Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

creative times has been, about doing things, about things that deeply affect the lives of
numbers of people” (Bevans, 1999:24).
The underlying problem of the mainline
churches cannot be solved by new programs of
church development alone. That problem is the
weakening of the spiritual conviction required
to generate the enthusiasm and energy needed
to sustain a vigorous communal life. Somehow,
in the course of the past century, these churches
lost the will or the ability to teach the Christian
faith and what it requires to a succession of
younger cohorts in such a way as to command
their allegiance (Hoge, 1993).
The Western churches do not realize -- or seem to care -- how deeply they have drunk
from the well of modernity and postmodernity. South African David Bosch says: “There
is a profound feeling of ambiguity about Western technology and development, indeed
about the very idea of progress itself. Progress, the god of the Enlightenment, proved to
be a false god after all” (Bosch, 2000:188). Bosch continues:
The foundational Enlightenment belief in the
assured victory of progress was perhaps more
explicitly recognizable in the Christian
missionary enterprise than any other element
of the age. There was a widespread and
practically unchallengeable confidence in the
ability of Western Christians to offer a cure-all
for the ills of the world and guarantee progress
to all -- whether through the spread of
‘knowledge’ or of “the gospel.” The gradual
secularization of the idea of the millennium…
turned out to be one of the most sustained
manifestations of the doctrine of progress
(Bosch, 1991:343).
Christianity is meant to be a movement, driven by a central passion -- our love and
appreciation for Christ. When the church ceases to be and do what it was purposed, it
becomes self-consumed and ineffective, little different from the world, and of little real
use to anyone. “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavour, how shall it
be seasoned It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by
men” (Mat. 5:13). No organisation can long last without knowing who and what it is; and
153
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa