Responding to Chuck

Ron Martoia enters the fray in responding to Chuck Colson's article on postmodernism:

In all humility, I genuinely believe this mindset is what keeps the church relegated to the sidelines of the cultural game. Let me state what seems obvious to me and others attempting to engage the culture in ways different from the modern church. Jesus did not come to bring people into a belief system that is rational and defensible. Jesus seems rather unconcerned about beliefs. Jesusí opening retreat on a mountain side with his new followers had nothing to do with belief systems or rational defensible worldview constructs. It had fundamentally to do with character formation and community building. Jesus used images, metaphors, stories. I know Chuck would wholeheartedly give amen. But why then the closing salvo that churches moving toward image and emotion are moving away from Word? Again, a category mistake in my mind. If ìWord basedî means moving away from the logical, linear, rational, analytical, atomistic, talking head obsession we have had in modernity, then I say hooray. That model of ministry, clearly a modern product and not a prescriptive biblical model, has proven highly ineffective in making the population of the good old USA any more churched, or according to Barna and others, any more biblically literate.