![]() I always thought of “burnout” as a rather banal way of communicating exhaustion from overwork. There’s a different form of deconstruction that that could actually destroy us. But even the churches and ministries that are not descending into warfare are aware of the conflict, and many are vigilant-wondering if one word said, or an event scheduled, might set it off.īeyond that, at the level of individuals and leaders, we are perhaps not aware that the most dangerous forms of deconstruction are not the people we know who are doubting, scandalized, or traumatized by what they’ve seen in the church. I don’t mean that every church is in conflict many aren’t. Someone asked me a few weeks ago what percentage of churches or ministries I thought were divided by the same political and cultural tumults ripping through almost every other facet of American life. It’s just that I believe there’s more than one way to deconstruct.Īt one level, we can see deconstruction happening in terms of institutions. ![]() As a matter of fact, I think the case could be made that all of American evangelical Christianity is deconstructing-at least in some sense of the word. ![]() This is true, come to think of it, of the word evangelical these days as well.īut that doesn’t mean that deconstruction is a lesser phenomenon than we think. On one level, these divergent meanings may suggest that the term deconstruction doesn’t signify any one thing specifically-not without a great deal of qualification, that is. For others, deconstructing means still believing in Jesus but struggling with how religious institutions have failed.Īnd there are also many for whom deconstructing means maintaining an ongoing commitment to orthodox Christianity, as well as a robust commitment to the church-but without the cultural-political baggage associated with the label “evangelicalism.” With all this talk of deconstruction these days, one problem is that very few people mean precisely the same thing when they use that word.įor some people, deconstructing means losing their faith altogether-becoming atheists, agnostics, or spiritual-but-not-religious nones. This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter.
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