Crisis to be faced by Churches

“Modernity, in shaping a new set of relationships for society, was not able to create the stable, cultural reality it displaced. This was no simple exchange of centers. The outworking of modernity’s own inner logic makes notions of center and periphery irrelevant. Late modernity is a decentred world. This did not happen immediately. The long-established moral, political, and religious centers of the West were carried over into the emerging modernity, though radically transformed in content and relationship. But all the while, the notion of a stable social center within a culture was dissolving… The church’s monopoly over the private center of religious life could not last because the center-margin structure of society was disappearing…

Modernity has gradually transformed Western societies from the large, folk-type cultures of the late Medieval period into the highly complex, associational societies of late modernity. In the latter, there is no longer centre or periphery; no one is on the margins.”

From Alan J. Roxburgh, The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, & Liminality, Trinity Press, Harrisburg, Penn (1997), p.11

How can we impact such a changed society?

The next two editions of The Flame will bring some more key pointers from Alan Boxburgh.

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