What is Post-Christendom?

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch have a lot to say about Christendom and post-Christendom. They believe the epoch of Christendom is over. What do you think?

Here are some of their thoughts:

We acknowledge that the epoch of history that shaped the contemporary church has crashed like a wave on a shore and left the church high and dry. That epoch is known as the era of Christendom. Christendom has been in decline for the last 250 years.

Christendom is the name given to the religious culture that has dominated Western society since the fourth century. Awakened by the Roman emperor Constantine, it was the cultural phenomenon that resulted when Christianity was established as the official imperial religion, moving it form being a marginalized, subversive, and persecuted movement to being the official religion in the empire. Whereas followers of Jesus at one time had to meet secretly in homes and underground in catacombs, now they were given some of the greatest temples and meeting spaces in the empire.

The net effect over the entire Christendom epoch was that Christianity moved form being a dynamic, revolutionary, social, and spiritual movement to being a static religious institution with its attendant structured, priesthood, and sacraments.

Christendom describes the standardized form and expression of the church and mission formed in the post-Constantine period (AD 312 to present). It is important to note that it was not the original form in which the church expressed itself. The Christendom church is fundamentally different form the NT church, which is made up of a network of grassroots missional communities organized as a movement.
Christendom is marked by the following characteristics:

Its mode of engagement is attractional/extractional as opposed to missional/sending. Come to us.
A shift of focus to dedicated, sacred building/places of worship. The church in the Christendom epoch is more static and institutional in form.
The emergence of an institutionally recognized, profession clergy class acting primarily in a pastor-teacher mode.
Church is perceived as central to society and surrounding culture. The church holds a place of honor and respect in the community.
The Christendom mode church is dualistic. It separates the sacred from the profane, the holy from the unholy, the in from the out.
The church in Christendom is hierarchical. It’s top down and bureaucratic in it’s approach to leadership