NORTH AMERICAN BAPTIST FELLOWSHIP

UNIONE CRISTIANA EVANGELICA BATTISTA DITALIA

BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL COLLOQUIUM OF ROME

Christian Mission in a Postmodern Society
Evangelical Baptist Church of Teatro Valle
Rome 5th 9th October 2009

Italo Benedetti
Christian Mission and Postmodern Culture

Talking about Christian mission in a postmodern culture raises a plethora of issues. First of all we
need to explain why we are talking about mission and not evangelism, and then we need to define
what is meant by the term postmodern. However, it also means we are forced to raise the issue of
a church that is no longer able to speak to its contemporaries.
My talk will have two main points, the first of which will tackle the question of whether or not a
crisis in Western Christianity really exists and if so what does it look like; in the second point I will
look at signs that a new kind of Christianity is emerging, one which is once more able to positively
impact society.
IS THERE REALLY A CRISIS OF WESTERN CHRISTIANITY?
What do we mean when we talk about a crisis?
The definition of the word crisis can be highly subjective. For example, many people might say
that Christianity is going through a crisis because they no longer recognise the church they once
knew, loved and grew up in. In this sense, the word crisis is ambiguous, because it allows people
to interpret church in terms of their own persuasions, choices and world views. This is not the
crisis we are talking about here.
In any case, the crisis itself is a sign of life. It transforms things, people and situations into
something new and different from what they were before. Thus, the crisis is inevitable because the
church interacts with a world which is in a continuous, rapid and spiraling flux of change. In this
case, the absence of a crisis would be a sign of stagnation, decadence and death.
Therefore the crisis cannot be denied. Hiding ones proverbial head in the sand would not just be
deluding ourselves, or even be simply an irresponsible action; it wouldnt even be merely a
strategical error, even if of historical dimension; it would mean nothing less than a lack of trust in
Gods plans. The solution to the crisis always implies an acceptance of the judgement intrinsic to
it and the result of that acceptance is the release of Gods grace.
The crisis is not a question of quantity but of quality. Faith is not a question of quantity (numbers of
church members, figures on a balance sheet, number of baptisms, how big your denomination is,

how big your budget is, how many buildings you own, quantity of social projects, how many
missionaries you send out etc.) but of quality; that is to say, a response to the gospel that bears a
clear witness. That said, we cannot deny that the churches have been truer to the former image than
the latter. Quantitative data does not give us a real picture of the kind of crisis we are now suffering.
These are useful only in so far as they can show us whether the quality of our faith is improving or
worsening. For example, negative financial data could be considered not only as an indicator of the
level of commitment in the church, but also as a thermometer to measure the deterioration of
relationships or of trust within it. Talking about quality, on the other hand, means asking ourselves
if the Christian movement is capable of addressing such a crisis spiritually, that is to say, to act with
the authority of faith and with the power afforded it by the gospel, instead of political, social or
economic weight.
The crisis is about God. In the West, a large number of people have stopped believing in God. If the
Church is incapable of helping people to discover God it is indeed experiencing a crisis. And this is
the crisis I want to talk about here. The big question that needs to be answered here is: how can a
Christianity in crisis help a society in crisis about God?1
A brief look at Western Contemporary Culture
Since the post war period there have been two main cultural changes that have transformed
contemporary society and the church: the first is the passage from modernity to post-modernity, the
second, the move from Christendom to post-Christendom.
Modernity has been rapidly de-structured in some of its most fundamental elements such as
rationality, objectivity, realism and progress. A rather good, aphoristic definition of post-modernity
was written by Umberto Eco: the sensation that the past is holding us back, confusing and
blackmailing us2.
The church as an institution has lost a large part of its privileged position in society. This is not so
much in its political significance but above all in its social significance. The church is being pushed
more and more to the edges of society and has been gradually replaced by other recreational or
voluntary organisations. Faith, then, is perceived essentially in sociological and psychological
terms, giving less and less importance to its spiritual aspects and to divine revelation. Pluralism and
relativism have become ever more part of its cultural fabric. The point is that, so far, the church has
reacted in one of two ways; either by fighting tooth and nail to defend modernity against postmodernity or by living in denial of this new cultural paradigm. The first and most urgent task for the
church today is to understand the culture in which it is carrying out its ministry. Why?
Because historically the church has always considered this task as essential. The basic text
on research into modernity was Christ and Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr, in which the
church was seen as in itself a culture. Liberalism founded its mission on the premise that the
church was a sub-culture (or, as Yoder saw it, a counter-culture). The challenge of postmodernity today, because of the ever increasing pluralism of society, has to be addressed on an
inter-cultural level.
Because knowledge of the culture in which the gospel is to be ministered has always been
good missionary practice. Today the church is a modern institution in a post-modern cultural
context3. Because of the pluralistic nature of Western culture and because of the churches
marginal status in society, it can no longer expect to be able to provide a credible ministry
without even attempting to understand the changing cultural environment in which it operates.
1

