Following Jesus is messy. He says that when we follow him we “lose our life” for his sake. It is a narrow road and a life of sacrifice.

In Recon, we talk about following Jesus together and taking his words at face value. At first, it was so exciting for me to have a new friend, dressed in raggedy clothes come into my house and share a meal at my table. “This is really it,” I’d say to myself. “Jesus spent his time with these kinds of people.”

Then, reality starts to sink in. After the sweet smells of dinner fade, I noticed the smell of those in the room. Their brokenness in some ways becomes your brokenness. Paul speaks of the Philippians as “sharing in [his] troubles.”

When we live like Jesus did, we begin to take responsibility for other people’s brokenness – and that brokenness becomes our own. We share in others troubles, sufferings, and difficulties. We identify with the sufferings of Christ.

Why would Jesus say, then, that to lose our lives for his sake is to find it? This seems bleak, discouraging, and unnecessary.

But then there’s the beauty of the gospel. When I take resposibility for someone else’s living situation or lack of money, I tangibly understand what Jesus has done for me. Though he didn’t have anything messed up about him, he took responsibility for my brokennes and my sin. He entered into my pain and made it his own. He actually paid my debt for me.

And not only for me – but he’s done the same thing for everyone on this world! Therefore, I am actually imitating Jesus’ work on the cross when I take someone else’s crap upon myself.

When I get to live that out, immense joy fills my heart. Even as I write this, I get the “Holy Spirit goosebumps.” Because I see that there’s someone out there who loves me so much that he’d take responsibility for what is not his own – so much that he died in my place.

Every time I get to buy a meal for someone else, to weep with a friend in their pain, or to even be scorned by the one’s I am trying to serve, I see Jesus. I think that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

Now we come to the key question of reaching our post-Christian society with this gospel message. Even if we know the gospel ourselves, we still have a hurdle to get over when communicating to culture. We need to speak their language and “enter in” to their world if we are going to truly preach the gospel.

If we are to reach our culture with the gospel, we must recast our ideas about preaching. No longer do we hold an established and authoritative place at the center of society. Instead, we are outsiders. We are missionaries to an increasingly godless and secular culture. We must adopt a missionary stance toward communicating the truth of Jesus Christ.

There are two elements of missional preaching – contending and contextualizing. A missionary has to contend for the truth, but he must contextualize his message to the people that he is reaching out to. In order to contextualize, he must know culture. And he must know how culture perceives him. We’ve already talked about what we contend for – the gospel. Now let’s look at what it looks like to contextualize the message to post-Christian culture.

Our Situation

For us to understand our present situation, we must understand the transition from Christendom to post-Christendom. Since the reign of Constantine in AD 300, Western culture has operated within Christendom. During this time, nearly all people that lived were both influenced by and familiar with Christianity. This made preaching the gospel much easier because one did not have to leave his or her own culture in order to communicate the message of Jesus. In a sense, we had a home field advantage when communicating the gospel.

Social institutions instilled Christian values such as:

• Be a good person.
• Our nation/culture is the Christian and, therefore, superior one.
• It is ‘un-American’ to disbelieve the Bible.
• Christian ethics (for the most part)
• A Christian worldview, including elements like the character of God, sin and the law, basic human depravity, rewards and punishment in the afterlife.[1]
• Go to church on Sunday and for major life events (marriage, funeral, etc.).

