Transcript Leadership in a Postmodern Context October 30, 2012 “The church is a modern institution in a postmodern world…” “The church must embody the gospel within.

Leadership in a Postmodern
Context
October 30, 2012
“The church is a modern institution
in a postmodern world…”
“The church must embody the
gospel within the culture of
postmodernity for the Western
church to survive the 21st century.”
Emerging Churches - Gibbs & Bolger –
page 17
“Taking postmodernity seriously
requires that all church practices come
into question.”
Emerging Churches - page 34
We must learn to separate the
gospel from our culture.
Real “Jesus” ministry is only possible when
we believe we are not moving into a void,
that we go expecting to meet the God
who has preceded us. We don’t have
God in our pockets and we don’t take
God to others.
Ken Shuman D.Min.
We should never have
transplanted Christianity
without breaking the pot in
which the plant came.
Transforming Mission by David J. Bosch
“From the beginning of his time in
India, Newbigin knew he was an
outsider who needed to listen to and
learn the cultures of that vast
country’s people.”
“He would do this by sitting in villages
with local religious leaders and they
would read each other’s sacred texts.
Then Newbigin made a discovery: he
needed to relearn the gospel itself. He
realized he hadn’t come to India just to
convert the Indian people…”
“As he lived among these people, he
realized that the gospel was converting
him; it was questioning some of his
most basic assumptions.”
Missional: Joining God in the Neighorhood
Alan J. Roxburgh
“Newbigin understood & modeled the
engagement between Scripture,
gospel, & culture in ways most church
leaders still have difficulty
recognizing.”
Missional - Roxburgh - page 43
“Christendom was in part, about
the church at the center of the
conversation.”
Missional
Our hope lies not in trying to
create (for instance) just an
Indian Christianity but a
Hindu Christianity.
Transforming Mission by David J. Bosch
The gospel is always conveyed
through the medium of culture. It
becomes good news to lost & broken
humanity as it is incarnated in the
world through God’s sent people, the
church.
Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder
To be faithful to its calling, the
church must be contextual that
is, it must be culturally relevant
within a specific setting. The
church relates constantly &
dynamically both to the gospel &
to its contextual reality.
Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder
It is important, then, for the
church to study its context
carefully and to understand it.
The technical term for this
continuing discipline is
contextualization.
Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder
We must learn the skill of
exegeting both the scripture
& culture.
Missional Church edited by Darrell L. Guder
Characteristics of Emerging Churches
• Identifying with Jesus.
“Emerging churches stress the kingdom of God
much more…”
“It began as a change of focus from the Epistles
to the Gospels, as a way to understand Jesus
more profoundly.”
Emerging Churches page 48