Postkiwi

Steve Addison on his ‘World Changers’ blog writes:

Almost twenty years ago Howard Snyder wrote Foresight: Ten Major Trends Facing the Church. It’s uncanny how close he came to predicting future reality.
Here’s a list of the trends he predicted:
1. From regional churches to world Church.
2. From scattered growth to broad revival.
3. From Communist China to Christian China.
4. From institutional tradition to kingdom theology.
5. From clergy/laity to community of ministers.
6. From male leadership to male-female partnership.
7. From secularization to religious relativism.
8. From nuclear family to family diversity.
9. From church/state separation to Christian political activism.
10. From safe planet to threatened planet.

Steve asks for people’s thoughts on how the list could be updated.

So how does it look now from where I stand today?

1. From regional churches to world Church
Globalisation is certainly affecting the church. I looked through a Chinese Christian bookshop yesterday and found one of the world texts translated into Chinese: “Purpose Driven Life”. Also Tony Jones’ book, “Postmodern Youth Ministry”, complete with playful realignment of the Chinese text. Perhaps we’re seeing the move from regional to Americanised church.

One of the factors in the development of a local contextual movement is the publication of local authors. Here in Australia we’ve just lost a major publisher, Open Book, who have diminished their publishing commitments to inhouse Lutheran work. However in the next twenty years publication will happen more on the internet and will be able to respond more quickly to immediate needs.

2. From scattered growth to broad revival
How many times have I heard this prediction? And how many times have I seen people disillusioned because of the sheer hard work required to impact a local community. The reality is that response to the gospel is as scattered as ever. We’re moving towards a niche approach to the planting of missional communities, not a mass movement.

3. From Communist China to Christian China
Hmm. Seems to me that China is still Communist, despite the growth of a significant Christian movement there. There’s a huge amount of state control being exercised for the sake of national unity, which is not surprising given the size of the nation. The last thing the Chinese government wants is the Balkanisation of states as happened in the dissolution of the USSR. What could be interesting is the combination of Christianity and communism.

4. From institutional tradition to kingdom theology
It’s interesting to note that we had both together at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the mainline churches started developing a ‘kingdom theology’. The tragedy then was that what came to be known as fundamentalist Evangelicals pulled the plug and walked away, calling it ’social gospel’. This was seen in the schism of Student Christian Movement (SCM) and the beginning of Inter Varsity Fellowship (Christian Union, Evangelical Union) on University campuses. ‘Kingdom theology’ can be expressed in counter-cultural underground ways in sync with the parables of Jesus. It can also be expressed in the development of a ‘religions right’ movement as we can see in the United States at the moment, with the push for the teaching of intelligent design.

5. From Clergy/Laity to community of ministers
I’d like to think we’re moving in that direction. In the Uniting Church in Australia we’re seeing the growth of ‘lay ministry teams’ who by their very existence challenge the assumptions we’ve had around professional specified ministries. However the institutional church is not ready to give up on the ordination of a few ministers yet. I’d say this is an ongoing journey. Maybe things will be different when we have Gen Xers as the seniors in the Christian community…

That’s probably enough for one post.