Growing Edge: In Brief
January 1, 2003
The Conviction of Things Not Seen
by Todd E. Johnson, ed.
(Brazos, 2002)
The best way to reach postmoderns may be to return to a simpler time. Not the 1950s. More like the premodern church era.
That's a common theme in this collection of essays in tribute to Robert Webber, college professor and founder of the Institute for Worship Studies. Webber has contributed to our understanding of worship as it is affected by postmodernism, something more resembling the first century than the twenty-first century. While the chapters read like treatises for a journal of higher education, within each essay we find a simple appreciation and admiration of Webber.
"In his most recent work (Ancient-Future Faith, Baker, 1999) he defines the threefold mission of the church as evangelism, education, and making an impact on the world. This threefold mission has further implications for the church of the postmodern era," writes Dennis Okholm, Webber's colleague at Wheaton College. "We come back to where we started—namely, Webber's recognition of postmodernism's receptive bent toward classical Christianity's understanding of worship, his unwillingness to allow reason to dominate over mystery, or verbal communication over the symbolic."
Mary E. Hess says postmoderns must be taught a new (old) language: "A generation of people socialized within a mass-mediated popular culture, in which explicitly theological language is often represented as belonging only to vehement fundamentalists, must now find ways to reclaim explicitly theological language that has resonance with their own experiences."
Constance M. Cherry, who is on the faculty at Webber's Institute and is executive director of worship and music at First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, California, ...
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