Unholy War: Terror in the name of Islam is book about the history of Islamic Terrorism and how we should respond to this threat. In The author, John Esposito, makes this statement:
“The global resurgence of religion is driven by a desire of many well-educated believers of different faiths to rethink and reevaluate the relationship of religion to modernity.”(Page 124)
I would differ to a degree—more differing from his conclusions rather than his theory that there is a global resurgence of religion. I do believe that there is a resurgence of religion, but not driven by a desire to rethink the relationship of religion to modernity–that is not new. I think, the reason for the well-educated believers are rethinking their religion is because what we are doing is not working.
I believe that this is especially true in the Christian life. God has not changed. Christ holds the answers to our questions and our needs–but our methods are tired and sloppy. It just does not work. I speak to people all of the time who used to be “in church” and for one reason or another have stopped attending. Granted that the responsibility is mainly ultimately up to the individual, but the church must take some of this responsibility as well.
We are not meeting the needs of modernity. We don’t have to change our message, but our approach. We need to be more intentional about do the work that we do. It is time that churches quit waking up on Sunday Morning before they give any thought to how the service is going to work. We must prepare for the worship service–the people are used to seeing something that is high quality every night in the television programs they watch. They should receive the same quality–not always costing and arm and a leg, nor for the purpose of showman ship–when they arrive on Sunday Morning. We need to be more intentional in how we reach out to people. I am continually amazed at the lack of understanding among Christians about social media and how it can be used in ministry. But, that is the language of our age, we must be online—we must be where the people are, or they will someone who will speak their language.
We as Christian leaders need to offer more than what we have been giving–stale bread never tastes good.
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Photo from Unsplash.com
This post is a fresh rewrite of a post titled Modernity and Religion written in November 2007.