Ministry in Late Modernity
Introduction
The Church in the West has been in sharp decline for many years and is in need of what Lesslie Newbigin calls a “fresh missionary encounter." This short paper aims to give greater insight into Western culture in the twenty-first century, empower preachers to contextualize the Gospel better, and equip pastors to lead their churches into more significant measures of courageous, humble Gospel witness. To do this, it will trace contemporary culture through modernity and late modernity, seeking to reveal some of the philosophical challenges the Church is facing in the West. We will emphasize Newbigin’s insights with modernity and Carl Trueman’s insights regarding expressive individualism in late modernity, drawing on others, such as Timothy Keller, Rebecca McLaughlin, and Michael Goheen. After diagnosing the cultural currents and challenges, we will look at how the Gospel interacts with this unique culture, looking at what Keller calls A and B beliefs and offering some insights for a more adequately contextualized Gospel presentation. Lastly, we will focus on how the Church can “tell and embody” the Gospel during this cultural moment.
Modernity
Modernity “typically refers to the 19th and 20th century Western worldview that knowledge and reason would lead inexorably to progress and the betterment of the human race.”[1] The modern age flowed from Enlightenment thinking and stays with us today. Timothy Keller notes, “The root idea of modernity (even more fundamental than confidence in rationality) is the overturning of all authority outside of the self. In the 18th century, European Enlightenment thinkers insisted that the modern person must question all tradition, revelation, and external authority by subjecting them to the supreme court of his or her own reason and intuition. We are our own moral authority.”[2] This moved away from the premodern notion of God’s revelation being the dominant way of knowing. Modernity and what followed was the spark that ignited the move from Christendom to late Christendom and, in many places, post-Christendom, which is far more resistant to the Gospel than pre-Christendom.
In Michael Goheen’s book, The Church and Its Vocation, the author draws on Lesslie Newbigin to diagnose modernity and “uncover the hidden credo that lies at the foundation of the public life of our culture.”[3] This analysis consists of three core insights. First is the “unquestioned religious assumption” that secularism is a “neutral area into which we can project the Christian message.”[4] Goheen argues that secularism is not neutral but “is an area occupied by other gods.”[5] Second is the modern story of “progress towards paradise created by humanity… [via] science, technology, economics, and politics”[6] which is in contrast to the biblical Story. Lastly is the “idol of reason,” where “we live in a culture that ‘has prized above all the autonomy of reason.’”[7] Rather than confronting the toxic aspects of modernity, the Church in the West has accepted these cultural currents and has been relegated to the private realm.
Late Modernity
Modernity has morphed into what is known in many circles as postmodernity or what some call late modernity. Postmodernism is a “term used to designate a loosely connected set of trends and perspectives in various cultural and academic fields that have in common only a perceived opposition to modernity. In philosophy, postmodernism is characterized by a suspicion of ‘metanarratives,’ an emphasis on the uncertain character of human knowledge and a tendency to analyze various intellectual claims, including Enlightenment claims about the universal character of reason and science, in a suspicious way as a mask for oppression and domination.”[8] I have chosen to use the phrase "late modernity" because the root system of what we are experiencing now is just a furthering of what modernity started. Keller says, "We can certainly use the term ‘post-modern’ to refer to many aspects of our life in the world now. There certainly are discontinuities with the recent past. But I conclude that an over-emphasis on the post-ness of our situation can lead us to celebrate the greater tolerance, the end of ‘Christendom,’ the fall of Reason-capital-R, and the openness to the spiritual, without seeing that it is based on a kind of hyper-modernity that is perhaps more antithetical to Christianity than ever.”[9] He continues, “The underlying thread that ties all this together is the inconceivability of a moral order based on an authority more fundamental than one’s own reason or experience. That was the founding principle of the Enlightenment, and that is the cornerstone of the most recent generation.”[10]
Carl Trueman is one of the thought leaders who has been the most helpful in many people's understanding of the underpinnings of our cultural moment. His work, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and the smaller work, Strange New World, trace the modern view of the self to philosophers and other influential thinkers of centuries past. Trueman believes the sexual revolution, especially transgenderism, is the fruit of expressive individualism and the modern view of the psychological self. “The modern self assumes the authority of inner feelings and sees authenticity as defined by the ability to give social expression to the same.”[11] He defines expressive individualism as the belief that “each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.”[12] To put it plainly, the modern self is “ one where authenticity is achieved by acting outwardly in accordance with one’s inward feelings.”[13]
Trueman notes that in late modernity, "the church carries almost no social authority" and "is moving to the margins of society.”[14] In stark contrast to the honored place the Church had in centuries past, “society increasingly regards her beliefs as buffoonish and her ethical norms as immoral.”[15]
How The Gospel Interacts with Culture
It is fair to say that the Church in the West is not doing well and is ripe for a “fresh missionary encounter.” So far, we have taken a glance at both modernity and late modernity, looking at some aspects of the root system that the Gospel must address with fresh insight. To do this, we will first look at specific cultural beliefs that align with and confront the cultural beliefs and then look at some practical insights.
In Timothy Keller’s book, Center Church, the author offers a helpful paradigm of A and B beliefs. A beliefs are those that align with the host culture, and B beliefs are those that do not. Some of the A beliefs are the high value of humanity, equality of all people regardless of race, sex, etc., diversity, welcoming the foreigner, caring for the least of these, and working towards paradise. Other aspects of the Gospel that align with Western culture include authenticity, hospitality, the value of community, belief in education and pursuing knowledge, pursuing justice to restrain evil, and even beauty, art, and music. These are all biblical values that the dominant Western culture affirms and even prizes.
On the other hand, many Christian beliefs are not affirmed and that the dominant culture may even be hostile towards. These include humanity’s need for divine salvation, divine authority being greater than self-autonomy, a biblical sexual ethic, and the place of divine revelation in the pursuit of knowledge. Others include the doctrine of sin, that people are not inherently good, the justification of mission, and that abortion is morally wrong. This is, without doubt, a truncated list that could be greatly expanded and elaborated on in a longer work.
In her book, Secular Creed, Rebecca McLaughlin beautifully summarizes these insights by explaining what she tells her children when seeing signs that clearly articulate the secular creed. “When we pass these signs, I tell my children that in our house we believe that black lives matter because they matter to Jesus. We don’t believe that love is love but that God is love, and that he gives us glimpses of his love through different kinds of relationship. We believe that women’s rights are human rights, because God made us—male and female—in his image; and for that same reason we believe that babies in the womb have rights as well. We believe God has a special concern for single mothers, orphans, and immigrants, because Scripture tells us again and again. And we believe that diversity does indeed make us stronger, because Jesus calls people from every tribe and tongue and nation to worship him as one body together.”[16]
Now that we have identified some of the agreements and disagreements between the bible and culture, we will look at four insights to help us give a more contextualized gospel presentation in Western culture.
First, we should speak to the emptiness in the human heart and the inability of anything in this world to fill it. At the root of late modernity, and every other era in human history, is a longing in the heart that demands filling. CS Lewis accurately described this when he said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”[17] John Piper’s Christian Hedonism has tapped into this wildly helpful insight and is one of the reasons his teachings have resonated with people globally. Our hearts are empty, even though we spend our lives trying to fill them with everything this world has to offer, because we were made to know God intimately. Because of sin, we are separated from Him, and nothing else can fill the void. In His presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11) We should focus on how God's love satisfies the deepest longings of the human heart in a way that no amount of sex, drugs, money, fame, identities or any other earthly pleasures can. Speaking to this longing and the inability of our modern attempts to satisfy it will leverage the philosophical underpinnings of our cultural moment to lead people to the One who can satisfy the deepest longings of their souls. This is using our subjective longings to introduce the objective truths of the Gospel.
Second, we should highlight the overarching metanarrative of redemptive history. Over the past century, evangelicals have adopted a presentation of the Gospel that is lacking. Starting with our sinfulness and ending with a disembodied heaven, we have cut off the "ends” of the Gospel: creation and new creation. In a Christendom context, this may have “worked,” but now we lack a basic understanding of God and His Word, and we must restore the “ends” of the Story. This is one of Lesslie Newbigin and Michael Goheen’s key observations for a fresh missionary encounter with Western culture. Jon Tyson recently quoted Paul Hiebert in saying that Paul started in different places with different people groups in his recorded sermons in Acts.[18] With Jews, He started with the covenant, but with the pagans, he began at creation, and we must do the same. This gives people a vision of beauty and flourishing in creation and gives us a picture of the paradise we long for and seek to work towards. This Ultimate Story is far more compelling than the lesser stories of modernity and late modernity and will captivate the hearts and minds of the modern hearer.
