3. Its not your Father’s Postmodernism.
Take everything you have read about the emerging culture being materialist, nihilistic, relativistic, consumeristic, individualistic, and of having no ethical code or moral standard. Now, invert it. Because the opposite is much closer to the truth.You are now looking at a culture with a deeper code of ethics, greater capacity for spirituality, a desire for less rather than more, a holistic view of following Jesus and a stronger relational commitment to community. That is a real challenge for the church and requires a whole new level of faith, godliness, prayerful reliance on God and an honesty that has been previously absent.
This was Question 3 of my 5 Answers from The Other Side, posted a few days ago here but published on Next Wave.
“A desire for less rather than more, a holistic view of following Jesus and a stronger relational commitment to community.” Those words struck my spirit. A strong commitment to community, a desire to live in community, to be upheld in community, to share in community. It all strikes me as truthful and desirable. How do you make it happen?
EXACTLY! That’s the church I want to be a part of!
What really burns me is that this generation lives out truth in ways that tradition would totally frown upon. Trying to explane to a 70 year old priest that it is ok for a youth that is so caught up in God to say “God is so *ucking amazing”, and at a christian youth conference at that… I am so sick of the black and whit of what many seem to think God would be pleased or displeased with. He and only he knows the hearts of those that love him… We need to stop struggling with what an emerging church is, and continue to let those who live it out daily show us