Preaching: Perhaps you are facing the issue that faces other pastors with whom I visit. We think about how you preach to postmoderns. At the same time, in most of our congregations, we are not just preaching to 20 to 30-somethings. We are preaching to 40's, to 50's, 60's. We are preaching to congregations that span world views. How do you deal with that diversity of perspective?

McClaren: That is an extremely tough issue. In the public speaking that I am doing around the country, there is an awful lot of pain clustering around that issue. The first thing is the fact that we have that pain is a good sign. It's a sign that we are in a situation more like the first century church, because you had Jews and Gentiles having to be brought together -- people on the same planet who live in different universes having to be brought together. I think we have an analogous situation. I think we've got people on the same planet who live in different universes.

I think that there are certain things that are impossible to do. For example, this problem isn't just a matter of modern and postmodern. It is a matter of religious taste. Some people have developed religious taste in a modern framework -- like an acquired taste in food. You are not going to take somebody who hates Indian food and get them to like it. It is just a taste that they haven't acquired. I think for people who are highly churched and have a very strong acquired taste for a certain kind of preaching, to ask them to change their taste is like asking them to change their preference in music or food or anything else. I don't think it is a matter of biblical or unbiblical. I think it would be honest to just say it is a matter of taste.

Then I think it is a compassionate thing to say that if some people are very set in their ways, we are probably going to have to keep meeting their needs in the language and style that they are more used to. It would be nice if we could change them. Maybe a few would change, but we have to recognize the limitations of human beings. What we have to do is not let ourselves be held captive to thosen tastes. We need to create new venues. A lot of churches create alternative services. I think that is one way of dealing with it. Keep meeting the needs of people; as Lyle Schaller says, "Bring change by addition not subtraction." But add to that some new options.

Preaching: Regarding the alternative service: many pastors have come to the conclusion that in a single worship service they cannot deal with 20's and 60's in terms of just the world view change. The world view perspective is just so different. Is it possible to do it within the same church? If you use alternative services, what are the advantages and disadvantages?

McClaren: First of all, this modern, postmodern thing isn't strictly a matter of age groups. What a lot of us find out is that when we start communicating the gospel in a postmodern context a lot of older people suddenly come out of the woodwork. They weren't coming to church before. For example, two of the really innovative churches exploring this area are in Minneapolis. One is called Spirit Garage and the other is called Solomon's Porch. The Spirit Garage is a sub-congregation of a Lutheran church and Solomon's Porch is a church on its own -- a new church plant. But if you go there you will find a whole range of ages because there are older people who have been waiting for something like this.