Fred Peatross, writer for New Wineskins, has recently offered his own contribution to the Emerging conversation with a new book titled, Missio Dei: In the Crisis of Christianity. Personally, I welcome this book and its contribution to the discussion of how to do and be church in a postmodern, post-Christian cultural milieu.

Missio Dei is refreshingly aimed, not so much at the EC crowd, but toward the existing Church - busy trying to wrap its heads around what exactly the EC commotion is all about. Peatross does well to include these brothers and sisters in the conversation.

While we’re well aware of the unfairly critical, over-generalized stereotyping offered by those who would oppose the EC conversation, at times, perhaps we too can come across as heavy-handed, blunt, unsympathetic, more-culturally-astute-than-thou, etc. And such an approach doesn’t do much to help those who are new to the conversation, still caught up in the fabric of the modern church. These people don’t need rhetoric and shaming; they need coaxing through the fog of old-world assimilation and on into cultural emergence. And this book does just that. It is, in many ways, both a crash course on the history of the western Church as well as a propehtic vision for its future.

Peatross offers a quick overview to contextualize us to the recent shifts in culture- specifically in terms of western attitudes towards the Church:

It’s important to mention that throughout the 1700s and 1800s, Christianity was aligned in a favorable position with its host culture. Every Sunday, children, with the blessing of their parents, gathered to learn Biblical values and morals. But over the last 250 years, the church has been in steady decline. Christianity is no longer on Center Street next to Town Hall. She no longer has a strong moral voice. She lives on the margins of her host culture, struggling to remain relevant; a very different position from the early days of the Sunday school.

• No longer does the church drive culture
• No longer does the church have a strong moral voice
• No longer is the church at the center of Town Square America

Oh, how times have changed. So what about today? Well, Peatross suggests that the Church is at a crossroads, needing to decide if it’s going to continue to pursue what amounts to a seeker-sensitive model, or whether it’s going to embrace a new role as cultural, and to a great extent- moral, exile. If the latter be the case, then it has no choice but to move into the culture, on its own turf, as an incarnational extension of the presence of Jesus. Peatross writes,

The future posture of the established, attractional church will not be known any time soon. The question on the radar screen of many is will she rel(y) upon professionalism to engage the assembly with homilies and praise songs while encouraging members to invite their neighbors, co-workers, and friends? Will that continue to be her primary stance? Or will she awaken to the reality of her un-favored position with her host culture and adopt a missionary stance?

Missio Dei is a great book for pastors, church-leaders and/or other interested parties seeking to learn more about the the EC and its message that the Church must change in order to thrive in the contemporary postmodern cultural stew. As Peatross poignantly argues, the culture is no longer listening when the church makes its moral pronouncements. If anything, movements such as the Religious Right have not only deafened the culture to the voice of the Church, but also soured it. This has happened to such an extent as to make the message of the Church not only- irrelevant, but actually immoral to many cultural leaders. In addition to serving as an introduction to the postmodern dilemma/opportunity, this book also helps to point the way towards the future. While Peatross himself admits he doesn’t know where all this is going, or how exactly it’s going to take on flesh (who of us does?), he does suggest that perhaps we should respond to the ongoing fragmentation of our culture the same way that retailers have:

Modern retailers are just coming to grips with the consequences of the breakdown of hierarchy and the fragmentation of narratives. Uniforms are out, as are standard décor, shelving, and presentation. There is no hierarchy of goods - watches compete with perfume, luggage with high fashion, cafés with fast food. We listen to reggae while we watch a Western, eat at McDonald’s for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wear Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong and knowledge— well knowledge is a matter for TV games.

Like the American shop owner of the 21st century, the faith communities that thrive will embrace fragmentation by catering to one niche.

This is a helpful and promising strategy for dealing with a world that is – paradoxically - growing both smaller, through the Internet and other media technology, and also larger, through the preponderance of mutually exclusive sub-narrative communities; moving, like planets, farther and farther apart from each other.

Before we can offer a new meta-narrative to draw those communities together, perhaps, as Peatross suggests, we must begin by forming missional communities that make sense, and cater to, the needs of those in these mutually co-existing, but separated sub-narrative groups. And if that sounds convoluted and obtuse, buy the book, Peatross makes these points in quick, clear and compelling fashion.