Zeal For Truth

The critique of the church that is the most broad in scope is that it has embraced a modern world view, divorcing itself from the way church has been done in the past. This critique goes beyond the idea that the church should minister to those in the culture around it by being relevant to that culture. It’s argument is that a large part of the North American church today has become to identify the church of modernity with the way church must be, and there can be no other.

An example may be helpful here. Someone may argue that, given the modern culture around us, the church should produce apologetic arguments based on science and rationality as that is the language and world view that the world around us understands. This would be a way of making the church relevant to the current culture. Another person however may go further and say that the only apologetic arguments that the church can use is those grounded on science and rationality and begin to read, understand, and identify only with a Christianity that fits within the rational and scientific understanding of Christianity. That would be identifying “The Church” as a modern church.

Often the line between the two practices is blurred. A practice may be adopted by a church because it best ministers to the community around them, but as the generation which adopted it begins to die out and the next generation takes over the church, the practice is maintained simply because that is what they have always understood church to be.

It is important, therefore, to look critically at the practices of local evangelical churches. Worship bands, alter calls, baby dedications, greeting time (the list could go on)…are all ways that various churches have sought to put biblical teachings into a specific cultural and philosophical world view; the modern world view. Arguments can be made for how biblical or unbiblical these practices are, however, that is not the point here. We must first recognize that these practices are a way that the church has sought to be relevant to a particular culture; the church should not hold these practices as the only way to do church.

As I noted in the first entry in this series, one of the ways advocated by some in the church to counter this identification with modernity is to revive practices from the pre-modern church. There is certainly some merit to this position. Reviving such practices will encourage the church to understand itself as neither pre-modern, modern, or post-modern, but as a universal object with different instantiations in different times. However, caution must be exercised not to begin to identify the church only with historical practices and rejected the modern church as it has done to the historical church.