April 22nd, 2005

I've read Bill Hybels' statements about the local church being the hope of the world. More recently, I've been reading Burt Waggoner's papers on the Vineyardusa.org website. Waggoner is writing about building community in the 21st century, post Enlightenment world we find ourselves in. He comes to a very similar conclusion as Hybels...that is, the local church is the answer to postmodern cultural despair. It boils down to something like this...out of the Enlightenment came an attitude and movement towards individualism in the West...every man for himself, "I'm my own person", "I don't need anyone else"...except, we regularly see signs in our world that contradict these cultural ideals (e.g. the fact that most of our teens/young adults feel a need to dress and look alike). My interpretation of Waggoner's point here is that there is an underlying thirst for community in a culture that screams individualism...and, the church is a perfect place to quench that thirst. As we move from modernity (the age sparked by the Enlightenment and marked by positivism, combined with individualism, which led to humanism) to postmodernity (marked by pessimism and a much stronger desire for community, leading to doubt in the inherent goodness of man), we also move from an age of hope to one of despair. Waggoner points out that the answer to that despair is the church, the local church.

More later....