Introduction

In August 2007, my friend Robin invited me to participate in an e-interview for a magazine article she was writing. Here is what she asked, and what I wrote. If you find some overlap with my entry on Key Transitions in Church Systems in the Next 10-15 Years, it’s because I wrote them around the same time period. In the previous 9 months, I’d written two extensive case studies. One analyzed the paradigm, culture, and history of a highly decentralized network of friends who minister at some of the farthest edges of emerging cultures in Post-Christendom UK, Europe, and US. The other analyzed a church which has been in a gradual transition from a Pragmatic paradigm and related methodological models to a more Holistic paradigm and contextualized ministry structures. Each report was the equivalent of about 150 pages of double-spaced type. (I expect to post portions of these eventually on my blog, highlighting the strengths and challenges that are typical of organizations in their situation.) The key thing here is that I’ve been thinking about ministry and relevance to community/cultures a huge amount this whole year!

Anyway, I have edited the interview some, mostly inserting a few clarifications and a sidenote on the idea of the post-Christendom Church in America being like “culturally conjoined twins” when it comes to leaders from opposed paradigms. I hope this will give more background on my perspectives about paradigms and my biases. Those are relevant concerns as I work on completing my series on The Golden Compass and then begin a series on paradigm analysis and cultural systems critiques of Willow Creek’s Reveal self study. And, oh, yes, I haven’t forgotten about the promised article on parallel cultures and countercultures in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, but that will happen on its own time schedule.

Please describe your current ministry and role(s):

I am a freelance writer to pay the bills, and I do see that as being as much a ministry as my “ministry.” But in the usual terms of ministry, to use technical terms, I am an independent consultant on discipleship systems, church planting strategies, learning style translation, strategic foresight, paradigm transition analysis, and cultural contextualization. Whoa! That’s a mouthful, if not a mindful …! Basically, I attempt to stand in the gap as a practitioner of critical paradigm and infrastructure development skills that no seminary or training program I am currently aware of teaches as standard, required courses.

In non-technical terms: My business card says, “Superhero Sidekick. I help you identify, validate, amplify, and activate your super powers. And, hopefully, help you keep from distributing your super-crud on others. In Jesus’ Name, Amen …” Works for both individuals and groups, both businesses and organizations.

My role is as a Christian philosopher and I see myself as a paradoxical-theology disciple, but I suspect people from traditional or typical systems would have a very difficult time categorizing me. I am a combination of “person of peace” and so have engaged in social justice concerns that might set theological conservatives’ teeth on edge, and a pursuer of absolutes that might do the same to theological liberals. I see this as reconnecting what the liberal-fundamentalist controversy split asunder a century ago. But simply gluing the broken pieces back together will not suffice. My paradoxical version comes out as both moral purity with social justice, and embodied/incarnational social presence with biblically countercultural lifestyles. This does not represent a compromise “muddy middle ground,” but a reintegrated biblical-and-cultural grounding.

So, I am not strictly a post-conservative or a post-liberal, nor even a post-modernist (!), but a radical remix that has emerged over a 30-plus year period as a holistic and paradoxical culturologist. As it turns out, the past 10 years, I have worked primarily with “post-conservative” evangelicals who have attempted to move toward a more balanced perspective and practice on community ministries outside the church building. (In other words, they have moved toward becoming more comprehensive in terms of biblical content in their conceptual framework, and more integrated in how these parts are interconnected.) That role has clarified the past year or so, while the focus of my ministry has been changing. More on that shortly …

Which cultural issues do you face? Which cultural issues does your ministry / church face?

What I personally face and find the most difficult to cope with is loss of cultural flexibility. I believe I have a high level of cultural fluidity, which normally allows me to connect with a wide range of people. But when circumstances or calling require that I relate with only one culture for too long, it leads to burnout. Like most intercultural people, global go-bees, and “third culture kids,” I need cultural variety to maintain emotional elasticity and avoid the drain of culture shock. However, most of my work the past decade has been to help church leaders from Traditional and Pragmatic paradigms understand the emerging, holistic paradigms of Younger Evangelicals – to use Robert Webber’s three category terms in The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Baker Books, 2002).