Third, we should utilize the power of personal testimony. In a post-truth context, objective truths are often viewed as oppressive, but subjective stories are often welcomed, even if disagreed with. Personal stories of encounters with Jesus are not the whole answer and cannot be told as ends in themselves, but they can be the tip of the spear penetrating the hard soil of Western culture that can be followed by a clear presentation of the objective truths of the Gospel. It is remarkable how arguably the greatest theologian of all time, the Apostle Paul, shared his testimony in many of the recorded sermons we have of his in the book of Acts. Personal testimonies may be the trojan horse that lets the Gospel loose again in Western culture.
The fourth has to do with presenting the B-beliefs. We cannot ignore the places where the Gospel must confront Western culture, but we also cannot rail against them angrily. John Mark Comer has leveraged what Phillip Rieff calls “cultural biopsies”[19] in his preaching. This is when you carefully extract one toxic element of Western culture and humbly show how it is incoherent and lacking in hope. Rather than railing against “the culture” at large or ignoring it, we thoughtfully examine it, exposing its toxic nature. Another way to address B beliefs is by telling stories that accomplish the same things as cultural biopsies. Gently and exposing how what secular culture holds to be good, true, and beautiful but is not so and showing how God's will is "good, perfect, and pleasing" will lead to genuine wrestling on the part of the modern listener. Timothy Keller calls this "subversive fulfillment." He means that we do not critique cultural beliefs from the biblical framework outside their worldview but by getting inside the framework of the listener and pointing out inconsistencies in their worldview from within.[20]
How Can the Church “Tell and Embody?”
It is not enough to just preach the Gospel; the Church also must embody the Gospel as a people living in the reality of the New Creation. Lesslie Newbigin calls the Church a “hermeneutic of the Gospel.”[21] To do this, we must choose presence over performance, life-giving community over casual attendance, and bold mission over privatization.
First, we must become a people who are marked by the presence of God. In a culture that values authenticity above nearly everything, the Church cannot revert to Sunday morning performances void of God's presence. The previous generation moved from traditional churches focused on reverence to attractional churches focused on excellence, which really “worked” to engage with de-churched people in late Christendom. However, this does not seem to be "working" anymore, especially in post-Christendom contexts. Rather than seeking to perform, we must focus more on authentically hosting God's presence. We need to adopt Moses' posture, "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.” (Exodus 33:15)
This means spending more time praying to seek the potency of God's presence than perfection in Sunday worship. It means leaving more room for the Spirit to change our plans than sticking to a strict timeline. It means teaching people to keep in step with the Spirit daily, listening for His voice, and overflowing His Living Water into our everyday interactions. This emphasis on prayer and God's presence will bring fresh power proving more transformative than the empty spiritual practices of the modern age.
Second, we must become life-giving communities of faith. Carl Trueman observed, “Loving communities are powerful and attractive. The LGBTQ+ movement has triumphed in part because of its tight-knit, well-organized, and mutually supportive community. If those who believe a lie can do so, should those who believe the truth not do as well, if not better?”[22] People crave genuine community in our individualistic, digitized, and atomized culture. This must include more than Sunday gatherings but also the rest of the week. By our love for one another, people will know that we are God's people. The result of the Acts 2 community of the early Church, "And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47b)
Timothy Keller gives us insight into how this looked in the early Church by quoting Larry Hurtado. He notes that the early Church was distinctive in at least five ways. They were multi-racial, a community of forgiveness and reconciliation, hospitable to the poor and suffering, committed to the sanctity of life, and they were a sexual counterculture. [23] Many of these observations are crucial for the Western Church to become a compelling community. The holiness, diversity, forgiveness, and sacrifice of the early Church portrayed in Hurtado’s insights are all critically important to reaching late modern people. As the Church becomes a life-giving community that does not fit into cultural and political categories, people will be drawn into God’s love through this beautiful hermeneutic of the Gospel.
Lastly, we must reject the privatization that secularism aims to relegate the Church to and instead pursue costly mission. We will not belabor the point that the Church must live out the Gospel by making a real difference in the world because much attention has been given to this over the past few years. We must care for the poor, pursue biblical justice, adopt children, help addicts find freedom, and find other ways to make a tangible difference. The point this paper seeks to emphasize concerning mission is that of the art of thoughtful conversation.
