After 37 years of full-time ministry — including 20 overseas — I still have a love affair with the church. However, things have really changed. Sometimes I feel like a foreigner in my own culture. I empathize with the enormous challenges pastors face in leading the church today.

Challenge #1: Understanding the Cultural Shift
Every time we came home on furlough from our ministry in South Africa we were shocked by the change in moral values preached by the media. That should have alerted me to the tidal wave of cultural change sweeping over America in the 20 years I was away. But like Rip Van Winkle, I didn’t really understand what was going on around me. I did not recognize that, as Leonard Sweet declares, the invention of the microchip would have more impact on the world than the invention of fire, the wheel and the printing press together.

I began to observe that we live in a world of people desperate to worship God with their senses, desperate to experience His presence emotionally. I wasn’t sure how to relate to a new “postmodern” view of life that favors experience over doctrine, emotion over reason. Random thought process prevails over linear. Participation, not performance, appeals in worship. Narrative/storytelling trumps propositional preaching.

Challenge #2: Adjusting to Significant Generational Differences
I desperately want to understand my children’s generation. I’m a family man, deeply committed to my children’s spiritual and personal growth. As we have re-rooted ourselves into American soil, I find that my children are part of a generation different from mine and that the people of each generation learn from — and interact with — others in their own generation. Even Christian kids who attend Christian colleges and marry Christian mates form a worldview that is unique to their generation. They live by their own set of values hammered out in coffee shops and on the Web. Because I want to be a part of this process, as a father and grandfather I need to understand where they are coming from.

My children’s generation is disillusioned by science as the savior of the world. They see the scientific worldview’s failure to bring world peace, eliminate mass starvation, quell the AIDS epidemic or staunch the flow in America of divorce and the disintegration of the family.

More significant for me as a churchman, my children’s generation has lost hope in the church as they know it, as the savior of the world. They don’t think the passionless church they know is worth saving; in order to find authentic Christianity they think they must start over.

Challenge #3: Facing the Hard Truth
I have come to the awful realization that the church I love is in trouble. Mike Regele and Mark Schulz’s Death of the Church broke my heart. It detailed what I suspected. Across America evangelical churches are plateaued or dying and literally ceasing to exist. As the older generation of believers passes on, churches are shrinking because we are not reaching the younger generations. Talented people are leaving the church to start undefined, independent, ministry-oriented churches without denominational accountability. Even larger churches are affected. It’s only a matter of time until hundreds of churches will no longer be viable unless we find a way to reach the postmodern generation.

The hard truth is that if I choose to ignore the postmodern world, the people of the postmodern world will ignore me and my church. If we don’t deal with this new reality and make the changes we need to make, the church in its present form will continue to shrink and die.

Challenge #4: Feeling Like an Immigrant
Several years ago, Sweet addressed a group of perhaps 150 pastors, most of us in our 40s and 50s. He complimented us as representatives of a corps of people highly trained for Christian ministry. He then broke the bad news: We had been trained to minister in a world that no longer exists.

In this new postmodern world, all religions are equal, and ethics and morals are based on personal choice; families encourage their children to make their own decisions about religion and to be tolerant of all beliefs. Community is more important than individualism; mysticism is valued; and people are influenced by global news, global fashion, global music and global religion. The favorite mode of communication is “story,” especially when accompanied by visual images. Anyone over 35 is an “alien” who finds it difficult to understand the language and values of the “new world,” much like first-generation immigrants living in New York City, trying to make sense of their world. I confess that is where I am.

Challenge #5: Accepting the Discomfort of Change
I have struggled to accept Christ’s teaching that we cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. I am comfortable with old wineskins. I like for a church to look like a church. I am comfortable with Sunday school at 9:30 a.m. and worship at 10:30 a.m. I don’t mind wearing a suit to church. I think people should attend a midweek prayer meeting or Bible study. I think people should attend church every Sunday. I like contemporary choruses but I also like the great hymns of the church. My struggle comes when I realize that God may want to pour the new wine of His presence into new wineskins, new forms of worship, new times of worship, new types of community and new ways of presenting the eternal message of salvation.

Common Ground
I admit that I was a little depressed about the future of the church. But that was before I heard about “emergent” churches that are springing up across our land backed by leaders who share two basic beliefs summarized by Pastor Chuck Smith Jr.: “Western culture (has) radically changed since the 1950s, and the Church desperately [needs] renovation to respond to cultural changes” (“What Is Emerging?” Worship Leader Magazine, March/April 2005).

This isn’t just a wildfire of disillusioned pastors and disgruntled laypeople. It is backed by a community of theological thinkers seeking to speak to postmodern culture with a relevant but biblically sound message and to call the church back to authentic Christianity. In his book The Emerging Church, Dan Kimball wrote, “Emerging churches encourage members to proclaim Jesus Christ through their daily lives and struggles rather than words only.”
Perhaps I’m at home here after all.