Preaching to a Shifting Culture: 12 Perspectives on Communicating that Connects

By Baker Publishing Group

The church in America is part of a changing culture, and today's preachers must be prepared to engage the unique issues of our postmodern age.

Editor Scott M. Gibson has skillfully combined the works of many well-known preachers, including Haddon Robinson and Bryan Chapell, into one practical guide written for present and future church leaders. Including questions for reflection and suggestions for further reading, this helpful resource addresses important topics such as preaching to a postmodern audience, pluralism, and the intersection of preaching and psychology.

"Preaching to a Shifting Culture is a must-read for preachers. It intensified my passion to preach Scripture, it clarified for me some critical issues related to preaching, and it triggered some ideas and strategies I will biild into my preaching."--Steve Mathewson, author of The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative

"A stimulating potpourri of evangelical insights for changing times."--Michael Quicke, Charles Koller Professor of Preaching and Communications, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary

"Timely and relevant, this collection of essays thoughtfully explores the issues facing today's preacher and calls today's preacher to thoughtfully face the issues."--Patricia Batten, pastor, Village Baptist Church, Kennebunkport, Maine

"Those who are called to proclaim the Word in a contemporary setting will benefit from the analysis and suggestions offered in this outstanding collection."--Michael Duduit, editor, Preaching magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781441242440

Book preview

preach.

Introduction

Preaching to a Shifting Culture

Scott M. Gibson

The church has entered the new millennium. In a way, there is nothing special about the flip of the calendar. We easily glided from the twentieth century to the twenty-first century. Nothing particularly changed when the date scrolled from 1999 to 2000. That is, life was not radically different as the sun set on December 31, 1999, than the next morning when the sky was brightened on January 1, 2000. More than twenty-four-hour days, and the change from Sunday to Monday, we are witnessing an era change, a shift in perceptions and assumptions. We are sensing a turn in how our culture functions. The dawn of a new millennium is a convenient demarcation. But the shift in culture has been taking place for a while over the course of the twentieth century.

Preaching has had to change. For evangelicals, hopefully, the content of the sermon has not changed. However, preachers are confronted with how they engage with the challenges of culture’s shift. People who preach, moreover, people who live in the culture, cannot help but be influenced by their culture. The question is, how will preachers respond to the challenges?

The purpose of this collection of essays is to explore some of the issues confronting evangelical preaching at the turn of the millennium. The hope is that the chapters will assist preachers in engaging with the issues they encounter as they face the changing culture. Preachers have choices to make: engage the culture, ignore the culture, capitulate to the culture, or even challenge it. This book is not comprehensive as it deals with only some of the broader themes in preaching today. Discussion questions and suggested reading lists at the end of each chapter are intended to challenge the reader who wants to explore a topic further.

One of the important issues in preaching today concerns the Old Testament. In chapter 1 Ray Lubeck examines the place of the Old Testament in the evangelical church and challenges preachers to appreciate the richness of this much-ignored part of the Bible.

Recent New Testament studies raise questions for evangelical preachers, too. Vic Gordon takes a look at New Testament issues in chapter 2 with particular emphasis on Jesus as preacher. He examines how this aspect of New Testament studies can be integrated into one’s preaching.

The pluralism of the era is considered in chapter 3 by Bryan Chapell. This vital topic is faced by preachers daily. We live in it. We see it in newspaper articles and the buildings of worship that line the streets in our towns. Religious pluralism confronts us at every turn. The question is, what do we do with Jesus? In a culture that denies the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, Chapell carefully presents the necessity of preaching Christ in a hostile world.

Demonstrating the Bible’s relevance is as important now as it ever has been. Men and women want to know if the ancient text has something to say to them today—in the twenty-first century. In chapter 4 Haddon Robinson argues for the relevance of preaching the Bible in this era. He reminds preachers that all they have to give are the Scriptures—and that is all listeners will ever need. He charts ways to make this happen.

Convincing listeners of the truth of a text continues to challenge preachers. In chapter 5 Keith Willhite picks up on the need to connect with one’s audience. One way he suggests to connect with them is through the rhetorical device of argumentation. He skillfully demonstrates how preachers can convince listeners of the power the Bible can have in their lives.

Shaping sermons for present-day listeners is another responsibility for preachers. Don Sunukjian takes up this charge in chapter 6. Here he challenges preachers to reflect accurately the biblical text in the sermon, all the while shaping it appropriately for the listener. He provides examples of how preachers can shape sermons for a twenty-first-century audience.

