Q & R: postmodernism and moral absolutes
Here's the q:
Please help! I am currently taking a graduate class on church growth and we are using your book More Ready Than You Realize as an example of "friendship evangelism." You book has caused much discussion...which is what I guess you were wanting.... [details of class discussion removed] Here is my problem. I consider myself a postmodernist, but I can't really give a good answer why. What I do know is that the modern way (while once extremely effective) of evangelism is no longer effective. The following criticism is what I hear as an attack towards postmodernism, "they believe that there are moral absolutes." Is this true? I find it hard to believe that you would not take any moral stances. Also, I do not get this when I read your books.... I'm rambling, but if you could help me with the question on moral absolutes it might help me in the quest of better understanding postmodernism
.
Reply after the jump.
0 Comments7 Minutes
Countdown Day 82
Week after week, satisfied or not, spiritual seekers left my office with the best answers I had to offer, and I was left with their best questions. And soon their questions became my own. (6)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
0 Comments1 Minute
Countdown Day 83
People would visit the church for a few weeks or months, listen intently, and then come to see me with their questions … I would give them my best answers, but often, after they left, I felt hollow. If they “bought” my answers, I was strangely disappointed. If they pushed back and told me my answers still made no sense to them, I though, “Good for you, because some of them don’t really make that much sense to me either.” (6)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
0 Comments1 Minute
Countdown Day 84
Unless the church wanted to become a small, isolated enclave that could only talk to its own, we needed to welcome people in from the non-church majority, with all their questions, uncertainties, skepticism, and honesty, which required first of all that we listen to them without judgment and understand them without condemnation. (5)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
0 Comments1 Minute
Q & R: Prayer for the earth … yes, please use it!
I just received this ...
I have a blog about climate change at www.350orbust.wordpress.com, and today I posted the first 3 paragraphs of "The Prayer for the Earth" which you and Tim Costello have written, and which is posted on the God's politics blog. I wanted to make sure that you are okay with this use of it. If you are not, I will remove it. However, if you give me permission I would like to post the entire prayer. I have listed you and Tim Costello as the authors, and have included a link both to your website and to the Sojourner's blog.
Thanks, and God Bless.
Yes - Please feel free to re-post the prayer (short or long form) ... available here. Thanks for spreading the word, and helping to turn "copenhagen" into "hopenhagen" - we need to go from not coping to coping to hoping to actually changing. God help us!
0 Comments1 Minutes