Terry, I don't get to the Blog much at WC but both of your recent comments were (unfortunately)  right on.  That has been a problem with the Christian church as of the past few years (most of my life).  The emphasis has been on evangelization without effort towards the much needed aspect of Christianity called discipleship.  People don't know what they "believe"; they just remember making a decision upteen years ago and are resting on that.   Your comment that we must share our faith without shame and deliberately with surety is a cry that must be heard in our churches.  As for Postmodernism,  the comment I;ve copied below is one of the most powerful and sorrowful that I have heard regarding our hobby, writing.  Frankly, it scares me.  From:  Blind spots:  Christianity and postmodern philosophy by Merold Westphal in Christian Century, June 14, 2003.

         One manifestation of this understanding among postmodern philosophers is their focus on the     "death of the author." According to one familiar modern theory of interpreting a text, the intention of the    author is or decisively determines the meaning of a text. To know what a text means is to know what the    author meant. Derrida, Foucault and others reject this interpretation of interpretation.

Under the traditional (modern) approach, the author is related to his text the way God is related to the world. The created reality, whether text or universe, contains all and only what the creator consciously intended. Authorial sovereignty is absolute. If there is any indeterminacy, whether through ambiguity in the text or freedom in the universe, it is only because the creator deliberately intended it to be there. The author has an absolute knowledge of the text, and the reader attains similar knowledge by learning to see the text through the author's eyes.

But, say the postmodernists, the human author has no such sovereign power over a text. Prior to the author's intentions are the psychological, historical, cultural and linguistic forces that shape those intentions or which sneak into the text behind his or her back, in either case shaping the text in ways which the author is not aware of and does not intend.

Whatever the author's intentions, says the postmodernists, readers will discover unintended dimensions of meaning in a text over whose production the author did not have godlike control. These meanings come to light when the text is placed in a different context from that of the author and its original audience. Therefore, postmodern thinkers believe that the meaning of texts, and especially classic and scriptural texts, is never exhausted by interpretation. We are never finished reading Homer or Hosea, Plato or Paul. (This is not to say that the meaning of the text is entirely unrelated to the intention of the author, or that all interpretations are equally valid.)