Mission Implausible

In many ways the task before the church seems an impossible one. How on earth can we engagingly relate with a fast-changing world? What are we to do to demonstrate that the church is a point of resolution for society's struggles? Duncan MacLaren, in "Mission Implausible" (Paternoster, 2004) certainly recognises the problem - p. 22/3 - “Against the gleaming backdrop of cutting-edge technology, Christian faith looks a little tired. Its homely doctrine of providence – God is working his purpose out as year succeeds year – cannot compete with the adrenaline-rush injected by scientific and technological progress. Nor can its story compete with technology’s underlying evolutionary narrative. More than that, whereas progress exalts the idea of the ‘new’, Christianity trades on the value of the ‘old’, the traditional and the authoritative. In a world bewitched by progress, Christianity suffers cognitive dissonance; it tries to tell the old, old story, but people think they have heard it before. Who wants to hear the obsolete, obsolete story? In the modern world, then, while science, ‘is a culturally successful – or rather, perhaps better, confident – form of practice, in the West the church is not’.” So what are we to do to make this implausible mission plausible and effective in the communities in which we are set?