The Living Dead...

There is a concept in Africa (I forget where) in that the dead who have died in the lifetime of someone who is still alive live on in that person's memories. They are the "Living Dead", the dead who are part of living memory. For example, soon the generation that lived through the Holocaust will pass on and the people they knew personally who died in it will pass from being the living dead to being the old dead, the dead that are known only by the written word and pictures. No living person remembers them personally...

This is why the Church must change. Now, the Church is the "Living Dead" in the mind of Post Modern Culture: something "dead" but still talked about by a generation of believers that remembers it by going through the rituals of it weekly. The Church is dead to Post Moderns the same way silent movies, radio theatre, Zeppelins, and gas lamps are dead to 21st century people: antiques of an earlier time that, while still around, really have no place in a technological, scientific age.

A simple fact must be accepted: most people are not Christian. We are no longer a "Judeo-Christian" Nation. Thus, the old way of doing things must change. We must establish, from the Scriptures, how to reach this new culture. How to keep the essentials (God loves us, Jesus is the only way to Heaven, the Bible is the Word of God, The Holy Spirit is with us) while communicating that in a way this generation will understand. Whether they embrace it or not is their choice and the work of the Holy Spirit unto salvation.

To not do this is to allow the Church to finally become the "Old Dead" when this generation of believers dies off: obscurred, irrelevant, and forgotten, Easter and Christmas becoming "Spring Break" and "Winter Holiday" forevermore.

We should instead live out the words of the Apostle Paul:

"Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. To the Jew, I became like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings." (1Cor 9:19-23)


Mike