The former two paradigms are not my native culture, and they are quickly becoming “former” in the globally culture, while the latter holistic/Younger paradigm, which is my native culture, is becoming the leader. So, if churches and ministries and agencies are to survive incarnationally into the future, it leaders MUST of necessity transition their strategies, infrastructures, and styles to be more holistic-friendly. That is where the tides of cultural change are moving. To sustain biblical relevance, we need to move with those new-paradigm currents, though we should not act as if the cultural flotsam and jetsam on the surface is what is driving deep change underneath.

Anyway, this work with say-they-wanna-be transitioning leaders has been exceptionally draining. The cultural issues my clients face are typically issues of transition in paradigms and cultural systems so they can raise up new kinds of leaders from ALL generations – not just Busters, Blasters, and Beyonders. It’s the right and wisest thing to do. However, I am long beyond amazement at Christian leaders who sincerely desire to pass on their legacy to next generations, but who are so totally stuck in the paradigms and theologies that are in decline globally. Could it be that the Builders and Boomers are being called upon to “give up power” far sooner than they expected, and thus are digging in their heels? Or just that they’ve received little or no training on how to mentor paradoxical people? Or …?

I shared last week with a friend in a medical-care mission that churches in the West have been especially slow to recognize the pressures toward inevitable cultural change; it is as if we are dying and actually need end-stage hospice care, but we have Alzheimer’s Disease and act from long-term memory as if we are still in the glory days of vigor and influence from our youth. Many leaders are vocal about maintaining the past and/or restoring the glory. They tend to oversimplify and lump together everything that is against their paradigm, worldview, values, and culture into some neat label or another (e.g., postmodernism, neo-fundamentalism, emerging) – and then criticize (or demonize) these “right strawy creations,” as Martin Luther might have quipped, were he here now to equip us. (Of course, perhaps I have just done the exact thing I’m complaining about, by turning the tables on the people in power.)

Meanwhile, I sense the Holy Spirit has shifted my calling and I am in the process of focusing more on being a superhero sidekick to holistic paradigm leaders who are relatively intercultural, like me, and who minister in more “emerging edge culture,” although they do not necessarily identify with “emerging” or “Emergent.” This looks like it will mean catalyzing cohorts for a training system in developing holistic ministry strategies and structures – should be interesting! From experience, I already know this will likely mean more emphasis on helping young/holistic leaders who have been actively marginalized or passively overlooked by existing leaders. It will be a different set of frustrations to deal with – but a set far more familiar, given my similar experiences over the years.

What differences do you experience between your prevailing church culture and the life that Jesus calls us to live?

Another whole cultural issue I believe churches in the West face is what I’ve come to call, “the theology of nice.” We don’t want to be irrelevant, but also don’t want to be confrontive. We want to contextualize with local culture, but don’t necessarily want to be countercultural. We want to be seen as a smiley people, but may end up a syncretized people. In a post-Christendom world where we are no longer the main peoples of influence, perhaps this is a good time to figure out a new integration for how best to live in the midst of society that disdains Christians and Christianity, but tends to like Jesus. Whatever we come to, I’m certain it won’t be “nice.”

Stemming off of this, I’m currently stewing over three issues where I think the prevailing local (and Western) church cultures have slipped a tectonic plate from what Jesus intended.

First, we (individually and corporately) draw our identity far more from imported generic Christendom than we do from our own providential personal and social possibilities. Whatever happened to local recombinant spiritual DNA? For instance, it’s nice that we have so much creative worship music available now – but who is training up local worship leaders who can write within their own genres and cultural milieus?

