Connections: Lessons From a Swing
By Leonard Sweet
What time is it?
Ever feel like you’re caught cross-wise in two different conversations? Like someone suddenly changed channels on you? Ever wonder whether you’re living in the same world as everyone else, or if the world suddenly changed while you were off somewhere?
Guess what. It did. If you don’t think it did, you ought to have your clocks examined. Or your screens. At least check the date on your newspaper. Didn’t it tell you that in 2000, more Americans watched the Survivor finale than voted for George W. Bush or Al Gore?
There are many ways to talk about this new world out there — a world that sweeps away generational cultures analysis. Some academics call it “the end of modernity;” others “late-modern” and “high modern;” still others “late capitalist.”
I, and many others call it “postmodern” — a word that is used in the same way and for the same reason they named the first cars “horseless carriages.” Why? Because they didn’t know what else to call this new thing that ate gas rather than hay.
If the word “postmodern” sticks in the craw, try another way of talking about the new world out there: If you were born before 1962, you’re an immigrant in an alien culture. If you were born after 1962, you’re a native of a new, emerging culture, one where rationality has been trumped by relationality and experience, representation by participation, word by image, and individualism by connectivity. I’m an immigrant, a child of Gutenberg. I was born B.C. (Before Computers). All my kids were born A.C. (After Computers).
The question for the church is this: how do we sing the Lord’s song in this strange, new land?
First, we have to want to sing. This means moving from a reformational hermeneutic to a missional hermeneutic. A reformational hermeneutic focuses on the church and on differences between Christians. A missional hermeneutic focuses on a world where people don’t believe the gospel in the least and where too many believers keep their heads down. Purity is the goal if you’re in the reformational paradigm. Communication is the goal if you’re in the missional paradigm. The reformational hermeneutic is egocentric — inward looking and obsessed with ecclesial issues. The missional hermeneutic is “ecocentric” — outward looking and obsessed with evangelical issues that have reformational issues.
Second, we sing the same old songs in new, fresh ways — just as our ancestors have done through 2,000 years of church history. How did our ancestors do this? By putting the past and future on speaking terms with each other. By a mutual interaction between the gospel and the culture.
Consider the swing: There is a new theory among physicists about how the swing works. Previous theories revolved around the principle of “parametric instability,” which pivoted the action of swinging at the middle of the arc, and the rocking forward into a higher center of gravity. Physicist William Case of Grinnel College, while watching how children actually swing, has now posited a new principle which physicists call “driven harmonic oscillator.” The key to the swing is not in the middle of the arc, but at each end of the arc, where and when the swingers at the same time lean back and throw their feet forward.
I can identify with the swing. As a historian of Christianity, I want the church to lean back — not just back to the 50s, not just back to some nostalgic golden age, not just back to the premodern (like Lot’s wife), but all the way back through 2,000 years of history, all the way back until we are — in the words of that Sunday School song — “leaning, leaning, leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
But at the same time (and I do mean simultaneously), we must use that energy and power that comes from “learning to lean” on Jesus to kick forward into the future. Not seize the new and the novel (modernity’s cult of the new and novel still has inertia). Not even kick forward to the postmodern. But kick forward to the New Jerusalem, a city not made with hands, our ultimate home. God’s Kingdom.
So the whole “postmodern” discussion boils down to this: Do we know what time it is? Can religious leaders even tell time? Jesus told us we better (Matthew 16:3).
Leonard Sweet is the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey and author of several books, including Soul Tsunami, Post-Modern Pilgrims, and Faithquakes.
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