Jon Sobrino e Felix Wilfred (edd.), Cristianesimo in crisi? Concilium, anno XLI fascicolo 3 (2005), pag. 19 [519]
Stefano Rosso and Carolyn Springer, A Correspondence with Umberto Eco, Genova-Bologna-BinghamtonBloomington August-September, 1982 March-April, 1983, Duke University Press. pp. 242-3
3
Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches, Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures,
Baker 2005.
2

Because the West now finds itself at the centre of a cultural change of historical
proportions. Westernisation has been largely replaced by globalisation; electronic
communication and easy access to information have revolutionised culture and access to
information; national industries have been transformed into global enterprises; scientific
research has given us a new definition of what human means at a biological level, thus giving
rise to new ethical questions and new ideas in the science - faith debate.
Because the church is in decline. The average percentage of people who go to church in
Europe is about 25%, whilst in the USA it is 40% (even if some think that this figure is more
like 10% in Europe and 25% in the USA). This decline in numbers brings with it a degree of
economic difficulty, vocational crisis, decline in mission and the demise of certain
denominations.
Because church programmes are geared towards the culture of a society that no longer
exists. This signifies that we need to take a long hard look at what kind of culture exists inside
of the church. The modern church has removed from its spiritual life all things symbolical,
mystical and experiential in favour of logic as the importance of deepening ones knowledge
has been the core of Protestant spirituality since the Reformation. In postmodern church surfing
the internet, multimedia culture, narrative exegesis and experiential spirituality prevail.
Because the language of our culture has changed. The Reformation managed to exploit the
invention of the printing press, whilst the modern church has been slow to understand the new
technology of communication. While church services, theological training and community life
have remained tied to an abstract, verbal culture, the rest of society is driven by technology and
multi-medial experience. The impact made on the younger generations by traditional sermons
is almost zero as the internet has rendered one way communication obsolete. Even dialogue,
that is two way communication, is being challenged because of the internet which has created a
virtual marketplace where any number of people can take part in a circular conversation.
Because a new culture demands new organisational structures and new ways of managing
finances and buildings. This is the problem that all church administrators have pondered over.
Today people keep in contact through blogs. The actual physical meeting place is no longer of
value or of great importance, what really matters is the network. Work can be done from home
and the church can meet in the pub (bar).
Because leadership is more important than a role (pastoral). In the secular world we can
look at the rise of Barack Obama and the hope he inspired, and in the Christian world, the
ministry of pope Wojtyla, showing the potential influence that Christianity can have through its
leaders. People want witnesses, examples, guides, saints and apostles not functionaries,
managers, intellectuals or bishops.
Because it is not that people are less religious than they were before, but rather that
religious beliefs are rooted in collective experience and not in any single ecclesiastical
identity or religious institution. Religious authority resides more with the individual believer
than with the Bible or a religious hierarchy. The big question that the church is asked is: by
what authority?.
Because the new generation is more spiritual than the older generation but feels out of
place in church. They like Jesus but not the church is the title of a well known book by Dan
Kimball. This means:
1. that their spiritual needs are not met in church and so young people seek their own doit-yourself syncretistic religion.
2. that the new generation does not follow the religion of their parents. Individuals choose
their own faith without much regard to family traditions.