Second, and directly related, it’s nice that we can provide so many goods and services for spiritual seekers and various kinds of disciples to consume, but why are we not producing disciples who can reproduce other disciples? Seeker-sensitive programs and using key church services as a platform for evangelism are based on a passive/consumerist paradigm; discipleship – TRUE discipleship – is based on a participatory/producer paradigm. Sometimes I wonder if our churches have become more like permanent neo-natal intensive care units than maturing communities; seems everyone hooked up with direct feeding tubes to the paid staff.

And third, the traditional church power systems rely on paid leaders in authority, whose decisions needed to be implemented loyally in deference to their position in the hierarchy. However, power is now in the hands of participants, who authorize influence to institutional leaders based on maintaining a relationship of trust. This means participants may well not continue their involvement if trust is not established after a reasonable period of relating, or if it is broken and not mended. Too often, we are promised nice things, but the follow-through is lacking and that breaks trust. Thus, I would urge leaders to review all “systems issues” and “church service styles” in light of TRUST. If mutual trust is not the core of bridging generations and paradigms, then the legacy of the Traditionals and Pragmatics will not be sustained, even with well-intentioned “tweaks” of programs and structures in order to seem more Holistic-friendly.

I’m grappling with how to have integrity and keep these polarities in tension – especially since I have a distinct preference, but also realize that these two systems (Traditional/Pragmatic “versus” Holistics) are going to co-exist for quite some time in the future. Still, I must come down on the side of following Jesus Christ first of all, regardless of whether I come across, ironically, as naughty or nice.

Sidenote: These days, I’m using the Farrelly Brothers’ 2003 film, Stuck On You, to illustrate the problem. Their movie centers on Bob and Walt Tenor, conjoined twins played by Matt Damon (Bob) and Greg Kinnear (Walt). They explain the fact that Greg (is and) looks at least 10 years older than Matt by saying that Bob’s side has most of the one liver they share, so Walt ages faster. This also means that if they attempt surgical separation, Walt has a greater chance of dying.

I think it is almost too vivid a metaphor of the current Christendom situation in America, with “culturally conjoined” twins of paradigms on the decline organically connected to those in the ascendancy. The Traditional and Pragmatic paradigm churches have less “spiritual liver” to filter out current toxins in their system, and when they are separated from Holistic paradigm leaders, they really have a far less chance of survival.

Where do issues of relevance come into play? For example, if you lead a church, is your church experiencing tension between the message and lifestyle of Jesus and the prevailing cultural (city, nation, tribe) in which you are located?

I live in Marin County, California, reputed to be the least populated with Christians of any American county. Sadly, Marin presents its own microcosm of the malady of being “culturologically challenged,” but I actually think it’s just that we’re ahead of the curve in terms of the global shift to a Holistic paradigm. What Christians face here is what will become the norm in the post-Christendom era when it is as strong here as it already is in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. And, I hate to say this so bluntly, but, oh well, here it is: We in the American Church overall are irrelevant to culture in just about every theological discipline.

Epistemologically, we are still behind our community’s curve in acknowledging and practicing the important differences providentially among the ways God “wired” people to process information. We are still linear thinkers in a culture increasingly dominated by non-linear thinking.

Apologetically, we still tend to answer questions no one is asking. Marin County church culture is still based primarily on apologetics for skeptics, when nearly all people here seem to embrace some kind of spirituality. (In my 15 years here, I have had exactly three conversations with agnostics or atheists.) Traditional apologetics of linear “logic” and debate don’t work with Marinite non-skeptics, who are more into dialogue and plunging into spiritual experiences with interpretation of the experience to follow.

Missiological and ecclesiologically, we tend to focus on church worship services for evangelism rather than for discipleship. Most evangelical churches here still rely on the “attractional model” of evangelism at church buildings, when there is no local cultural practice in this community of going to church, and has not been for decades. (It is not that uncommon to encounter people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and even 50s who have NEVER set foot in a church except perhaps for a funeral!) In a wealthy culture dominated by social and business entrepreneurs – and where many people hire nannies, personal trainers, and personal chefs – the churches’ distinction between paid “clergy” and volunteer “laity” reinforces false expectations of who should minister, and that clergy are there as sort of on-demand spiritual directors.

