I’ve just started reading a fantastic book called Organic Church by Neil Cole, and it got me thinking about something I’ve been mulling over already for a while. Some people in church circles have been lamenting over the growth of postmodernism and pine for the good ol’ days when objective rationality and logical truth were the norm rather than the celebration of personal experiential beliefs. Ironically, what most of the New Atheists who attack Christianity for its irrational “faith” in something for which there is (supposedly) no evidence fail to realize is that postmodernism is a threat to their own worldview as much as anyone else’s.

In fact, I am really beginning to think that postmodernism may be a direct movement of God’s within the “unchurched” post-Christian world. Postmodernism is distrustful of institutions and centralized organizations and prefers a relational, decentralized lifestyle in areas of human engagement. Postmodernism stresses personal experience over logical truth. Postmodernism is skeptical of claims for a one-size-fits-all approach to life. Postmodernism rejects grand, overarching theories devoid of concrete impact and instead celebrates an on-the-ground, daily walk that is lived out rather than talked about.

Wait a minute, am I really describing postmodernism, or am I describing the first century New Testament Church? Sometimes it seems to me that hippie communes have more in common with Biblical Christianity than CEO-led Fortune 500 corporations. When I think about how Jesus, the disciples, and later the apostles lived, I think about a tightly-knit community of Kingdom lovers who lived together, ate together, slept together, and traveled together. Church wasn’t a building with a weekly service, it was a family with a mission to adopt new siblings. And this family was relational, decentralized, on-the-ground, experiential, and personalized for each setting, place, and time. Hmm, sounds an awful lot like the postmodern milieu we find ourselves in today!

I think God invented postmodernism, and I think it’s the best thing to happen to the Church since 33 A.D. Rather than be frightened by it, we should be rejoicing in our Lord’s sovereign hand that is determined to reshape the Church in His image rather than in our image. This isn’t a religious crisis, this is a supernatural opportunity given to us by Heaven that is unparalleled in the history of Planet Earth. In this postmodern world, the Church is starting to rise up as the glorious Bride she was always intended to be, and I for one am more excited about the “postmodern” Church than just about anything else I can think of.

Bring it on!