Cool vs. Relevant

In response to the Relevant magazine article "Moving Beyond Postmodernism" by Joey Berrios. (link)

I still wonder what people are referring to when they refer to "postmodern culture". I have read plenty about postmodernism and plenty of post-modern philosophy. None of it suggests to me that there is a culture or group of people out there that could be called "postmodern." Obviously, not very many people share this sentiment, even though no one could accurately define who is post-modern and who is not. I think it confuses things much more when the Church claims to be responding to this ghost-culture! But that's a different issue.
Nonetheless, Berrios's article makes some great points... let me stick to one of them. Cool vs. Relevant.
When I ask people, "What is postmodernism?" the most common response I get has something to do with the relativity of truth; everyone gets to believe what they want to believe because in the end it's just belief anyway... nothing more. Ironically, the "postmodern church" has responded by trying to be cooler. I fail to see how this approach correlates to our definition of postmodern culture. Of course, they would not say cool, they would say relevant. I would call Starbucks in church lobby's a pretty obvious attempt at branding the church. To me, relevance has nothing to do with image... I mean, true relevance. Berrios makes a great point: "Jesus is relevant to culture" but not really cool. And by 'cool', I am talking about whatever is really hot right now. Whatever you want to call the culture out there, I think there is one way for it to be apparent to them that we are authentic:

Entrust our reputation to the Father, sort of like what Jesus did.

Yeah, I'm pretty much against this thing called image-management, right now. I just do not see where Jesus was that concerned about His reputation. I mean, what did He think upturning all the tables in the temple would look like? It certainly was not an image-polishing stunt. Yet, if we, the Church, ascribe to this marketing formula of putting on our best face in the public eye, carefully managing our image, when will we have time to manage our substance? Jesus put so much time into managing His substance, His character, and helping others do the same, I am not sure He had time to worry about His image. That's real. That's bold. Just like so many other great Christian truths, it's the last thing you would expect to work.

But it does. Obviously. Therefore I agree with Berrios: let's move on from postmodernism! Really, it's a distraction for the church. If you want to talk about philosophy, that's one thing. If we are talking about being Christ-followers, let's not dress it up in the latest fashions. Simple orthodoxy is good enough for me.

TwitterJesus

I was curious to see how much the word "Jesus" was on Twitter compared to some other words... interesting results.

The fact that Twitter exists and is a growing phenomenon could mean several things.  A) All we Twitterers are just self-obsessed, hoping to gain as much attention to our daily minutia as possible.  B) Twitter really is a great marketing, PR tool.  C) Twitter is just another cultural reality illuminating itself in cyberspace... the reality of constant connectivity.

I lean toward C.  

Twitter is about the act of Tweeting.... which in non-Twitter terms simply translates "adding your voice to the chorus of other voices".   It's a constant conversation.   

More on Twitter and Jesus later.

Party politics and Christianity

There are many dividers: red vs. blue, black vs. white, liberal vs.
conservative, etc. We're in trouble if we as Christians start to
view one as more Christian than the other. I've heard so much in
recent days about both McCain and Obama from Christians that seem to
suggest that Christianity always picks a side and fights for it.
Sorry, but I just don't see that in the Bible.

Here's my brief thought on politics... if postmodernism has any good
side to it, it's this: it can help us appreciate other ways of
interpreting the world, even inside our Christian faith. It at least
acknowledges that there are often more than one way to view things,
more than one interpretation. If we are humble, postmodernism can
correct our dogmaticism a little. I think believers in Christ have
to be careful to first represent who Jesus is, and then humbly hold
to their own opinions. In the heavily mediated society we live in,
KNOWING is hard; we need more humility in our approach to
interpreting the reality around us, especially political reality.
Otherwise, we'll just pick a side and join the shouting match.

In-your-face Online Pastoring: Porn-Again Christian

Mark Driscoll is releasing a book chapter by chapter online for free
about porn and Christian young men. (click on pic above) Besides the need for this
kind of honest approach from Christian leadership, this is also a
good idea because it's free but not pushed in your face... you have
to choose to access it. Pastors in this age need to be creative in
getting God's culture-ideas into the hearts and minds of this
generation... and Mark D. is doing it!

Intuitive computing: speaking into the cloud

Could the future of laptops do away with keyboards? I think so, and I don't think it's very far away. [This picture was found anonymously on some server; it looks like a prototype fusion of a Macbook and an iPhone.]

A couple technologies are really being fine-tuned right now that are
preparing the way for small but completely functional mobile computer/
phones. One is the concept of "cloud computing," where most
information is not stored on the pc anymore but, instead, online.
This allows for devices to be more like windows to knowledge than
warehouses for it. Second, voice-recognition software is getting so
adept that in 10 years typing will be as ancient as typewriters (my
prediction). At least, they will be second place to voice-reg, only
used for privacy.

So here's the central idea behind this post... technology is mimicing
human intuitive practice... touch, speech, etc. Instead of us having
to adapt to technology, technology is adapting to us, so we don't
have to learn how to type or create code. We simply speak to our
device which takes our speech into the air where our ideas float
around and are mixed with millions of other ideas. Anyway, it's
worth keeping an eye on.

New Kinds of Knowledge: The Internet as a Source of Qualitative Study

A new field of qualitative research may be emerging from the marketing/computer science sector. Tags, metatags, and user descriptors on the Internet are creating huge fields of data for researches to study trends and mass user opinions. So, in normal every day terminology, there could be an actual academic approach to studying user behavior on the Internet besides just statistics. Studying trends in the market by qualitatively analyzing tags is bound to transform mass media studies. [Thanks to a new favorite blog, thetrendwatch.com]

Text in church?

Last year, at the Future of Television conference in New York City, audience members could ask questions... and not just in your normal pick and point method. There were several hundred people at this conference! Actually, any person in the audience, at any time, could simply pick up their phone and ask a question via SMS. The questions would be filtered by someone with incredible wisdom and tech savvy, and some questions would be posted to a screen where everyone at the conference could see... prompting the speaker to respond if the audience felt it was a good question.

While this is supposedly cutting-edge, I found out that churches are already doing this! Mars Hill has supposedly done this in their youth services, while a church outside of St. Louis is using SMS in their main service. (Check out the article!) So here's the "postmoderner" question: how is this going to change the dynamic of preaching in the next 10-20 years if this catches on? Think of it! People can ask questions, get involved... and unavoidably, talk to each other during the service! It signifies the battle between inner reflection and constant connection... and yet, transforming the Sunday morning sermon into a conversation might just be the openness outsiders are looking for.