Preaching at the Crossroads: How the World—and Our Preaching—Is Changing

Preaching and Christian Identity

6 Preaching and Christian Identity Postmodernism, secularism, pluralism—these are significant and complicated topics, and I am grateful if you’ve been willing to wrestle with them. But while their antecedents, causes, and outcomes can at times feel as convoluted as they are complex, their influence in the lives of our people are often far more straightforward. In recent years, for instance, I’ve been doing a lot of speaking about the phenomenon of “digital pluralism,” which I described in the previous chapter. Much of this has been with pastors at various continuing-education events or theological conferences, and by and large, these pastors have appreciated a framework by which to name things they have been experiencing. I’ve also presented much of the same material in adult classes in congregations. There, too, I find lots of heads nodding as the folks in attendance find names and categories by which to make sense of their experience. But there is also a persistent question that gets asked, often after the presentation as people are leaving. It is a question that is as simple as it is poignant: Why don’t my children and grandchildren go to church? Of course, it’s not just a question, it’s also a lament, and I can almost always detect a note of grief in the voice of the questioner. During one adult forum I led, I was grateful not only that the gentleman who asked this question raised it during the class rather than afterward—so we could talk about it—but also that he continued and named what I think is often an unspoken second question. “When I was a kid,” he began, “my parents took me and my brothers and sister to church, Sunday school, and confirmation. We all went to church our whole lives. When we had kids, we did the same: church, Sunday school, confirmation, and youth group. But many of our kids don’t go to church anymore, and almost none of our grandkids do. So what happened?” And then came the question behind the question: “What did we do wrong?” It’s the same question we as pastors and preachers and church leaders often ask ourselves. What did we do wrong? But the fact of the matter is that we 97 didn’t do something wrong. The world just changed, and we haven’t really changed with it. The world offered us so many other places to look for meaning and significance and identity, often in intriguing, challenging, and compelling ways. But we continued to offer Sunday school and confirmation as if there were no other options. We continued to do worship as if folks have nowhere else to go. And we continued to preach as if our people already know the biblical story and just need a little more instruction and inspiration to live it. But as we’re discovering, that’s hardly the case. We now have a generation of parents and their children who do not know the biblical story well enough to find it useful and who will not devote one hour a week to an activity unless it shapes and informs and gives meaning to the other 167 hours of their week. Nor is it simply the younger generation that is drifting from church. Consider the following e-mail I received from a reader of my blog, “. . . In the Meantime,” in response to some posts about how church as we know it does or does not serve us in nurturing our faith: I’ve been a Christian all my life. Our children are adults now; one almost finished with college and two already graduated with jobs in cities far away. My husband and I have found ourselves skipping church frequently, although we rarely missed while our children were home. I’m starting to realize that our church attendance was “for” our kids . . . they attended confirmation and youth group and church camp and leadership school, and we took them to church every Sunday. And I’ve found myself drifting and doubting . . . and church just doesn’t seem relevant to my life. We frequently choose kayaking or biking over church attendance, feeling a little guilty as we do so. I’ll be honest, stories like this one make me as nervous about our future as do the mounting statistics about church decline or the rise of the “Nones,” those folks who identify with no religious tradition whatsoever. Except that I’m not really just anxious...