The present era has been a sea change of ideas, morals, and practice. The sea change can be seen in the congregations in which we preach. The composition of our congregations has altered the way we understand them and preach to them. David Hansen thoughtfully reflects on these changes in chapter 7 and discusses how preachers can address them.

Alice Mathews picks up on the changes in our congregations but also explores the similarities: preachers preach to both men and women. In chapter 8 Mathews provides historical and biblical evidence on what it takes to preach to both men and women in today’s church. She encourages readers to consider carefully how they preach to congregations today.

Preachers preach to people. People are, as the psalmist writes, fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14). In chapter 9 Rodney Cooper explores the role and nature of psychology in preaching. The engagement of the church with the social sciences was introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century. Cooper provides cautions for the use of psychology and also gives handles on how to appreciate its strengths in our preaching.

This era has been called postmodern. What that means is examined by Jeffrey D. Arthurs in chapter 10. Under the rubric of postmodernism, men and women have undergone changes in perception and practice. Arthurs explores the mind of postmoderns and then assists us in understanding how we might preach to them.

Postmodernism may be a Western phenomenon, and the next chapter stretches the reader to think beyond his or her own preaching church. Timothy C. Tennent dares readers to think beyond their own context and to consider what it means to preach in a worldwide, global arena. Tennent charts the recent changes in Christianity globally. He calls preachers to remember they are partners with the worldwide church in the spread of the gospel.

Finally, in the last chapter I explore what it means to be a biblical preacher in an anti-authority age. I look at the collapse of authority in the culture and in the church. Then, in light of the chapters in this book, I explore what it means to preach to a shifting culture, including what the challenges are before us and what it might take to address them.

I hope that as preachers read this book they will be encouraged, challenged, and instructed as to how they might reflect on, address, engage with, and practically apply the issues wrestled with in its pages.

At the dawn of this new millennium we continue to be doggedly confronted by our culture and context. We cannot avoid it. We have to preach. We must find ways to be thoughtful and reflective, keeping ourselves orthodox, as we are compelled to preach God’s Word to people today. In his biography on Martin Luther, Roland H. Bainton demonstrates that like Luther, preachers must speak to their culture.[1] Whether it was John the Baptist, the apostle Paul, Chrysostom, Martin Luther, John Calvin, George Whitefield, D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, Harold John Ockenga, or Haddon Robinson—all of these preachers faced the questions of their day, and we do, too.

With God’s help, we will preach faithfully to a shifting culture, making the right choices as we obediently preach God’s powerful Scriptures.

1

Dusting Off the Old Testament for a New Millennium

Ray Lubeck

Introduction

A few years ago, I polled a group of college freshmen in an introductory Bible survey course on which biblical book they thought was the hardest to understand. A significant number of them had difficulty singling out an individual book, simply opting to write down the Old Testament. For many people today, the Old Testament is unfamiliar at best and frequently viewed as difficult, strange, obscure, and largely irrelevant.

Perhaps the biggest question facing the speaker contemplating preaching from the Old Testament today is, Why bother? Not only are the events removed from our own times by 2,500 years or more, but for many Christians, the Old Testament simply doesn’t matter all that much. The New Testament believer lives under a new program, the new covenant, placing his or her faith in Christ. Long gone are the Old Testament emphases on ancient and arcane things like bloody animal sacrifices, smoking tabernacles, priestly rituals, strict eating regulations, blood-and-guts violence, tedious genealogies, weird prophetic antics and oracles, and all those endless, mind-numbing, and spirit-quenching laws. We’re free in Christ, right? Jesus (thankfully!) put an end to that whole system, and thus the need to know all that stuff, right?

Oh sure, it’s fine for some people to study the Old Testament, if they have the time and the interest for it. But, like knowing how to change the ribbon on a manual typewriter or how to churn butter for yourself, it’s just so unnecessary for today, especially for busy people who have real lives. Generally speaking, the Old Testament is better left for the antique collectors of the faith.

And yet, both Jesus and the New Testament writers, and indeed the New Testament itself, seem to regard those Scriptures very highly, appealing to them as bearing continuing scriptural authority. Not only does the New Testament quote directly from the Old Testament in hundreds of places, but its story is completely embedded in the story line begun in Genesis, with countless thousands of allusions to people, places, nations, behaviors, events, objects, expressions, institutions, literary forms, themes, motifs, and ideas.

