part of the life of faith.

Don Hudson writes: "Postmodern thought comes upon the scene to remind us that faith is the dance of presence and absence, grace and tragedy, assurance and doubt.... [It] critiques the arrogance of modernism, and in so doing, offers the church one of its greatest opportunities to present the gospel. ... If modernism at its extreme can result in the triumph of reason over ignorance at best, but at worst the triumph of reason over mystery and faith, then postmodernism can be the invitation to mystery alongside reason and thus fresh opportunity for faith."4

Are we terrified by postmodernism because it reminds us that with all our theological knowledge, organizational structure, and church growth strategizing, we find ourselves without the ability to really control anything? What are the ways we can introduce our faith to postmoderns while embracing their sense of mystery? Would we lose our own faith if we were to admit that we don't have all the answers? Are we assuming that God can only use "the river of the rational" to reveal Himself? Can we reclaim the rich tradition of Christian mysticism that we were so embarrassed about during the age of modernity?

From objectivism to other ways of knowing

Modernism boasted of its objectivity. The scientific method sought to find the truth by removing all irrelevant factors from the research. But according to postmodernism we always speak from an angle. We learn about the world from maps someone made for us, we study historical records written for us, and we observe life through the glasses of our person l history, personality, and experience. Postmoderns believe that "every point of view is a view from a point" and that any group of people you belong to pressures you to observe reality from their common point.

While this line of reasoning may feel threatening, we must admit that "God's point of view" belongs only to God. While radical postmodernism attacks Christianity by denying objectivity, in reality most postmoderns are just asking for gentleness and humility in these matters. They deeply doubt humanity's ability to understand, to remember, to transmit, and to communicate in an absolutely accurate way. What most postmoderns are rejecting is not absolute truth, but absolute knowledge.

Postmoderns plead with us to consider other ways of knowing besides being "objective." They would agree with Paul (who said: "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know ... [Eph. 1:17,18, NIV; emphasis added]) that there are other valid ways of knowing that modernism dismissed as subjective. While modernism was built on Decartes's maxim "I think, therefore I am," the postmodern would add: "I make choices, therefore I am. I feel, therefore I am. I believe, therefore I am. I experience, therefore I am."

To remain true to the faith revealed to us, we don't have to advocate less than objectivity, truth, and propositions, but more! Jesus' statement "I am the truth" claims that truth is not found in an objective concept or prin ciple, but in a Person (John 14:1-7). And He is an ultimate subject that cannot be compartmentalized and objectified. We can't objectify God who is at heart a relational being. We can acknowledge that this subjectivity in fact is not a bad thing, not an embarrassment to be covered up, it is rather a necessary thing, a reality that the Bible actually assumes, since it is a "premodern" text.5

The opportunity

Postmodernism is not dangerous, not for One "'who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty'" (Rev. 1:8, NIV). It is we who have planted ourselves into one period of time. The hurricane of postmodernism has moved the riverbed. The old "bridge of answers" we built so carefully, prayerfully, and methodical ly, can no longer bring people from disbelief to belief as it used to. The river has moved and a new river now flows wide and deep. Was the church in fact originally called to remain unchangeably a bridge but nevertheless to be a movable or adjustable bridge? We do have innately in the Christian faith, the tools and the materials to reset the bridge of answers so that it will astonish post modern seekers. I have experienced it in my ministry in the postmodern culture of downtown Manhattan, and I have found peace with my Adventist faith in this postmodern world. In the next article I want to share with you what I have learned along more applied lines.

The conclusion of this article will appear in the September 2001 issue of Ministry.

1 Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub. House, 2000), 168.

2 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Trans. Bennington and Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, first edition 1979).

3 McLaren, 110.

4 Don Hudson, "The Dance of Truth: Postmodernism and the Evangelical," Mars Hill Review, No. 12, Fall 1998, 12-22.

5 Brian McLaren, "Honey, I Woke Up in a Different Universe!: Confessions of a Postmodern Pastor," Mars Hill Review, No. 15, Fall 1999, 35-46.


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Samir Selmanovic, Ph.D., is a teaching pastor at the CrossWalk Seventh-day Adventist Church in High/and, California.

July 2001

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