Granted, it was southern Ireland where I spent vacation this past summer— a bastion of Roman Catholic faith, much like southern Germany. “If it’s a church, it’s a Catholic church,” our bed and breakfast hosts said.  Not entirely true—there were the occasional Church of Ireland congregations, too.

But in spite of the Catholic/Protestant distinction among the Irish, the culture of the land we visited was unabashedly Christian—modern Christian, with a pinch of creeping secularism, and a dash or two of ancient paganism or neopaganism. Each town had its shrines to Mary and the saints. We stayed in Patrickswell,  named for St. Patrick who was supposed to have blessed the local well.  There is a high level of trust in people’s motives, even when they fall far short of actual moral purity—for at least there is common knowledge about what they’re supposed to do.  There is general respect for authority, be it the church, the state, or the Garda (police) blaring the siren to flag you down. There is value placed on those things that bind people together: soccer and hurling (a unique Irish sport something like hockey or lacrosse), the pub and its ceili (music and dance), and tea.

If my vacation Ireland could be described as modern, then the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Chicago was an immersion experience in a postmodern culture.

In this culture, diversity is valued and celebrated; authority lies in the collective majority of individual judgment (which is the fundamental reason for the shift from “delegates” to “voting members”); and hierarchy is dismantled with power distributed among all, 60% to the laity and 40% to those entrusted with the guardianship of the faith (cf. I Timothy 6:20ff. and II Timothy 1:12-14).

One significant example of this shift to a postmodern paradigm is what is promoted as the way the church should be structured. The ecclesiology of the ELCA is being reshaped—not along scriptural lines, or by apostolic tradition or confessional distinctiveness—but by the egalitarianism that defines contemporary American culture. This new model of church that we were repeatedly called to embrace is being inculcated through “transformational ministry.” The roots of this movement are American evangelicalism’s conviction that the kingdom of God must be revealed by the church on earth. This is explicit in the ELCA’s commitment to transformational ministry as the expression of the church’s mission.

The ELCA website describes the mission of transformational ministry as a participation in the incarnation of God: “Through the gift of faith in Jesus Christ and trusting in his work, the Holy Spirit claims people to be disciples and gathers them into communities of faith. These faith communities, the body of Christ for the world, are gathered and empowered by the Holy Spirit both to support the ministry of the participants and to be an apostolic community, committed to continuing the work of the Reign of God.”

In this understanding, the church is constituted immediately by the Holy Spirit, rather than corporately through the means of grace administered by those regularly called to exercise the holy ministry (Augsburg Confession V, VII, and XIV). The term “ministry” is understood exclusively in terms of I Peter 2:9 with no distinction between the church’s constitutive life (engagement with God through word and sacrament) and its missional life (service to the neighbor). Thus, one of the governing scripture passages is Galatians 3:23-29, with no eschatological horizon or canonical context. Now the law is set aside; now there are no distinctions among us (and we are free to add whatever categories of distinctions may seem relevant); now we are the kingdom of heaven, the reign of God.

Further, the embodiment of this consummate kingdom is the ecclesial imperative for the pomo church. Hierarchy violates the principle of inclusivity; authority violates the principle of freedom from the law; and the particular incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth as Lord violates the principle of Christ the (abstract) ascended Lord who is present in all of us. As the gurus of transformational ministry are quick and passionate to point out, the pomo church must change the old structure—pastors can no longer be at the center of congregational life, exercising an office of sacred authority and leadership (never mind Ephesians 1:19-23 and 4:11-12ff.). Now it is the priesthood of all believers that is exercised in the church.

Russ Robinson, currently senior pastor of Meadowbrook church in the Manhattan suburb of North Haledon, New Jersey, and former director of small groups at Willow Creek Community Church for seven years, explains the transition from being a church with small groups to a church of small groups in an article entitled “Escaping the Pigeon Hole: Why small group leaders really need to be ‘pastors’—and vice versa.” He writes: “Small group leaders are the most strategic people in the life changing process. Really the goal in small group ministry should be to have small group leaders as ‘pastors’ of the church… Their role is to be the practical expression of the priesthood of all believers; they really do the pastoral ministry of the church. They need to be granted this authority and empowered to not just connect people into groups but also help people take their next step spiritually.”

Similarly, the ELCA webpage on transformational ministry states: “Because systems move only with direction, leadership is a key component… This leadership is best exhibited in the development of a team… Congregations that utilize only pastoral leadership in the change process also risk regressing if and when the pastor moves on to another ministry. It is the strength of lay leadership, combined with empowering pastoral leadership, which will be the most effective in congregational change."

Now as far as it goes, there is valuable truth in that. The pastor cannot and should not do everything. We all are called to use our gifts for the upbuilding of the body of Christ.  The witness to Jesus Christ in the wider community is the work of all Christians.

But when the life of the church internally is confused with the mission of the church externally, the integrity of both is compromised. So it comes as no surprise that in the pomo church, leadership skills trump both biblical knowledge and theological acumen for pastoral candidates, who are valued most for their charisma and ability to motivate believers’ engagement in service ministries in the world. The cost to the church may not be seen in this generation, but it will surface in time.

As Martin Luther wrote in his 1528 Preface to the Small Catechism: “The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare [publish] this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form. Mercy! Good God! what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many pastors are altogether incapable and incompetent to teach [so much so, that one is ashamed to speak of it]. Nevertheless, all maintain that they are Christians, have been baptized and receive the [common] holy Sacraments. Yet they [do not understand and] cannot [even] recite either the Lord’s Prayer, or the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; they live like dumb brutes and irrational hogs; and yet, now that the Gospel has come, they have nicely learned to abuse all liberty like experts.”

While it might be nostalgic to wish for something else, the postmodern church in a postmodern world is what we have for the moment. The important question is this: How will we share the Good News of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, crucified and risen, with the skeptics, the seekers, and the alienated ex-believers?

What is clear is this: The pomo church will speak not only from the pulpit, but also from the cubicle, the cell phone, the computer, the blog, and the webmedia. Yet the gospel will still be handed down Christ to His church: pastor to parishioner, person to person, face to face, in the personal community of God’s people, the living body of Christ the Lord.

There may be doubts about Santa, or the spring bunny, or the tooth fairy, but there will always be the real Jesus, given through word and sacraments in his church, so that he might be proclaimed to the world through you and me.