David Fitch on Post Christendom
The video above is of David Fitch, pastor at Life on the Vine in suburban Chicagoland. David is a brilliant thinker who lovingly addresses some of today’s most important issues for the church. His book, The Great Giveaway, was formational for me several years ago in helping me to process what the mission of the church is and how we might move forward in forming communities of faith that embody that mission.
The video above is helpful because he lays out clearly what Christendom was, and why we in North America live in a post Christian culture now. I’ve had a few conversations over the past several weeks that led me to realize that many, many Christians continue to assume that we live in a Christian society, and therefore hold assumptions about church planting and communicating the Gospel that are no longer valid in many of our contexts. To be sure, there are still pockets of populations in America for whom the old assumptions are still true. However, more and more, especially in urban contexts, and particularly on the West coast, people no longer have a basic understanding of Jesus and Christianity, and no longer view Christianity as a valid belief system. If we are going to communicate the Gospel within those settings, we have to reconsider the ways the church forms and functions, including the way in which we plant new churches.
The video is 15 minutes, and well worth your time to understand some of these issues.
