The first issue of the 2010 Lutheran Witness wrote of how the church can best navigate in the post-church world of today’s culture. The articles are most interesting and informative, and have a pressing need for a solution, because it seems what the church stands for, and what it has to offer, matters less and less.
I thought of this during my walk this morning, warming up, by the way. And my mind went back to a sunny September morning when a little girl woke up and asked her mom in an excited voice, “Is THIS the day I get to go to school?” The answer was “of course”, so she went, and she is still, in the classroom, now a teacher of, of all subjects, math. A subject that has not changed. One and one still equals two. But the methods for teaching certainly have, and this teacher uses the latest and best technology available for teaching her classes.
And she is successful. During the school year the powers that be decided to visit classrooms to see what was happening. A staff member from the State and one from her Distinct planned to come to visit, and they planned to stay in each classroom 45 – 50 minutes, and then move to the next. They arrived first thing and landed in her classroom, and got so interested in methods she was using to teach math concepts that they stayed till lunch. [An interesting sidelight - during this time, the teacher had left her watch somewhere and wondered aloud what time it was, they do need to watch the time, and a lad sitting just in front of the two visitors said to his classmate, “who cares, we are learning stuff here”.]
It strike me that is the sort of the thing the Church is facing in this time, finding and using different ways to “preach the Word”. The Lutheran Church has used radio with great success for years, and has tried TV. Many churches have a website. Pastors use email and the network in many ways. And the object is to have people come to “taste and see that the Lord is good”, as the psalmist said 34,8.
In a sense, the task of the church is the same one that a teacher faces in the classroom. Math is the same, but the methods used to teach it are surely much different today.
So the WORD, which is Truth, remains the same, and the message is always that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world. But the methods we use may be quite different than the ones used before. This is a serious matter for concern. It needs, first of all, prayer, earnest prayer that the Lord might give us wisdom and direction, guidance and strength, to carry on the work Jesus gave us just before He left this earth.
Yes, how does the Church do its work in this post-church culture? Will you pray also?
GPD 3/10/10
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