In this chapter I shall contend these two points: (1) that the Old Testament is largely neglected in local churches, to their detriment, and (2) that this unfortunate situation can and should be remedied.

The Neglect of the Hebrew Bible (i.e., the Old Testament)

As one who grew up in and has spent several decades in conservative, Bible-preaching churches and having been involved in ministry in churches, at the college and seminary levels, and in many nonformal venues, I propose that most evangelical believers operate with a functional Bible which is significantly smaller than is found within the Bibles that they carry. Though they would be willing to fight any liberals who would question the truthfulness and accuracy of the complete canon of Scripture, in reality we practice discrimination as we read, favoring some parts over other parts. In what amounts to a canon within the canon,[1] the New Testament enjoys a status superior to that of the Old Testament—after all, who prefers an older car, computer, or tennis racquet?

Granted, certain parts of the Old Testament are familiar to most churchgoers. These include the stories of Genesis and Exodus, along with other highlight narratives such as the walls of Jericho, Gideon’s fleece, Samson, the birth of Samuel, David (and Goliath,…and Jonathan,…and Bathsheba), Solomon’s wisdom, Daniel in the lions’ den, and maybe Nehemiah and Esther. These stories are frequently taught to the children (you can’t get a roomful of third grade boys to sit still for Colossians!) while adults receive their more meaty teaching from, say, the book of Galatians. Beyond this, most have some familiarity with Psalms (especially those who are more artsy anyway), Proverbs (good for devotions), a few messianic prophecies, and, for the devout, perhaps some of the more exotic end-times apocalyptic passages. The rest of the Old Testament remains, for most, unexplored territory.

Neglect of the Old Testament shows up in other ways as well, or rather, as badly. One is the fact that any person can go to the local Christian bookstore and purchase a New Testament alone, or New Testament with Psalms (and perhaps Proverbs). Imagine telling the salesperson that you’re interested in buying an Old Testament alone, or an Old Testament with Romans! Now this may sound ludicrous on the face of it, but there is a serious issue at stake which underlies this practice. Isn’t it dangerous on the part of Bible publishers to choose to exclude, for marketing considerations of course, certain books which Christ and the New Testament writers deemed as Scripture? And what implications does this practice have for churchgoers also to view these excluded books as more or less extraneous to Christian faith?[2]

The Old Testament (aka the Hebrew Bible, as used hereafter), which comprises approximately 70 percent of the canon, is also underrepresented in Christian education. Sunday school curricula, Bible college and seminary course offerings, parachurch Bible study programs, and Bible translations nearly always give greater priority to the New Testament. The same may be said of preaching in many churches. I would venture to say that at least 75 percent of the sermons that I personally have heard (at least those which were primarily expository in focus to begin with) have been based on New Testament passages. More egregious in my opinion, however, is the frequently dismissive or disparaging comments that are made regarding the Hebrew Bible, that it simply requires too much effort, that it is optional or reserved for only a few to understand, or that it has little bearing for New Testament believers.

Behind these attitudes and practices that contribute to the overall neglect of the Hebrew Bible lurk certain presuppositions and theological commitments, some perhaps only dimly recognized. These are the systemic issues, while those mentioned above are merely symptomatic. While space precludes addressing each of these points adequately, let me sketch out a few of them.

1. The relationship of the New Testament to the Hebrew Bible has been a major aspect of theology for the church since its inception.[3] In the book of Acts, the church needed to address the important question of whether or not Gentiles were to be included into the community of Messiah, when the prevailing Jewish opinion assumed that the Messiah was considered primarily and fundamentally as the King of Israel. And even if Gentiles were to be recognized as full citizens into this kingdom, what is their obligation to the Mosaic law? Both Galatians and Hebrews also rebuke Jews for the mistaken notion that obedience to the law of the old covenant could possibly merit salvific favor before God, making it clear that only through a new and better way, paved by Christ and framed as a new covenant, could reconciliation be possible. In light of Christ’s ultimate and decisive sacrifice, the Levitical regulations have now been set aside. In both of these cases, lines of distinction are traceable between the regulations of the old covenant and new covenant life.