Although the culture was Christian, people remained unregenerate. The task of the church within “Christianized” culture was to awaken the hearts of those who were already coming to church and familiar with the language. The message of the preachers was, “You know what you should be doing. Get to it.” [2]

Today, Christendom is dead in most of Europe and the United States. Instead of having a common worldview and understanding things like sin, righteousness, and Jesus, the world has become fragmented. People no longer identify themselves with “grand stories” or ideologies. Instead, they form small pockets of affinities. This is what sociologists are calling the “tribalization of Western culture.”[3]

But what about where that seems to be untrue? Churches are growing in some parts of the U. S., right? Yes, that’s true. But there’s a catch. Hirsch argues that churches that are growing appeal to a small percentage of the culture that remains “Christianized.” The situation looks something like this: [4]

Tim Keller explains:

Our growing ministry ineffectiveness is another ‘frog in the kettle’ phenomenon. It is generally hidden from us because…a very good church program can still ‘grow’ a church by transfer and can even produce a stream of converts out of the remaining body of people who are traditional and conservative in sensibility. But…this is a shrinking part of the American demographic. Eventually evangelical churches and preachers ensconced in the declining, remaining enclaves of ‘Christendom’ will have to learn how to become ‘missional.’ In other words, they will have to learn how to speak so that the unbelievers of our present time can at least understand and be challenged by the gospel.[5]

Alan Hirsch says, “What is becoming increasingly clear is that if we are going to meaningfully reach this majority of people, we are not going to be able to do it by simply doing more of the same.”[6]

            We’ve looked at what the central storyline about Jesus is, but how can we find this story when we look at a chapter from Genesis, 1 Samuel, or Philippians? When the text we look at doesn’t explicitly mention Jesus, what do we do?

Goldsworthy says, “While there is much in the Bible that is strictly speaking not the gospel, there is nothing in the Bible that can be truly understood apart from the gospel.” [1] So how can we legitimately bring the gospel into passages where it isn’t there on the surface? We must remember that there are two authors of the Scriptures: one human, one divine. When we read a passage, we must ask, “What did the human author intend here?” and, “What did the divine author intend?”

Looking at the intention of the human author grounds us firmly in the text. It takes us away from one great danger of interpretation – allegorizing. We can get carried away in our attempts to “get to Christ” and begin assigning illegitimate meanings to certain parts of the passage. The classic example is taking details from Song of Solomon and reading into those things Christ’s relationship with the church. There has to be some controlling factor to our interpretation, and we do this by looking at the text from the human author’s perspective.

When we look at a text from the human author’s perspective, we ask, “What did the human author say to his audience?” We look at cultural, linguistic, and historical elements to find the text’s meaning to the original audience. We also see the practical applications and exhortations on the surface of the text.

But if we remain there – the “historical-only” interpretation of a text, we run into some problems. First, look at the New Testament’s usage of the Old Testament. We have a model for finding Christ in Old Testament Scripture that do not explicitly mention Christ. Take the author of Hebrews, for example, and his treatment of the sacrificial system in the Law. Though the texts he uses from Leviticus do not explicitly mention Christ, the author finds legitimate symbols and connections to Christ that illuminate the Scriptures.

Secondly, we run into the problem of preaching sermons from the Old Testament (or, more subtly, from the New) that aren’t “Christian.” This is the problem of moralizing. We cease to preach the Gospel. We give people advice rather than news. We take Bible characters like David or Samson and hold them up as examples, as heroes. Ed Clowney says:

There are great stories in the Bible…but it is possible to know Bible stories, yet miss the Bible story… The Bible has a storyline. It traces an unfolding drama. The story follows the history of Israel, but it does not begin there, nor does it contain what you would expect in a national history…If we forget the story line…we cut the heart out of the Bible. Sunday school stories are then told as tamer versions of the Sunday comics, where Samson substitutes for Superman. David…becomes a Hebrew version of Jack the Giant Killer. No, David is not a brave little boy who isn’t afraid of the big bad giant. He is the Lord’s anointed…God chose David as a king after his own heart in order to prepare the way for David’s great Son, our Deliverer and Champion.[2]

Keller adds, “If they hear us, in isolation, simply telling them how to raise their children, face trials, pray fervently, or create a healthy church – we give them the (totally false) impression that they can be right with God and others through their own efforts.” [3]

Because of these problems with looking only for the human author’s intention, we must also look at the Divine author’s intent in a text and ask, “Why did God include this in the Bible? How does it connect to the Story?”

