This week wraps up the series on preaching in a postmodern, relativistic society. Please view the posts leading up to this one. 

Part 1: The Nature of Religious Pluralism

Part 2: Religious Pluralism in Church History

Part 3: The Influence of Postmodernity on Religious Pluralism

 Part 4: Understanding the Current Culture

Part 5: Bridging the Gap

Preaching to Postmodern People

Peter’s preaching is a Christian apology in the truest sense of the word. It calmly reasons with a non-Christian audience willing to lend an unbiased ear to what Christianity had to say.[1] The ultimate aim of apologetic preaching is to proclaim Christian hope as the viable alternative to the relativism of the current age. Still, Christian preachers have become so hypercautious that their sermons, at best, offend no one and, at worst, merely bore. Preaching aims to adequately proclaim the faith, making the best defense for the hope found in Christ Jesus. [2]The Christian preacher seeks to do this in a way that will penetrate the hearer’s heart. Therefore, the preacher must preach an active and working God in the world today,[3] for God’s Word is His action.[4] Two primary preaching methods are most effective in the current culture.

When Jesus was asked a question, He did not argue or debate but responded with a question or a story. For this reason, Loscalzo argues that the preacher should use an inductive method rather than a deductive method because people react better to stories because they do not have the predisposed position of belief in the Bible. In fact, since preaching no longer takes place within a Judeo-Christian culture, most people do not know the stories of the Bible or Christian theology. The preacher must present these from the pulpit.[5] In doing so, the preacher must remember to put the text into the context of the whole Bible, namely the message of the gospel. The Bible is a story, a unified narrative plotline resolving and climaxing in the person of Jesus. If the hearer does not see how the chapter fits into the whole story, they don’t understand it. In Old English, to tell a story was to cast a spell. The preacher is to cast a spell over the audience, describing the narratives so well that they become visible to the listeners.[6]While a primarily oral culture often proves more able to preach narrative parts of Scripture sensitively and tellingly, most Westerners have greater strength in the ability to handle discourse.[7]The influential preacher must be able to do both. Even in discourse, the preacher should sprinkle engaging, concise, yet penetrating asides and illustrations to move the heart of the hearers. Remember the story of David: he was cut to the heart by Nathan’s story, and it led to his repentance.[8]

Expository preaching should provide the main diet of preaching for a Christian community. It is the best method for displaying and conveying the conviction that the whole Bible is true. It grounds the message in the text so that all the sermon’s points are points in the text, and it majors on the text’s significant ideas.[9]Expository preaching directs people’s attention to the Bible and draws them to read it for themselves.[10]

In expounding a biblical text, the Christian preacher should compare the Scripture’s message with the foundational beliefs of the culture, which are usually invisible to people inside it, to help people understand themselves more fully considering the Scriptures. By preaching expositionally, the preacher leads his hearers through large swaths of the Bible’s plotline. The gospel cannot be rightly heard and understood without this kind of structure. This approach to preaching the gospel is essential when the audience belongs to those most afflicted with biblical illiteracy and religious pluralism. [11]The preacher should not assume his congregation understands the Christian faith. He must teach theology from the pulpit; expository preaching is one of the best ways.[12] A good sermon must be built on Bible exposition, for people have not understood a text unless they see how it affects their lives. Helping people see this is the task of application.[13]Christianity will not survive with believers who cannot articulate and make a defense of their faith. Preachers must preach to train their hearers to defend the Christian faith. The expositional sermon provides the way. The effective proclamation of Jesus Christ in a postmodern world must emerge from a correct theological understanding of the Bible. This is best done through exegetical preaching.[14]

Whether you are preaching narratively or expositionally, the preacher must preach Jesus. Apologetic preaching is Christocentric. The New Testament authors were primarily concerned with presenting a theological understanding of Jesus.[15] There is some way to preach Christ with integrity from the main point in every text, whether New Testament or Old Testament. All the seemingly loose threads and contradictory claims of the rest of the Bible come together in Jesus.[16] Everything will be tied to the center, the historic gospel.[17]

Christian preachers must preach in such a way as to show people the profound good news of the truth that all their longings will be met in Jesus Christ. By penetrating how the text points the reader to the saving work of Jesus, the preacher has a great picture of the gospel of salvation, but in the end, the hearer also has a more powerful, heart-changing motivation to trust God.[18]The preacher must know his audience well enough to address the distortion of the biblical portrait of Jesus.[19]He must be able to pull from the text the Christology and impart it to his hearers.

The preacher must preach Christ through stories, illustrations, and testimonies.[20]The goal of preaching is to point people to Jesus and how everything needed was accomplished through Him. If the stories and asides are not pointing to Jesus, then they are distracting away from Jesus. The end of the sermon should not be an appeal to live in a certain way or make changes in your life, but rather to show the hearer that they cannot do what needs to be done. Only Jesus could do what needed to be done. Only Jesus can accomplish what still needs to be done in their lives. It shouldn’t encourage them to change their lives but to see that Jesus already did. All they need to do is have faith in Him. [21]The preacher must remain committed to preaching exclusive salvation as exclusive to anyone outside of Christ but inclusive in the fact that He died for all to be saved. The preacher must communicate the hope that is found only in Jesus.[22]

Conclusion

The culture has changed over the last few decades. Religious pluralism and postmodernity have infected the world where the preacher and his audience dwell. It has made its way into the church. The culture has changed, but the gospel of Jesus Christ has not. It is the privilege and duty of the preacher to proclaim the truth of the gospel faithfully. To do this, he must understand the culture. He may need to modify his preaching style, but he must not change the content of his preaching. He must remember Paul’s exhortation to Timothy. “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching.”[23]

Bibliography

Carson, Donald A. “The Challenge from Pluralism to the Preaching of the Gospel.” Criswell Theological Review 7 (Fall 1993): 99–117.

Carson, Donald A. “The Challenge from the Preaching of the Gospel to Pluralism.” Criswell Theological Review 7 (Spr 1994): 15–39.

Keller, Timothy. Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism. New York, NY: Viking, 2015.

Loscalzo, Craig A. Apologetic Preaching: Proclaiming Christ to a Postmodern World. InterVarsity Press, 2000.

Lilla, Mark. “Getting Religion.” New York Times, September 18, 2005

Reagan, Joseph Nicholas. The Preaching of Peter: The Beginning of Christian Apologetic. University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Tatlock, Richard. Proving, Preaching, and Teaching: An Inquiry into the Nature and Technique of Apologetics and Communication in the Context of the Christian Religion. Studies in Christian Faith and Practice, 8. Faith Press, 1963.