Which Christianity is in Crisis?

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Church culture is going through a crisis and not, in my opinion, the Church in its theological sense.
It is Christendom which is in trouble or should I say the paradigm in which the Church has
identified itself with the predominant culture. I am of course referring to the Constantinian
paradigm which has characterised Christian history in the West for 1,500 years. The cracks in
Constantines regime had already begun to appear when the Eastern Orthodox Church split off from
it, and in the West, with the Protestant Reformation, which represented the fall of one of the
founding principles of this Constantinian paradigm unity. Later the birth of the Anabaptists and
the Baptists dealt another hard blow to this paradigm by denying the link between the sacred and
the secular (the church needs to be born again from believers baptism, separated from society).
The vestiges of the Constantinian paradigm are still very evident in the church today, even in the
free churches:
The unity between the sacred and the secular. In spite of all the reforms, the Constantinian
paradigm has survived to the present day. Americas Christian right, despite the so called wall
of separation (this term was coined by a Baptist by the name of Isaac Backus) and the
marriage of church and state in Italy are examples, albeit of different degrees, of the survival
of the Costantinian paradigm in Western Christianity.
Mission as a foreign enterprise. Often associated with colonialism and imperialism, mission
tended to be directed exclusively towards the pagan, that is to say, those who did not belong to
a Christian culture. Mission was defended in military style by the State and missionaries
themselves were heralded as heroes and heroines on a par with soldiers in the armed forces.
There objective was cultural as well as religious but the two things were considered to be one
and the same.
The church community as a parish. In the Constantinian paradigm we have the church
community becoming a geographical entity. From a gathering of saints in a largely hostile
environment, the church became compartmentalised in a social context in which everyone
living within a designated parochial area were de facto members of the church in their area. In
other words virtually nothing exists outside the confines of the church (extra ecclesiam nulla
salus). Today all churches, especially those in the majority, but also the free churches, have an
instinct that their ministry should target a defined geographical area and that the pastor/priest
should look after the whole community in his area; baptising all the babies born, marrying all
the engaged couples, conducting all funerals, whether these people have ever taken part in the
life of the church or not and whether or not they are even believers. The catechism is geared
towards knowledge of a particular denomination and the pastors/priests are trained to be
theological garrison in a particular locality.
The necessity of unity as uniformity. Discipline, administration and uniformity of doctrine was
essential to the survival of the church in the imperial Rome under the auspices of Constantine.
However, that first ideal was completely undermined by the schism between the Eastern and
Western churches and, later, the Reformation. This fragmentation within the church structure
has continued to the present day even if each church has continued to live with a deep sense of
their own unity and mission as if all the other churches did not exist. Each church is convinced
that it is one and often fostered a great deal of uniformity amongst its members. The
ecumenical movement has opened the eyes of many churches and has contributed to the quest
to find unity (but models of unity have evolved over the years from attempts to reconstruct
organic unity to those which championed unity in diversity thus sacrificing the idea of
uniformity). The problem with ecumenism today must be tackled bearing in mind that any idea
of unity in a world as fragmented as that of the church has been superseded.
The place of the laity in the church. People did not enter the church out of choice but were
admitted automatically at birth (cuius regio eius religio). If you wanted to join the clergy, the
people of God set apart from the laity within the church, then that was a matter of choice. The
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role of a good lay person was to be a good citizen and worker, loyal to the institutions and to
the denomination, in some cases perhaps a deacon or, in the free church, a minister.
It is my opinion that this Christian paradigm has been shattered and furthermore will disappear all
together as soon as the generation of church goers who still believe in it die leaving a financial void
which will make it unsustainable.
The problem then is not how to do ones Christian duty better, that is to say, to evangelise more,
give more, go to church more but it is that the evangelistic appeal of the churches has remained
stuck in the old paradigm in which it was fundamentally an invitation to be part of a church.
WHAT ARE THE OUTCOMES OF THE CRISIS?
Emerging signs:
1. All too often a newly converted Christian instead of finding Jesus ends up in a church. More
and more people are leaving the church in order to be able to preserve their own faith. Many
feel that the church has nothing to contribute to their spiritual growth nor is it a place of
comfort in times of need. It is estimated that globally 5% of Christians are defined as being
without any denominational tie, or are post-congregational to use an American ecclesiosociological term. It is thought that this figure will double over the next fifteen years. Church
programmes and activities have been judged inadequate to cater for the demands for authentic,
spiritual vitality. Converts want to find life changing experiences (that really change lives and
cities. They want to feel that they have a valuable contribution to make, to have their spirits
nurtured, their human potential brought out etc.) The Christian call is to a conversion to Christ
and the churches have a duty to keep this promise.
2. Believers are increasingly less concerned about the growth of the church and more concerned
about changing their own immediate environment. The Gospel is not about sitting comfortably
in our pews but about walking the streets. The question is no longer how can I help this church
grow but what can I do to help the Kingdom of God grow?. The aim of mission is much less
to do with calling the people into church where they can meet with Christ and much more to do
with going out to the people bringing Christ to them where they are. The aim of evangelism is
less to invite people to come to church and more about going out and infiltrating society.
Evangelisation is no longer just another church activity alongside other church activities but
becomes the reason that the church exists and underpins all other church activities (the church
becomes missional). Such church members divide their financial contributions between their
church and other charitable organisations prefering to decrease their financial contributions to
their denomination in favour of local, lay projects as a sign of their involvement in local
concerns.
3. Church programmes are primarily to form church members (the welcome pack that we give
new members at Rome Teatro Valle Church, for example, includes the church rules and
regulations, a donation form and a list of telephone numbers of other members of the church).
The message is clear: following Christ is nothing more than being a good church member;
disciple=member. Churches today are increasing more concerned with how to train up more
disciples of Christ. The first pastoral meeting with new members of a church is increasingly
more like establishing a contract in which the new members express what they would like to
see happening in their lives as members of the church with regard to their own personal and
spiritual development. The Pastor or the Church Council may expose them personal
development programs and spiritual discipline within the church community. However, the
focus of development is no longer on attendance at church meetings but on mission in ones
own sphere of life.
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4.