How can we find the divine author’s intent and “get to Christ”? Keller mentions five ways: [4]

1. THEME RESOLUTION – Only Jesus resolves redemptive themes. The Bible raises questions that only the cross can answer, such as, “How can God be both holy and just?” Answer? Jesus died our death and gave us his righteousness. When we see these themes emerge, we can get to Christ.
2. LAW RECEPTION – Only Jesus lets us truly receive the Law’s requirements. Galatians 3:24 says that the Law acted as a tutor that led to Christ. When the Bible gives us commands, they are not only there for us to obey. They are there to point us to Jesus. How? First, they show us our sin and our need for a savior, because we cannot live up to the Law’s commands. Second, they point us to the only one who could keep all the laws. Jesus was the only one who kept the law perfectly – and as a reward, he received God’s wrath so that we might gain favor with God!
3. STORY COMPLETION – Only Jesus completes the great stories of the Bible. This is incredibly important in the character studies of the Old Testament. There is only one hero in the Bible – Jesus. Jesus is the greater Adam. He’s the greater Moses, who leads his people out of captivity. He’s the greater David, who killed the greatest Giant in the most unlikely of ways.
4. SYMBOL FULFILLMENT – Jesus is prefigured and symbolized in the Old Testament. We see this especially with the tabernacle, and the writer of Hebrews unpacks the symbolism for us. Jesus is our Great High Priest. It’s his blood that was sprinkled in the heavenly tabernacle to cover our sins.
5. WAY OF CONTRAST – Keller says, “When we say that Christ is the completion or fulfillment of every text, that means that he is not only a comparison but a contrast to every text. Christ is a better David, Samson, and Moses – so we don’t have to apologize for their flaws. Their flaws show us Christ by way of contrast.”[5]

Spurgeon said, “My brethren, preach Christ, always and evermore. His person, offices and work must be our one great, all-comprehending theme.” If we are to reach a post-modern world with the gospel, we must preach the true gospel of Jesus Christ from every text.

We cannot understand the Bible apart from the work of Christ. So, what is the one central storyline of the Bible culminating in the work of Christ?

The Gospel Story

In the pre-fall narratives (Gen. 1-3), God shows us the world as it ought to be, free from sin and humanity bringing glory to God. In the post-fall narratives (Gen. 4-11), we see the effects of sin upon humanity and our brokenness without relationship with God. The rest of Genesis shows us hope – God begins to intervene in humanity’s storyline through Abraham and his promised seed. “We see the embryonic shape of his saving purposes: his sovereign, free grace, his intention to create a new humanity…”[1]

The exodus account clarifies both how radically gracious God is and yet how righteous and holy God is. God gives the Law and the sacrificial system as a pointer to the atonement of the Messiah – redemption. His saving work appears to come to fulfillment with David, but the post-Davidic account shows us that God’s promises will not be fulfilled by Israel.

The prophets show Israel’s condemnation as well as point to one who can restore, one who brings hope – the Suffering Servant and the Messiah himself. And in the Gospels, He comes. Jesus Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection are the climax of the story. He is the fulfillment of the themes of salvation and redemption, and he ushers in the Kingdom of God.

The church now lives in the tension of the “already/not yet.” We have already been saved by Jesus, but we are not yet fully saved because Jesus is coming again – this time to make all things right. And in the end, we see that all will be made right again. We see the new heavens and the new earth. Redemption will be fully accomplished. No more sin, no more suffering, no more separation. Jesus reigns as our Savior and our King. [2]

This is the gospel – the good news – of Jesus Christ. Goldsworthy says, “Salvation was not an afterthought brought on by the unforeseen catastrophe of the fall. God’s original plan in creation was that it should find its meaning and fulfillment in Christ and his gospel. This Christocentric perspective is vital to understanding the Bible, and the preacher should constantly remind the congregation of it.” [3] The gospel story can be summed up in three mega-themes:

adapted from Dr. Tim Keller’s Syllabus, pg 55.

