I’ve just begun reading The Church of the Perfect Storm, edited by Len Sweet, containing a compilation of essays by other authors. The church is headed for and in the midst of culturestorms: postmodernity, post-Christendom, and post-scale. Each of these storms is huge and requires huge adjustments, but the future is secure in God and Christians need not run from these storms. Len Sweet says, “Christians go out to meet the storm. Christians embrace the wind. And pass out kites” (page 5).
The tsunami of postmodernity is “the name given to this fragmentary, digital, dizzying world of kaleidoscopic changes” (page 8). Postmoderns want to know why there has to be a reason for everything. They want to experience everything; they’re curious. They’re more interested in relationships and through dialogue and discussion truths are discovered in those relationships.
Now if the tsunami wasn’t enough, here comes a Category 5 hurricane: post-Christendom. In this storm, the culture has washed its hands of the church. Christianity is no longer the common denominator in the culture and in the church. More people recognize the golden arches of McDonald’s than the cross. We can’t emphasize the Christian side of holidays like we once could; Christmas trees are now holiday trees. There is a very small percentage of teens who even know what Christianity is or who Jesus is. Sweet says, “the best days for Christianity lie in the future, but only if we get rid of Christendumb thinking” (page 21). The church needs to think and act missionally in a missionary culture.
Next comes the storm of global warming, post-scale. Within post-scale comes post-human, post-round, and post-cold storms.
As post-human, Sweet calls us cyborgs; we have become machines with our medications. At the first sign of any medical symptom, we medicate … ADD, ADHD, anxiety, obesity. As an educator of small children, it bothers me that we medicate before any other evaluations. Much more can be done to overcome the signs of common reasons for medications.
In a post-round world, we can be connected to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. We live in a “wired world.” With all this connectivity, it can be said that the world is actually flat and the church needs to be on the edge. Why do we say the world is flat? Because everything and all events are personal. Today’s generation doesn’t know or talk about WWII but we do know and talk about 9-11 and even the Space Shuttle Challenger. We can tell where we were and what we were doing at those times. “Anything that is working in a post-round culture is less a performance ritual than a participation ritual” (page 29). Churches must cash in on the EPICtivity of the culture: experiential, participatory, image-rich, and connective.
Finally in a post-cold world, we’re losing our renewable natural resources. Water is becoming extinct. I live in Delaware and it’s a known fact that we don’t eat anything from the Delaware waters …the joke is that the fish glow and have 3 eyes… from the nuclear power plant. We’re all going green to protect our natural resources: water, land, forests, fish. Sweet asks why local churches aren’t partnering with local communities to ensure that every person has clean water to drink.
These storms are suicide; we’re bringing them on ourselves. These storms must be cured with truth.
More to come on The Church of the Perfect Storm later … highly recommended reading … check it out for yourself. I’ve only touched the surface here.