5.

6.

Church programmes are also orientated towards encouraging the development of ministries
putting great importance on peoples gifts and talents geared to the development of local
practitioners and thinkers. However, often members are seen as human resources for the work
of the church. The genius of the Reformation was instead the transformation of ordinary
members into priests. The priesthood of believers was none other than an attempt to turn
every believer into a clergy, not, however a parish priest who assumes pastoral responsibility
within the church, but a member of the clergy with the ability to put people in touch with God.
This function has been rediscovered and renewed. Church programmes are geared towards
encouraging leadership valuing above all their spiritual gifting and directing them towards
becoming missionaries. Members are human resources for the mission of the church.
Churches train pastors competent to work in churches and for churches (in Italy pastoral
training tends to mould students into theological garrison capable of addressing a whole range
of pastoral issues bearing in mind the isolation of the church community and the solitude of the
pastor). Many churches today try to train leaders whose job it is to work beyond the confines of
the church and seek to create opportunities to build bridges between the church community and
secular culture (such as; being in touch with the culture of the day, fundraising, using
technology etc.). Therefore the onus is on moulding leaders for the Christian movement and
not loyalists to the denomination.
The greater part of cultural influence on the church comes from sources outside its control.
Nevertheless, many churches expend huge amounts of energy planning. Today the big question
is not how can we plan for the future but how can we prepare ourselves for it. What really
matters is not planning but spiritual preparation. Having a vision for the future comes in here.
However, you cannot invent a vision, it is something that has to be discovered. It belongs to the
realm of the spiritual and must be encouraged rather than suggested. Vision establishes values
which must be implemented and determines the outcomes that the church wants to attain.

