Long before I ever read an article containing the word “postmodern” or “Gen X,” I knew a seismic change was under way in my ministry. It was as if the puzzle pieces no longer fit. Things were inexplicably out of joint. My guess is that you’ve been feeling this way for awhile, too.

Whether we’re Boomers or Xers, today’s pastors are going to need to figure out how to lead a congregation in an ever-shifting cultural landscape. We’ve read enough books on the church’s current dilemma to know that one of the main reasons our old ways of doing ministry aren’t working anymore is that they’re rooted in a vision of Christendom that no longer applies. At the same time, we don’t yet understand enough about the postmodern, post-Christian, postdenominational landscape into which the Spirit is leading the church to do anything more than guess about what new vistas will emerge.

I propose that the very acts of guessing, relying on our intuition, and straining to catch fleeting intimations of the Holy Spirit are the most faithful disciplines we pastors can develop in this time of change.

Remember taking a Polaroid? As soon as you took a picture, the camera would eject what looked like a blank photograph. But slowly, as the picture developed, an image would emerge. We are only now beginning to take our first Polaroid snapshots of the new cultural context into which the church has arrived. The picture of what that world looks like is slowly beginning to emerge.