Post-Church or Post-Churched?

There's no question that there has been a fundamental shift in the worldview of Western culture.  We are no longer a modern society, but what we have become is difficult to define.  The best handle that we've been able to attach to it is "postmodern",  a title that will undoubtedly change once we arrive at a destination and can stop describing what we are not.  As part of this cultural shift, the church has experienced a change in its role in our society.  In modernity, the church maintained an influential role in our culture.  But now, like society, the church is in the midst of an identity crisis. 

Attempts to describe the current situation of the church with a term or a title has proven to be as difficult as nailing down the new paradigms of our society.  Just as the culture's worldview is being described in terms of being "post" what it most recently was, the situation of the church is frequently discussed as being "post."  That might work well for the church, but only if we understand what it is that we are "post" of.

The most prevalent view of the current situation of the church in America is captured by referring to our culture as "post-church."  Unfortunately, that term is defined as widely as it is used.  For some it means that the church has lost its place of influence in our culture.  For others it means that the institutional church, especially the mainline denominations, are as good as gone even though they will continue to exist for some time.  Taken to its logical end, some use the term to describe the church as being in its death throes as it approaches an inevitable extinction.   Trends, statistics, surveys, etc. are frequently cited to support and promote one or another of these definitions of post-church.  Whichever of these definitions we end up settling on, we should be asking ourselves why we're planting churches if we truly are a post-church culture.

Thankfully, post-church does not accurately describe the current religious landscape of America.  With thousands of churches in communities throughout our nation, we obviously are not post-church as a culture.  Yes, there has been serious decline in membership, in attendance,  in financial support, and in the church's influence in American society, but these losses do not equate to being post-church.  Instead they reflect the reality that we as a culture are post-churched.

Understanding the difference between being a post-church culture or a post-churched culture is critically important to church planting.  If we truly are a post-church culture, planting churches would be a pointless waste of resources.  What purpose would more churches serve in a culture that has no use for churches?  It would make as much sense as producing 8-track tape players in our digital age.  No matter how many features you added to the player, how well you marketed the benefits of 8-track over MP3, or disparaged the social and economic consequences of digital media, the culture has moved on and will not ever return to the 8-track platform.  We are truly a post-8-track culture.  So, if we are genuinely a post-church culture, planting churches, even vastly "improved" and wonderfully marketed churches, is pointless.  And, logically, those arguing for planting of "culturally relevant" churches are to be pitied most of all in a post-church culture. 

Fortunately, we are not a post-church culture, but a post-churched culture.  This term captures the reality that a majority of Americans are not churched.  Some of the non-churched were once churched, but have left the church for one reason or another.  Others, an increasing majority, have never been churched.  Once we see that the loss of the church's influence in our society is not a direct result of our culture's worldview shifting from modernism but is a function of the decreased participation in the church by a steadily increasing majority of Americans -- that we are a post-churched, not a post-church, culture -- we can go about the task of planting churches that effectively engage the non-churched through Word and Sacrament ministry which transcends all cultures and cultural shifts.