PostModern Christianity

Its been quite a week. I came down with an upper respiratory infection early in the week, which made me almost lose my voice, and I stayed home sick from work for a couple of days. However, I've been to the doctor, got prescription, and am just about back to normal (whatever that means). So diving right in tonight:

Early on in McLaren's A New Kind of Christian, one of the characters asks the other to distinguish between postmodern Christians and traditional Christians. The other character responds by saying that, "...if you succeed in creating a postmodern framework, I think you've just sabotaged it." His point seems to be that in the Modern world we tend to reduce any subject down to a list of main points or themes, and in so doing we oversimplify things and take them out of context to some extent. He seems to be saying that PostModernity, by its very nature, cannot be summarized in a few words.

But of course, the purpose of the book is to help people begin to recognize PostModernity and what its all about, so I don't think McLaren would object too much if I skip to the end and provide a summary of what he (or at least the PostModern character in the book) perceives to be the primary areas of change in a PostModern Christian.

That said, each of the items below are themes he highlights in the book. My plan is to post about at least a few of these items, maybe all of them, so as to flesh them out a bit, perhaps add a few thoughts of my own, and help my closer friends begin to think through some of these issues, perhaps more fully than we have before.

One more caveat before you read the list below. Looking over the list, I suspect that someone with a conservative Christian background (like my own) might read that list and become concerned for McLaren (or even for me in reading this book and writing about it here). I mean, if I were to read a headline saying that Christians should 'change their posture in relation to other religions,' I would possibly infer that the writer must believe that Jesus isn't the only way to God. But that's really not what that bullet is talking about, and several of the others are not exactly what they seem as well. So...if you're tempted to read that list and blow this off, stay with me a little bit longer.

Sorry, one other caveat: I'm no expert in any of this, only an interested party, so in the list below or in the following posts I may have some of these wrong or at least off-kilter. Still, I think they are good food for thought:

Important Areas of Change for PostModern Christians

• Our understanding of the Bible, how we follow it, and how we let it work on us
• Our posture in relation to other religions
• Our releasing of the ways in which our faith has been enmeshed with modernity
• Our exploration of theology free of the constricting, reductionistic categories of modernity
• Our escape from the narrowing of the gospel to an individualistic story about saving souls to a missional, communal, and global story about saving the world
• Our discovery of forms of authentic spirituality that are broader than our modern pietism

More to come shortly. Peace and love, and Merry Christmas,

B