1. The Gospel of Jesus Christ – Doctrinalist perspective

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” – Mark 1:1

            The word “gospel” in Greek is euangelion, which literally means “good message” or “good news.”  The most common examples of euangelion are stories of victories in wars or ascensions of new kings.[4] When we talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ in this perspective, we are speaking of the gospel as an historical event that changes how we live.

The gospel of Jesus is not advice on how to be saved. It is news about how Jesus saved us! The focus is on Christ’s work, not ours. What did Christ do? He took our place on the cross. He received the punishment we should have received and gave us his righteousness that we don’t deserve. We now have forgiveness of sins.

2. The Gospel of the Kingdom – Culturalist perspective

“And [Jesus] went throughout all Galilee, teaching…and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.” – Matthew 4:23

            Not only is the gospel the news that Christ has come to save us. It is also how he came to save us. How did he do it? Through a reversal of the values of the world. Keller says, “Christ wins through losing, triumphs through defeat, achieves power through service, comes to wealthy via poverty.”[5]

Jesus’ death and resurrection ushered in the Kingdom of God – a reversal of values. The gospel (event) brought the kingdom, but it also brings the kingdom! It in turn teaches us to renounce the values of the world and become like the king. This perspective emphasizes justice and yearns to see humanity and culture restored to be as God created us.

3. The Gospel of your Salvation – Pietistic perspective

“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed…” Ephesians 1:13

            This perspective on the gospel focuses on its working on us in the present tense. The gospel is not only an event that happened in the past, nor a kingdom that will come in the future, but it is also a present tense reality that we experience today. Tim Keller says, “ If we think of the gospel as only pardon or forgiveness of sins, we will trust in God for our past salvation, but will trust in our own present strivings and attainments for our present relationship with God.”[6]

I missed this piece of the gospel growing up in church. I understood that I was forgiven for what I did in the past, but I did not understand that I was accepted today based on Christ’s work. I relied on works for my day-to-day righteousness. Had I read my Bible enough? Had I prayed? Had I stayed free from sin? But, these are all works that I do. This perspective focuses on the grace that is available to us today!

Jesus’ righteousness is ours today (Rom. 1:17). In the same way that we came to know Jesus, we are to continue to walk (Col. 2:6). We need to be continually reminded of our status as adopted children of God, truly free from sin and without blemish. This is possible because Jesus’ work is finished. He has made us his, and nothing we do can change that.

One of the main reasons our generation has rejected the church is because they haven’t heard the true gospel. The “good news about Jesus” hasn’t been good news to its hearers. It has been a burdensome list of things to do or some feel-good jargon – not a life-transforming message of hope. In his experience in preaching in New York City, Tim Keller says, “I discovered that most non-believers had rejected Christianity because they could not distinguish it from simple morality. They could not distinguish a Christian sermon from mere moral exhortation to ‘live according to God’s rules.”^[1]

Preachers haven’t necessarily decided to stop preaching the gospel. Our lack of clear gospel teaching comes because of an assumption. D. A. Carson says, “When we assume the gospel, we are one generation away from denying it.” Living in the old paradigm of Christendom, many of our pastors have assumed that this generation knows what the gospel is. Graeme Goldsworthy says, “It is a matter for some concern that some books and study courses on evangelism seem to assume that every Christian is absolutely clear about what the gospel is, and that what is needed most is help in the techniques of explaining the gospel to unbelievers.”^[2] The simple fact is that our generation does not know what the gospel is. And those of us that know are quick to forget it.

If we are to reach the post-Christian world with the Gospel, we must preach truly Christian sermons – not “synagogue sermons.” We need to preach sermons that would get us kicked out of a mosque or a synagogue. Keller says, “Any exposition of a text that does not ‘get to Christ’ but just ‘explains Biblical principles’ will be a ‘synagogue sermon’ that merely exhorts people to exert their wills to live according to a particular pattern. Instead of the life-giving gospel, the sermon offers just one more ethical paradigm to crush the listeners.”^[3] We must “get to Christ” in our sermons and preach “Christian” sermons. How do we do that? I would suggest that we must preach the Gospel – the good news about Jesus – in every sermon.