2. Closely related to the point above is the belief that the Hebrew Bible focuses on the old covenant, while the New Testament focuses on the new covenant. In this view the superiority of the New Testament to the Hebrew Bible is as self-evident as the superiority of the new covenant over the old, this latter point being one which is clearly made throughout the argument of Hebrews. Indeed, there is a polar relationship between old and new in which Testament and covenant are virtually interchangeable terms:

Old covenant (= Old Testament) vs. New covenant (= New Testament)

In some sense, then, the church has outgrown or transcended the teachings of the Hebrew Bible.[4]

3. The Hebrew Bible is preparatory to the New Testament. While the Hebrew Bible remains a very necessary part of a believer’s biblical education, it serves as a primer through which serious Bible readers must work before moving on to the higher goal of the more advanced teachings of the New Testament. The institutions of the Old Testament are to a large extent a dictionary in which I learn the true sense of the language of the New.[5]

4. Furthermore, the Hebrew Bible merely foreshadows the New Testament—what is implicit in the Hebrew Bible is made explicit in the New Testament. Thus even though the Hebrew Bible is preliminary to the New Testament, it is the New Testament that explains and clarifies what is left more obscure in the Hebrew Bible.

5. The primary purpose of the Hebrew Bible is to provide illustrations of what is more clearly taught in the New Testament. The lives of Hebrew Bible characters are designed to provide positive examples to imitate and negative examples to avoid. Thus the chief expectation that Bible readers bring to the text is that its function is to provide how-to lessons on the spiritual life. Most often, so it is thought, these same lessons are taught as straightforward principles in the New Testament, although it may be helpful to dip into the Hebrew Bible to show how these characters exhibit the traits that reinforce the New Testament ideas.[6]

6. The Hebrew Bible is much harder to preach than the New Testament because it contains so much narrative, poetry, and prophecy as opposed to the much more direct discourse one finds in the New Testament epistles. While the epistles usually contain clear exhortations on how we are supposed to live our lives in light of what Christ has done on our behalf, in these other literary genres we have to work much harder at reading between the lines in order to infer comparable guidelines for how we’re supposed to live, seeking clues for what is most often left unstated.[7]

7. The Hebrew Bible describes life before the coming of the Holy Spirit, whereas the New Testament describes Spirit-filled living. Since the Holy Spirit didn’t come in power for the benefit of believers until Pentecost, then any examination of the lives of believers prior to that event is somewhat incomplete and deficient, not fully equivalent to the dynamics of spiritual life today.

8. The Hebrew Bible has to do with Israel—its history, beliefs, and rituals. On the other hand, the New Testament describes the life of the church. This contrastive perspective between Israel (and hence the Hebrew Bible) and the church (the New Testament), of course, constitutes the hallmark teaching of dispensationalism.[8] The more recent form, progressive dispensationalism, has sought to moderate such radical distinctions, understanding the relationship of Israel and the church, as well as the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament, under the rubric of complementary.[9] However, for many in the conservative evangelical tradition, the influence of dispensationalism has perpetuated the idea of complete contrast, leading at the popular level to a minimizing (dispensing?) of the applicability of the Hebrew Bible in the present economy. Moreover, and especially in the earlier versions of dispensationalism, it was commonly held that the Hebrew Bible deals with law, while the New Testament deals with grace, a view that still surfaces frequently in Bible study discussions. Thus the Hebrew Bible is regarded with some suspicion as something that might engender present-day expressions of legalism and pharisaism.

9. The Hebrew Bible is a scrapbook of stories, proverbs, songs, commandments, etc., the parts of which can be understood independently from one another. Now honesty compels me to admit that I have never actually heard or seen in print any statement to this effect—everyone at least pays lip service to the concept of reading in context. However, in the praxis of our Bible studies, preaching, and theological proof-texting, we frequently display the symptoms of versitis—the common practice of jumping between verses without careful regard to the point being developed by the biblical authors, or omitting passages that don’t make the point that we wish to make. Even many devotional aids will offer only a single verse or two to lend scriptural merit to the author’s own thought for the day.

10. The Hebrew Bible is messianic only in those portions that are cited in the New Testament as being so. In classes that I teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, I frequently encounter an assumption, most often unquestioned, that the New Testament writers have already explored and exploited the entire Hebrew Bible for its messianic elements, and have provided these in the New Testament books. Thus there is no need for contemporary readers to attempt to duplicate their efforts. After all, the New Testament authors were inspired (we’re not), and besides, we run the risk of over-messianizing the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, sometimes there is an aversion to admitting any intention of the Hebrew Bible text to a messianic reference unless there is already

Reviews for Preaching to a Shifting Culture

[WEI En Yi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

IMHO, it is uneven. Some chapters are good, some so-so. Overall, I find Chapter 10 most helpful.