Right on.  The contemporary rejection of the idea of human sinfulness is justified insofar as the church has misportrayed it.  Too often, ‘sin’ is viewed as an obscure offense against an angry deity.  While sin can certainly offend and anger God, I think the Church owes it to its own credibility to define sin in terms of brokenness.  Consequently, Jesus’ earthly ministry and his work on the cross serve not to appease a bloodthirsty god, but rather to heal humanity.  And although the concept of ‘sin’ is problematic to many outside the church, few would deny that humanity (and the world) is in need of some kind of healing.

So to mutant’s original thought that "a) the message of Jesus is of him as redeemer and ourselves as sinners in need of redemption, and that b) this is largely anathema to the post-modern & secular mind" highlights the discrepancy between how Christians think of ‘sin’ and ‘redemption’, and how those two same terms evoke completely different thoughts among the unchurched.  Because the emerging church wants to be relevant, it needs to convey the key concepts of sin and redemption in a way that bypasses the red flags those words bring up in most people’s minds.