This Christian Life

Small Group Report

We had our last small group meeting two nights ago. I started the meeting by saying that the conversation we were about to have was never ending. That was to be the beginning of an ongoing conversation with each other and in all of our spheres of influence. The conversation was centered around the big question:

Knowing what we know about postmodern values, how do we build the kingdom of God?

Among the postmodern values we have recognized are experience, participation, image-based, connective, eastern thinking, “just do it”, digital, simple, authentic, organic, fair, always changing, open-source, dynamic, loop, fast, “what is the purpose of life?”, virtual, and unpredictable.

We came upon the conclusion that the church must begin to identify it’s core values, cut away the riff-raff, and reshape itself into something that this generation can embrace. It’s high time that we recognize we may die. We’re trying to keep a dying methodology alive that reeks of religiosity.

The small group agreed that if we are to move forward, reaching today’s culture, we must use two criteria to determine if something (ministry, method, style, dialogue…) will be effective without compromising our values and history. The first criteria is to ask whether the thing we’re doing is Truth. The second is to filter it through the postmodern values (above). If both of these can be acknowledged, then we’ll get somewhere.

Are we right?