Emerging Characteristics of a Church

Even though we cannot predict how the church will look like in the future, it is possible to trace an
outline of where the church is heading. This outline displays certain characteristics:
Churches are becoming open systems. There is a noticeably increased openness towards the
outside and towards the cultural context. The separation between inside and outside the
church or between church community life and everyday life outside is becoming less and less
distinguishable. This, of course, leads to greater exposure to contamination by outside
influences and therefore can pose a greater risk of imbalance, but in general churches are more
sensitive to what is going on in the society around them and are therefore more responsive to
demands. They are also able to make much more significant and positive contributions to
society.
Churches seem more adaptable. For the reasons we have cited above, the genius of the
emerging church is that it is well rooted in its local community. Similar churches, even in the
same city, can be organised in very different ways from each other in terms of openness to the
community around them and responsiveness to the needs of that community. This flags up a
high degree of the dependency of churches on the cultures and societies that host them and a
high degree of localism (not of the tribal variety that we see often today but of the
incarnational variety).
Churches are more disposed to change. There is evidence of a virtuous cycle in which some
churches are involved, showing characteristics such as a sensitivity to environment,
adaptability, change and a capacity to contribute positively on a cultural and social level.
Churches are learning communities. Little improvements in community ministry become the
patrimony of a whole network; I am not talking about formal denominational changes (carried
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out by so called experts who gather to form councils and produce documents which the
church then has to study so that they can apply them), but each pastoral team has the
responsibility for improving its own local ministry. These are the low profile initiatives that
over a long period of time, have produced, a cumulative effect of radical changes in how the
church is run and what its ministry should be. Thus:
The ability to accept, understand and interpret signals from the environement
The ability of responding creatively to those through new organizational structures
The ability to influence the community outside in responsive and proactive ways
This is only possible if the church community is well connected with the community around
them through open channels of communication. It is impossible to achieve this if the church is
lead by one single leader or pastor and organised hierarchically (or at least from the top down).
Rather, to achieve this aim there needs to be a horizontal leadership and a church organised in a
bottom up structure.
Knowledge and theological reflection are more widespread. As in cloud computing,
knowledge doesnt get saved on the hard drive of the computer but online and is available to
anyone who wants to make use of it. This means that the whole way we relate to the truth is
radically changing. Knowledge and theology do not belong exclusively to academics, the only
ones who hold the key to unlocking it, but becomes a shared experience (something like
Wikipedia). The church is an open source, whoever is able to share practical advice and give
answers to theological problems that may arise is given recognition as an authority on that
particular subject (a bit like what happens with Google). This corporate knowledge can only
happen when everyone is connected.
The church is guided by visionaries. In the emerging churches location determines decision
making. In these situations it is the role of the church leadership to help their community to
change their perception of a given situation. Leaders dont simply announce change but
provide the resources necessary to bring about that change, so that from a grass roots level the
change will filter upwards to the top. The leadership put together action plans, facilitate
communication with other organisations outside the church, put people in touch with each
other, link up projects and activities and receive feedback to create a new hermeneutical cycle.
What do we need to do about it?
My brief response to this question would be nothing, but I accept that though sufficient as an
answer it is a bit extreme. Our question here must be not if the western Christian church will change
but how are we going to generate that change.
Now there are two options; one is to produce change by producing legislation to push it through.
This would come from the top down, from a group of experts, through legislative procedures or
through arriving at a consensus and in effect induce the church to change. The other alternative
would be to take a horizontal approach through an educative/cultural programme through which
ideas directed towards transformation of certain behaviours both of the individual member and of