Interpretative Methods

            . Charles Spurgeon said, “The true minister of Christ knows that the true value of a sermon must lie not in its fashion and manner, but in the truth which it contains.”[4]The biggest issue in Post-Modern preaching has far more to do with hermeneutics than it does with methods. It seems to me that most books and comments on homiletics stress methodology and public speaking techniques over proper interpretation. But, getting the gospel right in our own hearts and minds is the first step towards great communication. Yancey Arrington said, “Clarity precedes fluency. You must get the gospel right before you can speak the gospel well.”[5]

Let’s start with one basic question. What is the message of the Bible? What is the Bible’s thesis? In his book, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, Graeme Goldsworthy says that the gospel is “the hermeneutical key” to the Bible. “Proper interpretation of any part of the Bible requires us to relate it to the person and work of Jesus.”^[6] Later he says that the gospel is “the theological center of the whole Bible.”^[7] If we are to properly expound the Bible, we must preach the Gospel constantly. Why? Because the Gospel is the central theme of the entire Bible, the great mega theme running through the story of Adam and Eve, David, the Prophets, Jesus himself, all the way through the Apostle’s teaching.

Tim Keller says it this way:

The Christ-centered preaching approach sees the whole Bible as essentially one big story with a central story line: God restores the world lost in Eden by intervening in history to call out and form a new humanity. This intervention climaxes in Jesus Christ, who accomplishes salvation for us that we could not accomplish for ourselves. While only a minority of Biblical passages actually give the whole story-line, every Biblical text must be placed in the whole story-line to be understood. In other words, every text must be asked, “what does this tell me about the salvation we have in Christ?” to be understood.[8]

One central story line culminating in Jesus? That’s good from Tim Keller, but is that Biblical? This is the interpretive method of both Jesus and the Apostles. In Luke 24, Jesus is on the road to Emmaus, and speaking of his death and resurrection, he says, “ ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken’… And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Jesus speaks of Moses and the Prophets, the divisions of the Jewish Scriptures. He argues that even the Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) points to himself! Later in the chapter, Jesus explains from the Scriptures that it was necessary that he must die and rise again. “Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”^[9]

After Jesus’ ascension, we see this same pattern in the Apostle’s use of Scripture in their sermons in the book of Acts. They constantly quote Psalms in reference to Christ – and not just the “messianic” or “royal” psalms (for example Hebrews 1:4 quoting Psalm 91). Moreover, look at Peter’s words in 1 Peter 1:10-12. “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.”^[10] The “Spirit of Christ” in the prophets was pointing to the person and work of Christ in their writings.

Since a Christocentric approach to interpreting Scripture was the approach of Christ and the Apostles, it should be ours as preachers. We should tread a path to Jesus Christ from every text from Genesis to Revelation.

Soma Communities – Tacoma, WA from Verge Network on Vimeo.

            Although preaching is necessary and central to the life of the church, not everyone is called to “preach.” Although all followers of Jesus are called to preach the gospel, only some are called to proclaim it. Look at the distinction made in Acts 8:4-5. “”Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.” After the church’s beginning in Jerusalem, the believers were scattered by persecution that began to break out. These new Christians went back to their hometowns and began to “gossip the gospel.” They told it to their friends, their neighbors, and their families. Following this, we see in verse 5 that Philip the Apostle comes to town and “proclaims…Christ.” This is the distinction.

