Dr. Jim Belcher’s course offers a necessary look at postmodern culture and how living in this time affects believers, unbelievers, preaching, apologetics, and the future church. He begins with the philosophical and social background to postmodernism, considers characteristics of postmodern people, and suggests the consequences for these individuals and the community. Finally, Dr. Belcher provides a solution for sharing Christianity in this context.
“‘Culture is popularly conceived narrowly—as language, music, art, food, and folk customs—but properly understood, it touches every aspect of how we live in the world.’” (source)
“‘The great missionary task is to express the gospel message to a new culture in a way that avoids making the message [unnecessarily] alien to that culture yet without removing or obscuring the scandal and offense of biblical truth.’” (source)
“‘Premoderns placed their trust in authority.’ We saw that feudal authority, the church authority, the authority of the Bible. ‘Moderns lost their confidence in authority and placed it in human reason instead.’” (source)
“But there’s another danger that Keller talks about. He calls it to ‘under-contextualize’ the gospel. Newbigin said this is where the church becomes irrelevant because we’ve so pulled away from the culture and have made no attempt to understand it and to communicate things in ways that the culture and the people and the world around us would understand. This is often called ‘tribalism’: when the church pulls back into its little tribe and stays away from the world so that it’s not contaminated in the world.” (source)
“He found commonalities. He found where their heart was located, their beliefs and their customs, and their cultures. He looked for places that matched up with their hopes and their dreams. He found commonalities. But he also didn’t stop there because that would be over-contextualization. He also critiqued the culture. He also pointed out their idols or where their cultural stories would fall short and wouldn’t satisfy them in the long run and certainly wouldn’t save them.” (source)