Theologically, our churches have gaping holes in our systems. Marin culture is strongly occultural, yet the seminary programs I am aware of (locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally) rarely prepare leaders for living respectfully yet counterculturally in a world steeped in neo-paganism, wicca, esotericism, Christopaganism, JudaiBuddhaism, Gnosticism, animism, and other missing-the-mark forms of mysticisms. Our theological systems neglect theodicy and spiritual warfare (the Bible’s overarching narrative framework of God justifying that He truly is both righteous and loving in the context of angels, demons, humans, and creation). Without these frameworks, we remain anemic in the face of thin-space spiritualities that expect the realm of the invisible to break through into the visible, and that call for signs and wonders. This is the culturally emerging reality, regardless of whether we are from theological backgrounds where power encounter practices are assumed or dismissed.

Sociologically, the San Francisco Bay Area is reputed to have more non-profit agencies started and/or headquartered here per capita than anywhere else in the U.S. Social impact is in the community culture; it is one of their chief alternatives to “church.” However, American Church culture expects relatively quick change. Social transformation catalyzed by changes in individuals, couples, families, and affinity groups is far slower. Evangelical and theologically conservative churches here struggle to become involved meaningfully in community work; it appears theologically liberal ones sometimes struggle to differentiate themselves from mere community work.

Seems to me that a resurrection from dearth (if not death!) is needed for us to earn the right to speak into the depths of our societies.

Personally, what challenges do you see regarding living out your faith in your culture?

In relation to Christendom cultures, I have to face up to my disappointment with church-as-usual. I waver on the edge of losing hope for existing churches that refuse to change … is it just “anticipatory grief” before an unalterable future? … but that would mean I’m losing trust in God’s providential sustaining of His people. And that is never a good position to be in.

In relation to my community, it’s always a challenge to avoid miscommunication while simply going about daily life. Also, I need to steward my community involvements better to be in areas for which I have a sustainable passion.

And in all things, I’m trying not to just be nice anymore …

What changes are you making to communicate relevancy to the people around you?

Relevant communication of the Gospel certainly is ironic for those of us who claim a more paradoxical perspective as evangelicals: works are not enough, but words are often too much. So, I continue to pursue becoming a better listener. If I cannot (or will not) listen well, how can I discern and respond meaningfully to the actual questions and issues that people around me are raising? If I cannot (or will not) consider how God’s providence permeates the world surrounding me and those I encounter, how can I follow faithfully to know the wisest times to act and wisest things to speak? Without listening reflectively in the cultural in-between zone of God’s commands and wisdom, and human need, I will never be relevant, nor communicate relevancy.

Would you share stories and additional information regarding your experiences of relevance in church and ministry life?

Well, this has sure been a boatload of apparent negativity – “reverse mentoring,” as my Abbess friend Peggy Brown calls such experiences. Lemme see if I can come up with at least one story that’s more constructive and hopeful.

Okay, how about this: I think I am seeing a resurgence of passion among several dozen men and women here, all friends from their 20s to their 60s, who would probably resonate with the label of “disenchanted disciple.” Although their wounds from and disappointment with established churches run deep, they have responded with an even deeper pursuit of following Jesus Christ.

In my perspective, spiritual maturity comes in great part from working through suffering and finding God’s redemptive edge in our difficult circumstances. I see this happening among many, many friends as we process life together and look for God’s providence in all things. We are gradually becoming church with one another, no longer just doing church together. Through transformation of their (and my) disenchantment back to hope, I believe we as waves of post-wounded disciples will lead a robust and relevant Christianity for our emerging-edge, post-modern, global-culture world.

- – Brad Sargent, September 2007