Not everyone is called to this special task of proclamation. For example, Paul speaks of his special stewardship of the mystery of the gospel in his letter to the Ephesians. He also goes on in detail about his ministry in 2 Corinthians. There is a unique calling to this task of proclaiming – publicly preaching the word of God – that not all followers of Jesus posess. Lloyd-Jones says, “Preaching is never something that a man decides to do. What happens rather is that he becomes conscious of a ‘call’.”[1]

How do you know if you are called to preach? Lloyd-Jones again is helpful here:

I suggest that there are certain tests. A call generally starts in the form of a consciousness within one’s own spirit, an awareness of a kind of pressure being brought to bear upon one’s spirit, some disturbance in the realm of the spirit, then that your mind is being directed to the whole question of preaching. You have not thought of it deliberately, you have not sat down in cold blood to consider possibilities, and then, having looked at sever have decided to take this up. This is something that happens to you; it is God dealing with you, and God acting upon you by His Spirit; it is something you become aware of rather than what you do. It is thrust upon you, it is presented to you and almost forced upon you constantly in this way.[2]

Charles Spurgeon, the ‘prince of preachers’, gives several tests to detect a calling to preach in his book, Lectures to My Students. [3]

1. An intense, absorbing desire for the work. “We must feel that woe is unto us if we preach not the gospel; the word of God must be unto us as a fire in our bones.”[4] Desire for preaching is the first indicator of a call. We want to preach, but, like Lloyd-Jones said earlier, this desire comes to us; we don’t seek it out. Moreover, when we don’t want to preach, we can’t get away from it. It is like Jeremiah’s call, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”[5]
2. Aptness to teach. “If a man be called to preach, he will be endowed with a degree of speaking ability, which he will cultivate and increase. If the gift of utterance be not there in a measure at the first, it is not likely that it will ever be developed.”[6] Lloyd-Jones illustrates this with a story:

I remember the case of a young man who was a very good scientist and who…came to me saying that he was sure that he was called to be a preacher. But immediately I knew that he was wrong. Why? Not because of any special insight on my part, but simply because he…obviously had not got the gift of communication.[7]

If we are to preach, God will give us the ability to communicate and speak well.

3. A measure of conversion. “It seems to me, that as a man to be set apart to the ministry, his commission is without seals until souls are won by his instrumentality to the knowledge of Jesus.”[8] Preachers who are called are fruitful. Now, this is a general rule, and fruit can be easily mistaken. But, for the most part, those who are called by God to preach see the gospel take root in the lives of their hearers.
4. Confirmation of the call from others. “The sheep will know the God-sent shepherd; the porter of the fold will open to you, and the flock will know your voice.”[9] If you think that you are called to preach, make sure you ask someone other than your mom if they agree. Ask your pastor or your close friends what they think, and if you consistently hear from those you respect that they think you are called, then you are probably called to preach.

The Preacher’s Authority

            Those who are called to preach cannot help but be overwhelmed with the sense of responsibility and care that comes from preaching the word of God. What great importance is there in bringing the good news! As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:16, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Who has the uprightness of character to speak as a representative of God? Who has the eloquence to rightly expound the Scriptures? Thankfully, it isn’t about us. It is about God. Paul answers his own question several verses later. “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant.”

Our competency, our sufficiency, our authority as preachers does not come from within. It doesn’t even come from our call. It comes straight from God. He is the one who gives us the strength to speak. And it’s his word, his gospel that carries the power.

Our authority comes from Jesus and his spoken word, which still speaks today. In his Institutes on Christian Religion, John Calvin said, “God has so chosen to anoint the lips and tongues of his servants that when they speak the voice of Jesus resounds in his churches.”[10] As preachers we have a stewardship of the voice of Jesus. It’s his voice that we speak with because it’s his word that we proclaim. It is our job as preachers to reduce the static and make sure his voice comes in loud and clear.

What does that mean for preaching in a post-Christian world? It means that we should rest in God’s authoritative word when we preach. The temptation is to rely on wisdom or philosophy or creativity when speaking because it appears that the word of God has lost its place as authoritative. But we cannot retreat. Haddon Robinson said, “The authority of preaching is not heightened but lost if the preacher forsakes his place behind the book.”[11] The gospel is the power of God. We must not shrink back declaring it – not by our authority, but by the authority given to us as ministers of the gospel.