the church as a whole would be promoted. Clearly, the legislative approach fits in with a vertical
hierarchy (still democratic in character but top down in organisation) and with the exercise of
power. The cultural or educative approach however, fits in with a horizontal organisation of roles,
(even when the church is guided by authoritative leadership) and the distribution of power. The
legislative approach tends to lead to a moralistic stance (appeals to consecration) whilst the cultural
or educative approach is directed more towards facilitating change.
However the most important thing to understand at this point is that if we want the change we are
seeking, to be real, stable and of moral integrity then we must accept that it will take a long time
before we begin to see any fruit. Furthermore, I think that our generation will only get to the
mountaintop and see the promised land from afar. Others will have the task of ferrying our
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churches into the future. An orchestrated, violent change will only move the surface and throw up
mud and silt from the bottom for a while but will leave the landscape unchanged. There are many
generations represented in our churches not all of whom belong to the postmodern era and therefore
not all are ready to accept these changes that promise to be of historical importance. Nobody will
want to abandon the church as we find it today, as you might a worn out garment. The churches of
today are the daughters of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. They are certainly not short of
valid arguments to support a resistance to change. Therefore, the leadership must be careful not to
fall into the trap of the quick fix or find themselves sucked into the vortex of church commissions
and documentation. Our task is not to force the hand of the churches, but to accompany them
through change; not just discarding old ways of doing things as outmoded, but also being ready to
acknowledge the pain felt by some of losing important parts of a very rich religious inheritance. It
should not be a question of exchanging our old car which doesnt run very well any more for a
brand new one simply because we are tired of the old one. The role of the prophets like Isaiah and
Jeremiah in the Old Testament was to allow the exile to take place, to make sense of it, to accept it
and to provide answers to the many questions of why did God allow this to happen?. Good
leadership should own this prophetic role. A change without a time of grieving for the loss of the
old and without a period of acceptance would be such a shock to the church system that it may not
be able to recover.
If change is to be real change, then it must be transforming, not tactical. Todays leadership has a
strategy; it knows where it wants to go but now it has to leave behind tactics and plans to speed up
events and allow todays church to become a womb for the birthing of tomorrows church and it
must rejoice in the fact that it is expecting and will bring forth new life. Trying to instigate an epic
change from the top would be an illusory exercise comparable to trying to co-opt God into our
manmade designs. The real method for change is still the same as it was in the Bible; to be born
again; to die in the waters and emerge to a new life.
Something we can do right away is to say yes to change and let change happen. If we encourage
experimentation, micro changes and local projects in the knowledge that experimentation is not
change in itself but rather permission to do things differently, to think creatively and to rethink what
we do, then the new that we have been waiting for will be born from this fertile soil.
In the introduction we asked ourselves how can a Christianity in crisis help a society in crisis
about God?
There is no simple answer to this, but it is embedded in a Christianity that is capable of being
sensitive to the culture in which it finds itself, responsive and proactive towards it and conscious of
its dependence on it but also able to infiltrate and influence society spreading the gospel through it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baricco Alessandro, I Barbari. Saggio sulla mutazione, Fandango 2006
Brewin Kester, Signs of Emergence, Baker 2007
Gibbs Eddie, Church Next. Quantum Changes in How We Do Ministry, InterVarsity Press 2000
Gibbs Eddie and Bolger Ryan K., Emerging Churches. Creating Christian Community in Postmodern
Cultures. Baker 2005
McNeal Reggie, The Present Future Church. Six Though Questions for the Church, Jossey-Bass 2003
Mead Loren B., The Once and Future Church. Reinventing the Congregation For a New Mission Frontier,
Alban Institute, 1992.
Newbigin Lesslie, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans 1989
Sobrino Jon e Wilfred Felix (edd.), Cristianesimo in crisi? Concilium, anno XLI fascicolo 3 (2005), pag. 19
[519]

Tickle Phyllis, The Great Emergence. How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Baker 2008
Webber Robert E., The Younger Evangelicals. Facing the Challenges of the New World, Baker 2002