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Wake up to the reality that the modern era has ended; the postmodern era has begun. Can the church stop its puny, hack dreams of trying to "make a difference in the world" and start dreaming God-sized dreams of making the world different? Can the church help invent and prevent, redeem and redream, this postmodern future? In your lifetime and mine, a tidal wave has hit. We are now in transition and in transit out of terra firma. A sea change of paradigm shifts and transformations is birthing a whole new world and a whole new set of ways of making our way in the world. The Dick-and-Jane world of my 50s childhood is over, washed away by a tsunami of change. There are some technologies that function as deluges which sweep all before it; then there are technologies that are most like winter storms that swell the rivers of change. Electronics is the former; it has created a sea change.
Are we, or are we not, straddling two ages: the modern and the postmodern, the Industrial Age and the Bionomic Age? And if we have plunged into a breach with the past, are we going to spend our time critiquing the old, defending the old, or exploring and producing the new? The only concession to a tidal wave by a church in denial is to do what it has always done, except faster. So we microwave minute rice, or dish out double program offerings, or triple the same worship services. "The world is full of people whose
notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to
an idealized past." No matter how hard you try, or how many you enlist to hunker down with you, there is no way back to pre-modern bliss. There is no safe "bunker" where the church can "hunker." The wind blows where it wills. Our job is to hoist the sail and catch God’s wave. What would it mean for Christians to fully inhabit the new amphibious landscape we live in, even to the point of making some waves ourselves? It is the church’s task to catch God’s wave, and make some good waves ourselves in the wake of God’s wave. In other words, this book takes as its patron saint Noah, who built some new structures and adopted some new strategies in the midst of a sea change for his day. Like Noah, this book gives little credit and no cheers to those who invest their time denying the coming flood or crying "the sky is falling." "Noah’s Dove Churches" are faith-communities that are with boldness and courage scouting this new world after the sea change. They are then bringing back to the rest of us evidences of what works and what doesn’t. "Noah’s Dove Churches" are slicing the sharpest leading edges of creative thinking and deep spirituality. They are the places to find out how to do ministry in the postmodern world. The following 10 life rings can help Noah’s Dove leaders make informed decisions, not predictions, as you claim your cultural moment. They provide a handbook for the new religious and theological literacy of our emerging postmodern world, and they help the church to face the future and stop making faces at those who do. They give you new ways of thinking about what makes the postmodern world tick, and how to do ministry amid its ticking time bomb. They offer the church ways to think seriously and substantively about the long run, and help, as one of my professors used to say, "unscrew the inscrutable." They help create the historical and theological software -- with passing suggestions of hardware -- for the habitation of the third millennium. Notice that in this book there is no separate section given to technology. Unlike past technological innovations -- agriculture, sailing ships, the printing press, gunpowder, industrialization, the automobile, atomic energy -- it is now impossible to talk about anything without talking about technology. Technology is no longer a separate category. It does not exist on its own, but is intrinsic and implicit in life. Technology pervades everything and is part of everything. Name an area or field free of technology. Technology is now a part of everything -- from sneakers to toothpaste, from genetics to religion, from you to me. Technology is formed and altered by a host of factors. Because of the social construction of technology, we should really speak of technoculture, no culture. Technology is beyond even culture. It pervades who we are as people. No one can escape technology.
The irony of the church’s response to postmodern technology is this: Christians used to fear the codex and clung to the scroll. Now we are opposing the screen (an updated scroll -- the unfurling text on screen) and clinging to the page (an updated codex). Whether we like it or not, God has chosen you and me to live in interesting times. And interesting times, as the ancient curse has it, are unpredictable, chaotic, dangerous. This is not the time I would have picked. But the words of Jesus keep ringing in my ears, "Your time is now" (John 7:6b). SoulTsunami is designed and dedicated not only to helping you predict, but to help you invent and prevent the future. The future is not some dim and distant region out there in time. The future is a reality that is coming to pass with each passing day, with each passing decision. The church must help design this new world. There are many futures out there. The future is not a "single state" but a scenario of possibilities. There is a struggle between opposing visions of the future. It’s not too late to choose which one we shall get. The future is a function of our choices and creations. You can be the last of a dying breed of ministers, those left standing on a burning platform. Or you can be the frontguard of a new breed of ministers. You can be a dinosaur in the tar pit, or you can be the frontline of a new kind of leader for the church. Which will it be? Technology is not a remedy, it’s a tool. Technology will not save us or solve our problems. If the 21st century is to be an advance on the 20th century, it will not be because of razzle-dazzle technology or philosophy. It will be because postmodern disciples of Jesus have understood the times, and now what to do to make this new world a better place. Now What? Net Notes 1. Download from the Web site the Renaissance symbol of "Occasio," which can be found in churches throughout Europe. It portrays a woman running; she is inclined forward at a radical slant, and her very long hair is streaming straight forward in front of her head (contrary to expectation) while the back of her head is completely bald. How would your church change if you were to grasp the occasion or opportunity from in front, from the future, not from behind where there is nothing to grab? 2. It’s hard to convince some people that the water is rising. It is told of Noah that he desperately ran around trying to convince all the animals to get on board the ark. His most difficult challenge came with his pair of ducks. Noah ordered them to come with him. The ducks refused. "We’re not coming," they said. Noah replied, "But there’s going to be a flood!" The ducks quacked back, "So?" 3. With global warming, nuclear terrorism, etc., the future has itself become a moral issue. Visit these Web sites and discuss whether or not our even having a future depends on our moral betterment. If we stay the same as we are morally, can humans survive? www.angelfire.com 4. Jon Katz has written about our "schizophrenic" relationship with technology in these terms: "Let Johnny log-on to the Playboy Web site, and moral watchdogs turn out in force. Let a real thorny issue surface—cloning, genetic engineering, powerful fertility drugs—and there’s hardly a guardian in sight." Are our ethical concerns about the Internet focused properly? See if you can find some sites on the Internet that discuss the ethics of fertility drugs. 5. Log-on to the Microsoft Web site. As you explore, discuss the pros and cons of this thesis: Technology is not a remedy, it’s a tool. Technology will not save us or solve our problems. If the 21st century is to be an advance on the 20th century, it will not be because of razzle-dazzle technology or gee-whiz philosophy. It will be because disciples of Jesus have understood their times and know what to do to invent and prevent this new world a-coming. 6. An anonymous pastor is quoted as saying, "When you said, ‘Most pastors are chronically fatigued,’ I would have said ‘Amen!’ but I was just too tired." On the subject of clergy burnout, check out www.cc.org/publications/ca/0997/minister.html 7. For a group that is struggling to escape the Boomer technoboosterism of the Net as Utopia and the opposite extreme of neo-Luddites that see the Net as Evil Incarnate, visit the Technorealism Web site: www.technorealism.org. |
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