The document discusses Christian witness in a postmodern world. It summarizes several resources that address this topic. Three key themes are identified: finding new frontiers of witnessing through service rather than power, recognizing the sacramental nature of community, and taking sides in the postmodern context through open dialogue. The collapse of modern ideologies and relativism of values pose challenges to witnessing, but the church should bear eternal truths, discover community, and serve rather than seek power/status.

1. Christian Witness in the
Postmodern World
Joshva Raja
Session 8

2. Themes on Witnessing
• Sacramental Presence
• Finding New Frontiers of Witnessing
• Service rather than Power
• Taking Sides in the Postmodern Context

3. Resources
• George Carey, The Mission of the Church in a Postmodern World
http://www.postmission.com/articles/carey.html
• David Smith, Mission after Christendom. 47-103.
James K. Voiss Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context.
(Book Review)Theological Studies (Refereed), December 1, 2003
64 (issue 4)
• 870(3).
• Lieven Boeve Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in
a Postmodern
• Context. 2004.
• Peter Drilling Premodern Faith in a Postmodern Culture: A
Contemporary Theology
• of the Trinity. 2006.
• Roger Lundin The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the
Postmodern World. 1993.

4. THE MISSION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
IN A POST-MODERN WORLD – George Carey
Three issues in POMO
• The collapse of Global Ideology
• Relativising of Values
• The Loss of Hope
Three ways of doing mission
1. The church should never be apologetic for bearing
witness to eternal truths
2. As a church we need to discover the sacramental
nature of the community
3. The church must put service before power and status

5. Christian faith in the postmodern
world – Roger Lundin
• The collapse of modern project does not
mean that the search for truth must be
abandoned; if rationality and the
imagination cannot supply certain access
to the truth, the Christian my turn – or
return to the Bible, to the church and to
tradition for the truth. (p.5)

6. Culture of Interpretation - Roger Lundin
• When all knowledge becomes application,
eventually there may be nothing left to apply.
(p239)
• To believe in Christ means in a sense to belong
to the past, to a community and tradition of faith
established and sustained by the redemptive
acts of God.
• Truth must come to contemporary persons as a
promise of redemption for a troubled world, not
as a therapeutic message of happiness denying
the pain and promise of suffering and death.

7. Interrupting Tradition – Lieven
Boeve
• Recognising the plurality – existing side by
side
• Sensitivity towards the other – God’s
Grace and Mercy alongside Justice and
dignity
• Towards a Christian Open Narrative – not
on contextual demands but on
rediscovering more meanings of the text

8. Mission after Christendom David
Smith pp-43 ff
• Mission as learning experience of the
church
• Islam and Christianity encounter – not
crusades rather dialogue as model of
witnessing – Thomas Aquinas (1277)

9. Emerging Ecumenical Mission
Paradigm – David Bosch
• Church with others – church is a mission
in itself – she is pilgrim – ek klesia called
out of the world
• Church as sacrament – a sign and
instrument of God –ecumenical presence
• Mediating salvation – Salvation is concern
of all religions – Universal salvation
• Quest for Justice – Tension between
Justice and love

10. mission
• God’s and Christs
• Community building
• Life centred
• Family orientations
• Individual freedom
• Conflict resolutions
• Counselling
• Eco-recognition