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

Preaching at the End of the World (as We Know It)

1 Preaching at the End of the World (as We Know It) Whether you are reading various preaching and theological periodicals, church growth literature, journalistic magazines like the Atlantic, or almost anything else that comments on our contemporary culture, you’ve probably been struck by the degree to which all of them agree on at least one thing: our world is changing, and changing faster than at any period in recent history. Depending on their audience, various authors and commentators may refer to these cultural shifts in different ways. Those in the church will speak of a post-Christian or post-Constantinian age. Others in business will refer to the post-industrialized world or the silicon age. Still others will indicate the distinctive character of emerging generations with labels such as GenX or the Millennial Generation. Whatever the terms employed, the shared conviction is that we live in an age of enormous societal and cultural change. And of all the various labels and handles people have tried out to capture these changes, probably the most frequent descriptor used in recent years is postmodern. While the term is now fairly commonplace, many church leaders and preachers—not to mention the cultural pundits themselves!—continue to grapple with what it actually means and what it implies for preaching. For this reason, we begin our exploration of preaching at the crossroads at the intersection of modernist certainty and postmodern skepticism. Despite the suspicions, if not outright hostility, many Christian leaders harbor toward postmodernity, I believe it offers more opportunities than challenges. Indeed, I am convinced it offers preachers the best chance for offering a lively witness to, and gaining an engaged hearing of, the gospel that we’ve had in several centuries. I offer the reasons for my confidence in the next three sections of this chapter. In the first, I will sketch the broad contours of the movement—what makes postmodernity actually postmodern. In the second, I will address the 13 central challenge the movement poses Christian preachers: the nature of our access to truth. In the third, I will describe several elements of preaching affected by postmodern theory that may help us offer our witness to the gospel faithfully and effectively in this day and age. Finally, in a fourth section, I will conclude with a few thoughts—and, truth be told, exhortations—on the need for postmodern courage. Putting the “Postmodern Age” in Perspective Of the three elements of the cultural zeitgeist I have named, postmodernism is perhaps the broadest, most currently pervasive, and probably least understood of the movements we’ve set ourselves to face. For this reason, it often feels both omnipresent and indecipherable. Curiously, the chief difficulty in coming to grips with the nature and implications of postmodernity is its very name, which is as ungainly and confusing as any descriptive tag we’ve heard in recent years. In particular, it’s difficult for many of us to sort out what “postmodern” can mean when we regularly associate the word modern with whatever is most contemporary, current, or up-to-date. That is, how can something that exists now be “post-today”? But when cultural theorists, philosophers, and others employ the term modern, they refer not to whatever is most current but rather to a distinct historical era of the Western world.1 For this reason, it will be helpful to consider briefly some of the characteristics of the modern age in order to appreciate what postmodernity is seeking to move beyond.2 MODERNITY IN A NUTSHELL Inaugurated in the middle of the seventeenth century in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, the modern era represented a shift from grounding one’s basic assumptions about the world and society largely on religious faith to doing so based solely on human reason. This shift had significant implications, as it dramatically affected the criteria the leading intellectuals of the day—and later the larger populace—used to determine what is true, reliable, and valid. In the ancient world, the standards for legitimacy (that is, the means by which one validates what is undeniably true) were twofold: coherency 1. It is important to note that both modernity and postmodernity are Western constructs. That is, they describe the intellectual history largely of Europe and North America and cannot easily be applied to other regions and cultures of the world. 2. This discussion of postmodernity and its relation to modernity draws from the first chapter of my dissertation work published as...