Warning: New Church Words of the Day–Stay up on the buzz.

If you want to be cool in evangelical churches there are a few new words that must be regularly incorporated into churchly vocabulary. Those words are postmodern, and emergent (plus all their derivatives). These words join the host of other, now passé church words like church health, church growth, seeker sensitive worship, and friendship evangelism. Those words were good for their time, but now we are emerging and postmodern.

We church leaders all to easily are drawn to fads. Maybe because we are so intentional and desperate (in good ways and bad ways) to do ministry well, and to show some measure of success, we will chase, grasp, hope for any new ministry nugget that might turn the corner for our church or ministry.

I was just in Albania. This is a country that is just 12 years out from underneath a totally atheistic, repressive situation. A new church is being birthed-actually two different churches. One is a very indigenous church. The other is an American transplant. The indigenous church is seeking to form Christian community that is uniquely Albanian. This church, often coached by Western missionaries, seeks to understand the culture and context of the Albanian people and be the church in that context. The American transplant church, again coached by Western missionaries, is a sadly attempting to impose American church techniques, usually the church fads a few apparitions past, onto the Albanian context. One method is struggling to do well; the other is an embarrassing picture of rapid decline into irrelevancy.

Albania pictures for me what has been happening all across the North American scene, more gradually and possibly less noticeably. With too little thought given to our own unique context, we appropriate church models that are dated, irrelevant, and maybe missing the point. And along come the buzzwords, currently–postmodern, emergent. We have knee jerk reactions: either we embrace these concepts as the new answer, finally the piece that puts it all together, or we reject it out of hand as faddish and foolish.

Allow me to suggest what is readily apparent: Rather than debating the use of the new buzzwords, lets become missionaries of the best kind in our culture. Rather than debating if we live in modern, late modern, or postmodern times; rather than wondering if this is a Christian, or post Christian world, whether we are surround by the preChristian, the post Christian, the unchruched , the dechurched, or if this is the future church, the ancient church the ancient-future church, the liquid, the aerosol , or the gel church, lets be missionaries.

We will have to give up our comforts and go and dwell in our world. We will have to let go of our privileged status and humbly listen, really listen and appreciate what is happening in the lives of others. We will have to live exemplary lives when people are looking and when no one is looking. We will have to face the reality of hearts too readily turned in on ourselves, rather than face out towards others and the world. Once again we need to be captivated by the transforming grace of God which gathers us in community in Jesus and thrusts us out into the world.

What if we moved beyond buzzwords and did the hard work of being servants of Jesus Christ for the sake of the world? It won’t be easy, and no techniques or buzzwords will adequately inform us.

Yours,

Kurt Fredrickson

Let me suggest three that will help guide your own thinking in this process:

Lois Y. Barrett, et al. Treasures in Clay Jars: Patterns of Missional Faithfulness. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004

James V. Brownson, et al. Stormfront: The Good News of God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003

Reggie McNeal. The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003

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