8 Assumptions Pastors Can't Make in a Post-Christian Culture

At that point, I began to observe that our politics and culture had changed. I began to feel differently about our surrounding secular culture, and noticed that its attitude toward Christianity was not what it once had been. Aaron Renn’s account represents well my thinking and the thinking of many: There was a “neutral world” roughly between 1994–2

1. Pray. Pray for our own hearts to be soft but also pray for their whole lives.


2. Learn. We can learn what causes their distrust. Practice asking good questions.


3. Bond. Make space in your life for people. They write “The best conve

American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for The Next Big Thing. We’re growing bored with the ordinary means of God’s grace, attending church week in and week out. Doctrines and disciplines that h

And I started to recognize another danger to this approach: If we assume that winsomeness will gain a favorable hearing, when Christians consistently receive heated pushback, we will be tempted to think our convictions are the problem. If winsomeness is met with hostility, it is easy to wonder, “Are we in the wrong?” Thus the slide toward secular c

I am not religious, so it is not my place to dictate to Christians what they should and should not believe. Still, if someone has a faith worth following, I feel that their beliefs should make me feel uncomfortable for not doing so. If they share 90 percent of my lifestyle and values, then there is nothing especially inspiring about them. Instead o

Being a Christian is a way of life that is too susceptible to looking back and slowing down. Its moral tradition is assumed to be too restricting. Christian faith has a very different conception of communication, transportation, and production than the constant pursuit of new innovation.