The Centrality of the Word of God and the Incompleteness of Sermonizing

            Especially in post-Christian society, we must be aware of where the sermon fails. Many people have rejected the church because the message that the church preached did not line up with the lives of those they interacted with. Chester and Timmis say, “We must never make good teaching an end in itself. Our aim must be good learning and good practice.”[12] The goal of our teaching is lives changed by the gospel.

Although the ministry of the pulpit is not all encompassing, it is primary and essential to faithful gospel ministry. The proclaimed word has been Christianity’s great tradition throughout the ages, and we stand in that line, ready to proclaim the gospel to a post-Christian world.

The Call to Preach

            Especially in the post-Christian era, the call to preaching has come into question. Some view preaching as an irrelevant, old-fashioned way to reach people with the gospel that has little biblical basis. Frank Viola says that the sermon “has become so entrenched in the Christian mind that most Bible-believing pastors and laymen fail to see that they are affirming and perpetuating an unscriptural practice out of sheer tradition.”[1] The Emergent Church movement has tickled culture’s ears by eliminating the preacher altogether and replacing monologue with discussion and dialogue. The pastor transitions from preacher to discussion leader. From our vantage point a few years out, the Emergent Church’s solution to the preaching problem has resulted in a new brand of liberalism – a loss of biblical authority, a compromised gospel, and a lack of Gospel transformation.

Why Preach?

            Contrast the compromise of the Emergent Church with some of its other contemporaries – for example, Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church. Driscoll, although associated early on with the Emergent Church movement, broke away because they started asking the wrong sorts of questions. Driscoll says, “I had serious theological differences with some men on the team and was concerned about their drift from biblical truth.”[2] Although Mars Hill Church is in one of the most secular and post-Christian cities in America, he preaches every week for an hour or more. The result? Baptisms, new church plants, and hundreds of changed lives each year.

Why has Mark Driscoll had so much success? I don’t think it has much to do with anything other than the power of the gospel itself – a message that is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”^[3] Only the good news of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection truly has power to renew, restore and redeem; in, a post-Christian world, we can neither distort nor depart from it.

If we believe in the power of the gospel, we must place primacy on the publicly proclaimed Word of God. The sermon should be the rallying call of our churches first point of attacking human hearts with the gospel. The sermon should be of primary importance. Why? Because the gospel itself is a proclamation! It is a story about Jesus, not merely a discussion about his life. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached [emphasis mine] to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep…^[4]

Paul says that the gospel he preached affected the Corinthians past (“which you received”), present (“in which you stand”), and future (“by which you are being saved”). He then outlines what it is, and he doesn’t say that the gospel is an opinion or ‘five steps to a better life.’ It isn’t a series of questions looking to draw something out of our hearts. Paul presents facts. He outlines the story of Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. This story, the gospel, needs to be proclaimed if we are to claim the title of a Christian church.

Lloyd-Jones says, “You cannot read the history of the church, even in a cursory manner, without seeing that preaching has always occupied a central and predominating position in the life of the Church.”^[5]  Preaching has held a central role in Christianity, and it is often in the wake of great preachers that great Gospel movements follow.

“This is the primary task of the church,” says Lloyd-Jones, “the primary task of the leaders of the church, the people who are set in this position of authority; and we must not allow anything to deflect us from this, however good the cause, however great the need.”^[6] The church is primarily the “pillar and buttress of truth.” Not even the pressures of post-Christendom should distract us from the proclamation of the Word of God, which is able to change lives. Tim Chester and Steve Timmis sum things up well, “Without words of explanation [our good works] are like signposts pointing to nowhere…The gospel is good news – a message to be proclaimed, a truth to be taught, a word to be spoken, and a story to be told.” [7]

We get to tell the story.

