Cultural Change in Personal Perspective

Of all the books I have ever written, this one seems to have caused me more heart-searching than most. In the process of reflecting on its theme, and then trying to express what I have to say in a way that will be both engaging and clear, there have been several moments when I have been forced to step back, and ask myself some fundamental questions about it. For all their diversity, these questions have always come back to a handful of basic issues that can be summarized in a series of questions. What am I trying to do here? What are the significant issues that concern me in relation to the present state and future destiny of the Christian Church in Western culture? How and why have I arrived at this particular understanding of the situation? And what do I hope to achieve by sharing these thoughts with a wider readership?

Of course, I am not coming at these questions from nowhere. This is now the fourth book I have written in as many years, seeking to engage with the challenge facing the Church in the context of the rapid and, to a large extent, unpredictable cultural change that we see all around us.1 Maybe that is itself part of the reason why I have kept returning to such fundamental questions of purpose and intention. Throughout the 1990s, Christian analysts and church strategists have invested a good deal of time and energy in the effort to understand what has variously been called postmodernism, postmodernity, or (my own preference) post-modernity.2 But what do we mean, and what difference is all our analysis and speculation actually making to the work and witness of the Church in the world? As I have listened to both academics and church leaders expounding ever more complex definitions of the nature of the cultural change which, quite clearly, is a reality, I have often asked myself whether we really know what we are talking about. Are our efforts at cultural analysis truly describing what is there in any objective sense at all, or are we merely deluding ourselves with the thought that, if we are able to name a thing, we can also be in control of it, and therefore it becomes less of a threat to our familiar systems and lifestyles? The fact that many would dismiss the possibility of objective knowledge of anything at all, claiming that this is in itself yet another sign of the emergence of a new way of understanding reality, only serves to emphasize the importance of the question.3 Could it be that, in our laudable efforts to understand what is going on, we have ended up being more precise than the evidence allows or requires us to be, and that by carefully crafting our church strategies to match this perception of the needs and concerns of those who as yet are not Christian, we are not only failing to make any discernible difference (wherever we look, the Church is still in serious decline), but we are also, like the emperor in Hans Christian Anderson's famous story, not as well clothed as we imagine ourselves to be?

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