Here’s a mind-blower for some:
As you know, I consider myself to be a postmodern Christian. And I live in the suburbs of Santa Cruz. One of the nationally-recognized leaders of the “emerging church conversation”—a growing movement of postmodern Christians to understand how the church should function in this generation—is Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz.
Yet I don’t go to his church, because I find it boring and shallow.
People are horrified whenever I say this. (Especially people who love Vintage Faith Church and find it fascinating and deep.) What, they wonder, is wrong with me?
For those of you who don’t get it, follow my logic: Postmoderns don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all faith. Yet you act as if Vintage Faith is the one-size-fits-all church for all postmoderns.
I’ve been to several churches like Vintage Faith. My family currently attends one. Years ago I had the opportunity to decide to join that church. In the end, I decided not to. It reminded me too much of my high school youth group.
When I was in high school, the Gen X church movement was just beginning. You see, senior pastors had given their youth pastors a lot of leeway in the manner in which they had church, and as a result the youth church was way different from the adult church.
While the adults were slowly making the transition from hymns to choruses (and from organs to synthesizers), the youth had already made the leap to electric guitars and drums. While the adults were used to slow, careful, sometimes boring exegesis, the youth were treated to dynamic multimedia presentations that juxtaposed pop culture with scripture so as to make it relevant to the world they were enmeshed in. Within the very same church building, two very different congregations were being developed.
Division was inevitable. As soon as the youth became adults, they demanded that the adults worship the same way that they were used to. The adults would have none of it. So the youth began their own churches, and now they can have all the rock ’n roll and multimedia they want.
Because “Generation X” is now in its thirties, they have to call it something different or they'll lose the youth. So, call them what they’re doing; which is, supposedly, trying to emerge from the insulated, self-isolated Christian subculture. Call them “emergent.” That sounds young and vibrant and certainly not thirtysomething.
Ultimately, the emergent church is what was going to happen when the youth leaders took over the church. Anyone could have seen it coming. But here’s something I find fascinating: In order to reach the youth of right now, the youth leaders of today have to be more relevant. More out-there. More engaging of the culture. More everything. It’s gonna create a really interesting cultural shift in the church in 10 years. I’m curious to see what form it’ll take.
But I, like I said, am a postmodern. I don’t care about trends so much as I care about God working out a relationship with every individual that is unique to that person, and in that way the person can work towards their potential in God.
Now, that could involve rock ’n roll worship, and maybe multimedia. I have no issue with either. Where I do have an issue is all the fools who think rock ’n roll and multimedia automatically make you postmodern.
They have completely missed the point. How on earth are people going to be unique if they all look alike? Is an authentic postmodern church one where everyone sings the same songs? Prays the same way? Dresses alike? Looks alike? No! God created everyone to be different. Absolute conformity is what hell looks like.
I have to give Vintage Faith props for encouraging people to express their creativity, but the trouble I’ve always had is that I see so little true creativity. Going through labyrinths and the Stations of the Cross, while novel to many Protestants, is simply the recycling of ancient modes of spirituality that could be meaningful to people, but not when they’ve been homogenized so that the masses can try them out. The art all looks the same; the music all sounds the same. And when that happens, sad to say, you know that the movement is dying.
Part of the reason I haven’t joined the same church as my family (though I do visit it when I visit them, mainly out of laziness) is because, sad to say, conformity is encouraged. They worship leaders are actually going for a certain “sound” in their music, so that they all sound alike. I hope my sister’s efforts in starting a choir shake that up a lot; I really do. The more they sound alike, the less they sound like heaven.