|
No one has changed a great nation
without appealing to its soul.
Robert Bellah in
The Broken Covenant (1976:162).
In Part 2, I developed the
theology and explored missiological implications of five phases of
transformative revival process. I extended classic definitions of
revival into cultural engagement and renewal, seeing in the distance the
potential response of cultural revitalisation. I identified eight processes
that occur at increasing levels of complexity for each phase and analysed
the dynamics of revival movements. These were derived in a “pneumatological
conversation” between the New Zealand revival context and global revival
theories. In chapters 10 and 11, I indicated
prophetic and apostolic roles for expanding revival into cultural engagement
in societal sectors and examined this dynamic in the business sector in
detail.
But what if the culture was to respond in a cultural
revitalisation (Phase 5)? In Part 3, I give reasons why postmodernism is a
season for such a hope. For the New Zealand landscape is littered with
revived people and fuzziness. Few have questioned what such a cultural
revitalisation would look like, of “transformation into what?”
This vacuum of astute prophetic analysis allows for a multiplication of
erratic prophetic statements. The revived people mill around like the
harassed and helpless sheep of Jesus’ day, reactive to any area that is
clearly in violation of Scriptures but unable to carry their secular friends
forward into any promised land.
In Part 3, I develop the “city conversation” about a
vision for Auckland. While such a question of “transformation into what?” is
deceptively simple, we are dealing with transformation of a complex
multivariate situation when examining the modern (Chapter 2) and postmodern
(Chapter 3) urban context of Auckland.
I then interface these with theology in the
“transformational conversation”. This requires them to relate to
multivariate themes as big or bigger in the Scriptures. I will utilise two
major biblical themes, the city of God (Chapter 3) and the Kingdom of God
(Chapter 4), anchoring both back into the work of the Spirit.
Such transformation implies multiple starting points
and multiple better end points. So it would be foolish to attempt simple
statements of goals for the city (that is the role of politicians at any
time), but my purpose is to identify critical transformational
conversation spaces where these themes intersect with modernity and
postmodernism.
 Fig.
1:
The Transformational Conversation
About Vision
 
Fig. 1:
Part 3 develops a framework centring on the transformational conversation
about vision for the city. It uses a biblical framework of the ideal city
(part of the theological conversation), extends it through the city
conversation, involving contextual reflection on urban and postmodern
theories related to Auckland, then relates these to theological themes
within the Kingdom of God. Each of these adds
holistic elements to our understanding of the goals of transformative
revival.
| 
