Preaching

From Neoredemptive

Proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Preaching and Post-modernity

(Originally appeared at ZealForYourHouse.com as Ad Hominem Preaching for the Post-Modern World)

One popular (and tired) emerging church talking-point is the death of preaching. It is said that the post-modern ethos of inclusiveness, ecumenism, tolerance, and dialog leaves no legitimate place for preaching.

First, I’m not convinced that this is actually the case. Our media-saturated culture is, by definition, full of preaching. The content found in print, radio, and television are all rife with assumptions, presumptions, and declarations of what we should idealize, idolize, normalize, and marginalize. The blogosphere, despite its hype, less resembles “dialog” than it does a frenetic game of thousand-team position-statement volleyball. Post-moderns love to preach and to be preached to; if they didn’t, the industries their habitual mass media consumption props up would promptly collapse. What they dislike is not preaching per se, but either an approach to preaching, or what is being preached - the gospel. (Or, as likely, a bad caricature of the gospel.)

One thing that has changed in the way post-moderns hear the preaching of the gospel is their loss of the modern distinction between "your beliefs on this subject are incorrect" and "you, as a person, are flawed". Proclaim that divorce is sinful and a divorcee will immediately retort "are you saying I’m evil and wicked?" Say that abortion is sinful and someone who has had one will ask why you are making a personal attack against her. The modern church is often counseled to "love the sinner, hate the sin" (a concept we got from that most eminent of Christian thinkers, Ghandi), but the post-modern listener hears a condemnation of their sin as a condemnation of their whole self.

In this way, it may actually be much easier to communicate the authentic gospel to po-mos than to moderns. Yes, I said easier. The gospel only really makes sense when we understand our own sinfulness and brokenness. The important thing is to recognize not that we commit sins, but rather that our whole beings are permeated with sin, and that we need someone who can become sin on our behalf in order for us to be reconciled to God.

I’m not saying to be a jerk. But don’t apologize for saying what the gospel has always said — that the reason post-moderns (and everyone else, by the way) are alienated from God is because they have demanded the steering wheel of their life and repeatedly, habitually, and continually crashed it into the concrete wall of sin while congratulating themselves for making such good time.