With the current emphasis on “emergent”/PoMo methods, I was thinking how has this affected the ministry of those involved? You see, if the PoMo’s argue that language is limited to certain communities, or some other such argument regarding the non-universal idea of language many of them support, then doesn’t that defy their attempts to return to “ancient practices”? Anthony Jones, in Postmodern Youth Ministry, talks about using things like labyrinths, The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, and the Benedictine Rule section the Lectio Divina (and even a cursory analysis shows he is not alone). The problem is that teens, or anyone alive today really, does not by definition, fit into the “community” from which these works/methods were derived, and therefore, according to the PoMo standards, communication would not be possible.
While I am quite aware that there is little agreement or uniformity amongst PoMo’s, it is obvious that more than a few subscribe to such views of limited communication. Yet at the same time, they urge a return to a form of communication we can’t possibly understand by their methods. It just is not consistent.
By their own devices then PoMo’s become obsolete and irrelevant, unable to reach today’s man because they don’t speak the same language, if the PoMo’s presuppositions about language are truly correct. If they are not, then we must by necessity reject their conclusions as well, as they are too closely linked. Then, the same old Gospel story is as relevant today as it was the first time it was told, and reasonable, valid communication is available no matter the “community” or timeframe. Then we truly have a Gospel, once and for all delivered to the saints that is dependent upon the revelation of God, and not a disjointed, reinterpreted, reinvented message that is community dependent.
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