Something to Expand On: Ideas on Post Modernism and the Role of the Church focusing on Creeds

I can’t help but think that most parachurch organizations are going to end up no longer relevant.  It’s labels like “Evangelical” that have no meaning in a post modern society.  Most parachurch organizations were formed to avoid the internal workings of a church, while still focusing on the external activities of loving neighbor.  We are now finding out that the church can’t out source Christian Love and the parachurch can’t out source Theology.

We shouldn’t be surprised.  The church was called to be a certain thing, and in general it has left from that path.

On a happy note, as a member of a generation filled with Post Moderns, I think that there is hope.  The post modern doesn’t like labels or research or scholarly works, but they do like to pick, choose, argue, and question.  This means that they like to discuss and argue and test and weigh different paradigms (and God knows, there paradigm is generally very lacking).  Here is what I say to someone communicating to someone from a post modern framework; Say  “I Believe… “   The church has historically been strong here.  Creeds are what worked in the past instead of labels, and this gets past the label.  You want to focus on the object of the creed (Jesus).  You might need to spend a lot of time hashing out a common language to truly communicate the predicate of a particular creed, but talking about the finished Work of Christ is far more useful than arguing over labels or what it means to be “Evangelical” or “Reformed” or “Born Again” or “Charismatic”.