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THE MISSIONAL CHALLENGE
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| "Today no one even pretends that western culture still marches to Christianity's drum. The nearly complete secularization of the West is the Great New Fact confronting the entire western church." --George Hunter |
| The Crisis: Gone are the social functions the churches once fulfilled in American life. All churches, regardless of denomination, are being jarred and shaken by the shift in the social landscape. |
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Symptoms of this crisis take many forms:
- Deep uncertainty, malaise, and despair resulting from their displacement from places of previous cultural importance.
- Lack of focus in the proliferation of church programs.
- Loss of meaning in the work of clergy and lay people alike.
- An uneasiness that our faith does not really fit in the world where we live.
- Attempts to cling to the vision that North American culture and church are one.
- Considerable straining to hold onto the position in culture that they once had.
There is a deeper crisis and a more profound challenge. Churches are now discovering:
- How accommodated they have become.
- How very much they reflect the culture they inhabit.
- How they still assume that their social task is to underwrite the nation.
- How they have become mere voluntary enclaves for the cultivation of private morals and values.
- How they have adopted the culture's reigning "plausibility structure," the dominant system for determining what things are possible or feasible to believe, and in so doing, how they have tamed and domesticated the gospel.
This is the deeper crisis . . .
and the more profound missional challenge!
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