“The Church does not exist for me; my salvation is not primarily a matter of intellectual mastery of emotional satisfaction. The church is the site where God renews and transforms us–a place where the practices of being the body of Christ form us into the image of the Son. What I, a sinner saved by grace, need is not so much answers as reformation of my will and hear. What I describe as the practices of the church include the traditional sacramental practices of baptism and Eucharist but also the practices of Christian marriage and child-rearing, even the simple but radical practices of friendship and being called to get along with those one doesn’t like! The church, for instance, is a place to learn patience by practice. The fruit of the Spirit emerges in our lives from the seeds planted by the practices of begin the church; and when the church begins to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit, it becomes the witness to a postmodern world(John 17). Nothing is more countercultural than a community serving the Suffering Servant in a world devoted to consumption and violence. but the church will have this countercultural, prophetic witness only when it jettisons its own modernity; in that respect postmodernism can be another catalyst for the church to be the church.”

— James K.A. Smith

Who’s Afraid of Postmodernity?