Introduction

In Mark 9, Jesus finds his disciples struggling to cast out a demon from a boy. Jesus casts the demon out, and his disciples turn to him and ask, “Why could we not cast it out?” Jesus answers, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” The disciples’ usual methods were not effective against “this kind” of demon. In a sermon on this text, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones went on to apply this to the church:

Here, in this boy, I see the modern world, and in the disciples I see the Church of God…I see a very great difference between today and two hundred years ago, or indeed even one hundred years ago. The difficulty in those earlier times was that men and women were in a state of apathy. They were more or less asleep…There was no general denial of Christian truth. It was just that people did not trouble to practise it…All you had to do then was to awaken them and to rouse them…

But the question is whether that is still the position…What is ‘this kind’? The kind of problem facing us is altogether deeper and more desperate…The very belief in God has virtually gone…The average man today believes that all this belief about God and religion… [is] an incubus on human nature all through the centuries…

It is no longer merely a question of immorality. This has become an amoral or a non-moral society. The very category of morality is not recognised…

The power that the disciples had was a good power, and it was able to do good work in casting out the feeble devils, but it was no value in the case of the boy.[1]

Though Lloyd-Jones said this fifty years ago in England, his words are still applicable today in America. The Church is struggling to hold any influence in American society. Turn the TV on and you will witness the corrosion of Christian morals and values that once held center stage in our society. Although America was founded on Christian values, we no longer view ourselves as Christian. In 2008, President Obama said to reporters in Turkey, “One of the great strengths of the United States is, although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation.”[2]

The statistics back up the president’s claim. In 1954, 71% of Americans identified themselves as Protestant Christians. Today, only 55% say that they are Christian.[3] More shocking is that, as of 2003, actual attendance of evangelical churches in the United States accounts for 9% of the population.[4] Specifically in the Northwest, we see this to be true of major culture centers like Portland and Seattle, where pet dogs outnumber followers of Jesus. The church in the West is struggling and becoming irrelevant to a society that does not see any use for Christianity. Instead of multiplying, many churches are turning into museums.

But what about all the mega churches? Is really true that Christianity is losing its influence in America? Tim Keller says,

We must remember that the new situation Lloyd-Jones was describing has spread in stages. It was in Europe before North America. It was in cities before it was in the rest of society…In many places…there is still a residue of more conservative society where people maintain traditional values…But despite the growth of megachurches through these dynamics, there is no evidence that the number of churchgoers in the United states is significantly increasing. What is clear is that the number of secular people professing “no religious preference” is growing rapidly. [5]

As pastors and church leaders, many of us are finding ourselves in this transition from Christendom to post-Christendom. The methods of ministry, evangelism, and preaching that we grew up with are now becoming less and less effective with a growing majority of the population. Hirsch says, “The problem we face is that while as a sociopolitical-cultural force Christendom is dead, and we now live in what has been aptly called the post-Christendom era, the church still operates in exactly the same mode.”[6]

With these changes in our context, how can we continue to proclaim the life-changing message of the gospel? We are faced with the problem of preaching the unchanging word to a changing world. As American culture drifts further and further away from its Christian roots, we must ask the question: What does it look like to proclaim the gospel in a post-Christian world?

If we as ministers of the Gospel are to be faithful to God’s call, we must relearn how to preach the gospel as a missionary to a post-Christian society. The methods that we grew up with are growing ineffective, but we still bring to the pulpit the same life-transforming message of salvation through Jesus. We must recast our ideas about preaching as our context changes from Christian to post-Christian.

How do we preach in a post Christian world? We will focus on several elements:

The Call to Preach

Preaching the Gospel

Preaching to a Post-Christian Society

The Preparation of the Preacher

Although the time that we live in is unique, we can take confidence in the Lord of the mission and the Builder of the Church – Jesus himself. Let us learn from him as we seek to become faithful ministers of the world in a new era.