Modernity's Corruption of the Gospel...

Throughout the past few months, I've been learning a lot about the culture we live in and how this culture effects the way that I view the gospel. I've tended to focus entirely upon post-modernity as the enemy of Christianity, and I am persuaded that post-modernity is indeed a culture with dangerous implications and erroneous presuppositions. Yet it wasn't until lately that I've discovered how modernity is just as equally an enemy of the gospel as post-modernity. I disagree with those whose analysis of the culture leads them to believe that the context in which we live is entirely post-modern. Modernism is still a dangerous worldview which has spread throughout our churches like gangrene and the sad thing is, people are unaware of the problems.
You see it in churches all the time. The pastor walks to the pulpit and announces that the topic of his message is "5 Steps to Becoming a More Effective Spiritual Leader." Throughout this message, little or nothing is said about the nature of God, the beauty of truth, the transformation of our minds, etc. etc. In fact, little or no emphasis is placed upon the mind at all! By the end of the message, we have observed our situation and have concluded that something isn't right. We then have searched the Bible for specific verses which will help us in our pursuit of leadership and then we are presented with the 5 easy steps to becoming a more effective spiritual leader.
It is my contention that this intense focus upon method, solution, control, and power is destructive and incredibly harmful to the soul's of God's people. The God of the Bible has been exchanged for the cheap substitutes of self motivation and utilitarian power trips. We've subsituted scientific methodology for Christocentric beauty. And the result? A group of people who walk around obsessed with buzzwords like "leadership" and "purpose." The problem is that as humans, we are totally depraved. Granted, as followers of Jesus we are now partakers of a new nature. Yet this partaking does in no way relinquish our inability to change. Therefore God must transform us and this transformation doesn't take place by following a list of do's and don'ts. This renewal must be radically God oriented. We must, with the eyes of faith, see and savor something more beautiful than ourselves. We must be transformed first by the renewing of our minds not the renewing of our wills. Will is indeed important and we are responsible to actively mortify the indwelling sin in our lives. Yet beauty and knowledge must first be understood before the process of renewal occurs. Sanity, freedom, reality, relationships, connectedness, humility, servanthood, beauty, truth, Christ...all these things have been sorely neglected because of our modern approach to Christianity. I pray that God would renew our minds thus enabling us to cast off the old man of modernism. I pray that Christians would look more like Jesus rather than businessmen calling themselves disciples of Christ.
Soli Christo