Missional

Take a trip to your local college campus and what you’ll find is that non-Christian religious groups conspicuously outnumber the Christian groups. Wicca, Bahai, Muslim and Buddhist groups dot the campus landscape as never before. Religious diversity is not only encouraged but also considered supreme in today’s postmodern culture. Harvard professor Diane Eck states that, “Before 1965, we could conceive of ourselves as mainly a Christian nation but the influx of people of radically different religions and conversion of others to those religions -- Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism -- has resulted in two kinds of change: first, that these religions are changing American, and second, that America is changing the religions, evolving in a climate of diversity and freedom.” Newsweek Magazine recently pointed out “…young people are openly passionate about religion—but insist on defining it in their own ways.”

In the transition from modernism to postmodernism we have a mix of people with copious worldviews. But in the very near future we will watch a generation be born in an exclusively postmodern environment. The United Kingdom, Western Europe, Australia, and Canada have been post-Christian for a decade or more. America is just now postmodern and Latin America is a decade behind us in this transition. This being so, we need to see ourselves as missionaries; what do missionaries do? They cross borders.

Crossing borders familiar to God’s people is nothing new. Joshua sent out a couple of secret agents to spy out the land of Jericho. If we really desire to reach out to this diversely religious culture that is emerging we’re going to have to become like the spies Joshua sent to look over the land across the Jordan.