James Davison Hunter offers a helpful paradigm here. Rather than relating to the world by separation from, accommodation to, or defense against, we must pursue “faithful presence.”[24] One aspect of faithful presence is the Church intentionally building relationships with people outside the faith and leveraging their spheres of influence to engage in thoughtful conversation around ultimate matters. Secularism desires to silence the Church in public discourse, but as Goheen says, “Some vision of truth will shape the public square. And if the Gospel is true, then the truth, justice, and freedom of God's Word should most faithfully correspond with reality and may find a response in the hearts of those who do not believe the Gospel."[25] The Gospel is public truth and is meant to be spoken in the public square.
This, however, must be done thoughtfully and wisely. We should speak up when the opportunity presents itself in a humble, loving way. Training people to do this requires robust theological, philosophical, apologetic, and discipleship training to give them the confidence to engage thoughtfully in a non-combative way. Rather than being satisfied to fill our buildings with consumeristic Christians, we must become robust disciples, willing to speak the truth in love in the public square. This requires Spirit-empowered Kingdom courage and boldness that the early Church prayed for. My pastor, Brad Cooper, recently told me in a private conversation that the world has hard hearts and tender skin, but to be effective in mission, we need tender hearts and thick skin.
As we learn to host the presence of God in potent and powerful ways, live in life-giving biblical community as an attractive counterculture to the atomized isolated world, and embody a faithful missional presence by learning the art of thoughtful conversation, people’s lives and culture will be transformed by the Gospel.
Conclusion
Western culture seems to be vaccinated with half-hearted cultural Christianity of generations past that hinders it from being infected with the true Gospel and desperately needs a "fresh missionary encounter." We have traced some of the philosophical challenges and cultural currents through modernity and late modernity, which make it especially resistant to the Gospel. We then examined how biblical revelation aligns and confronts this culture and offered insights for a contextualized Gospel presentation. These included speaking to the longings of the heart, preaching the meta-Gospel, utilizing the power of personal testimony, and exposing the toxic aspects of Western ideologies. Finally, we considered how the Church in the West can both “tell and embody” the Gospel in such a way that serves as a “hermeneutic of the Gospel.” This includes pursuing the presence of God, life-giving community, and costly mission. I hope this would offer helpful insight into the underpinnings of Western culture, empower preachers to more effectively contextualize the Gospel, and equip pastors to lead their congregations into greater measures of courageous Gospel witness, which would lead to people and culture being transformed.
[1] Douglas Mangum, The Lexham Glossary of Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
[2] Tim Keller, “Late Modern or Post-Modern?” The Gospel Coalition, October 6, 2010. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/late-modern-or-post-modern/.
[3] Michael Goheen, The Church and Its Vocation: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology (Michigan: Baker Academic), 169.
[4] Goheen, The Church and Its Vocation, 171.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Goheen, The Church and Its Vocation, 174.
[7] Goheen, The Church and Its Vocation, 179.
[8] C. Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 2002), 94–95.
[9] Tim Keller, “Late Modern or Post-Modern?”
[10] Tim Keller, “Late Modern or Post-Modern?”
[11] Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World : How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Illinois: Crossway), 22.
[12] Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World, 22. (quoting Robert Bellah)
[13] Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World, 23.
[14] Carl Trueman, “Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: And How the Church Can Respond.” The Gospel Coalition. February 25, 2020. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/rise-triumph-modern-self-church/.
[15] S Carl Trueman, “Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: And How the Church Can Respond.”
[16] Rebecca Mclaughlin, The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims (Texas: The Gospel Coalition), 3.
[17] C. S. Lewis. 2017. Mere Christianity (Michigan: Harpercollins Publishers).
[18] Jon Tyson, “The Importance of Contextualization,” The Art of Teaching Podcast, March, 8, 2023, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-teaching/id1669104753?i=1000603344806.
[19] John Mark Comer, “The Importance of Contextualization,” The Art of Teaching Podcast, March, 8, 2023,
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-teaching/id1669104753?i=1000603344806.
[20] Timothy Keller, “’Answering Lesslie Newbigin,’ Tim Keller’s 2017 Kuyper Lecture.” Www.youtube.com. April 6, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0LG26k6ngs.
[21] Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publ. Company).
[22] Carl Trueman, “Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: And How the Church Can Respond.”
[23] Tim Keller, “5 Features That Made the Early Church Unique,” The Gospel Coalition, January 10, 2020. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/5-features-early-church-unique/.
[24] James Davison Hunter, To Change the World (Oxford University Press).
[25] Goheen, The Church and Its Vocation, 194.