Rejuvenating Proclamation in a Post-Christian Conditioned Culture: Seven Engaging Realities
It does not take much observation to conclude that this generation’s mentality thinks considerably different than our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Because of the penetrating forces of postmodern thought over the last fifty or more years, a “hardening” effect has settled upon our culture. This effect conditions society’s thinking to process information (spoken and written) differently from previous eras. I call this crystallizing dynamic “the Post-Christian Condition” (PCC).
As a general observation in the PCC, our society’s decision-making internal frameworks contain fewer tenets of Judeo-Christian theology than our parents’ and grandparents’ paradigms. In their generation, as a whole, our forebears thought more morally and orderly than this generation. This does not suggest that more people in previous eras were genuine Christians and that fewer authentic believers exist today. It means simply that people in our day as a whole do not possess near the number of Judeo-Christian values and ethics in their thinking matrix as appeared in times past. As a consequence, our times are “post-Christian.” What once existed in greater quantities (Christian morality) does not exist now.
While most leaders readily see the changes that have birthed the PCC, many do not know how to engage society communicatively in this cultural mental shift. More specifically, little, if anything, has changed formally in the last thirty or more years from a homiletics standpoint (proclamation) to recognize this mental horizon and to address it philosophically, contextually, and rhetorically. The reason is rather obvious: being “postmodern” and “post-Christian” are now two different things. In this case, the latter has emerged out of the former.
If homiletics continues to ignore or to minimize these hardening effects from the PCC, we can continue to expect widening gaps between preaching and listening, teaching and learning, along with the desired engagement that both sides want in a communicative exchange. Refusal to address the PCC will make the proclamation of the gospel lose its fullest impact.
What I am contending for is a fresh revisitation of homiletic theory and practice, seeking to remain faithful to the gospel’s truths, yet invigorating and renewing the task of communicating it in ways that more vibrantly connect with the thinking processes that people possess today. In short, I will propose that we need to reinvigorate homiletics by preaching and teaching biblical propositions more out of philosophical constructs than out of theological constructs.
Because fewer people possess a Judeo-Christian paradigm, proclamation that operates only from theological constructs will not “connect the dots” with today’s generation (young and older) as it did in times past. It used to be that the preacher or teacher could state a propositional truth, and then quote a Bible verse to substantiate the argument (i.e., “All have sinned because the Bible says…”). Nowadays, this kind of substantiation is ineffective because many people do not accept the Bible’s authority, and many more question its relevancy. Instead, people today think more philosophically because of the daily injection of post-Christian philosophy that influences them through pop music, television, movies, chic glamour, sports, art, and social media. While many of us do not like this predicament, it is nonetheless a real and present dilemma.
I contend that if we want to engage this post-Christian conditioned culture with the gospel in a way that will maintain faithfulness to the scriptural truth, yet bring greater fruitfulness under the Holy Spirit’s blessing, we must change. We must understand the PCC better and learn how to contextualize and to proclaim the gospel’s changeless truth in ways that recognize this new conditioned mindset. In essence, I propose a renewed and reinvigorated homiletic in our time that is cognizant of the PCC’s prominence.
The Post-Christian Condition: A Bird of a Different Feather in Seven Ways
There are at least seven realities that distinguish the PCC and make it significantly different. These actualities present exciting, yet challenging opportunities for those who wish to engage today’s listening audiences with authentic credibility and life-changing relevance.
There is no priority or degree of emphasis in the order of these realities. All are equally important in sketching the mosaic that makes today’s generation think differently. Keep in mind that this is a starting observation, not a final destination. You can add more tenets to this canvass to complete your own picture in light of your personal observations and direct experience.
1. Common Platforms: While the PCC joins postmoderns in rejecting many absolutes and foundations of modern thought, it also realizes that you cannot live in a vacuum. In order to have some point of reference, many PCC people are open to mutually-agreed upon platforms to discuss reality and truth. In this respect, the key is finding subjects or stages of common ground and interest (starting platforms) that can serve as a launching point, a suitable stage to engage in public and private discussion.
You do not have to spend much, if any, time with a PCC person debating the brokenness and fragmentation of our society. PCC people see and experience it every day. From Ebola to school shootings, from terrorism acts to the shortage of good jobs, people feel the effects of a broken society every day. The opportunity for communicators today (most especially preachers and teachers) is to find specific areas of brokenness that identify with an audience and then to contextualize the gospel to make a relevant connection.
2. Credibility: In today’s cultural climate, PCC people value credibility, specifically the authenticity behind a presentation. Coming out of Derrida’s and Foucault’s deconstruction, people seek to discern the power agendas present in advertising, public campaigns and sales presentations.
The reality: people are more suspicious and less trusting than in previous times.
The challenge: as a communicator, your presentation must resound with credibility.
PCC people as a whole can spot phonies in a big city minute. Therefore, position the gospel to show how biblical truth can “penetrate to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow” (Hebrews 4:12). In other words, organize and leverage the themes of Scripture to PCC audiences in ways that leverages divine truth confronting and exposing their issues, motives and agendas from an authenticity point-of-view. In this way, people can learn and understand from Scripture what God deems credible and not credible.
3. Appearance: In the PCC, life is all about appearance and presentation. From fashion to sports, from art to music, society is obsessed with the initial, “Pinterest” view. That is why billions of dollars are spent every year on cosmetics, fashion, weight loss and fitness so that the quick “sight” is attractive and appealing. This is all about how something or someone is formally presented or “represented.” Whereas in earlier generations the motto was “if it feels good, do it,” today’s PCC mindset says: “if it looks good, get it.”
What makes the gospel so relevant and appealing in a PCC culture is that it addresses representation directly in the Incarnation. God did more than simply appear and give a brief facade in the person of Christ. Instead, the Incarnation intensely shows the love, grace, truth, compassion and justice in the person of Christ, pictured as the “tabernacling” or enduring dwelling of God (John 1:14) among his people. The gospel becomes more satisfying and real when we see and experience its enduring permanence as contrasted with a world that seeks temporary approval from veneer surfaces that have hollow centers.
4. Social rhetoric: The prominence of social media and texting regularly remind us how PCC people value community networks not only for relational benefits, but also for decision-making purposes. In today’s world, people are more group-dependent, relying on like-minded communities to help them make decisions in practically everything—what to wear, what to eat, where to go, and what to do. Just go to any sales website and see the prominence of the “product reviews” section. In greater ways, people use community feedback, evaluation and group-think more than ever.
Recognizing this growing trend, proclamation to a PCC culture needs to reconstruct its approach and presentation so that it has a pertinent effect at the community level, and a more prominent effect to the leaders within that community. This recognizes the importance of “influencing the influencers” who will transform the community from within. When you think about it, this is what Jesus did with the Twelve, and the Book of Acts (with the subsequent expansion of Christianity) is organized around this principle.
5. The pursuit of contentment: Coming out of the postmodern quests in pragmatism and relativism, our PCC society searches in intense ways for fulfillment and contentment. Everyone has seen and many have experienced the power of rampant consumerism and its negative effects in personal debt and economic slavery. Practically all have felt in one aspect or other the bite and sting of divorce, abuse in all its expressions, and its fracturing effects upon social and family networks. Many have watched close friends and family members lose their lives to drug dependencies and overdoses. Behind all these dimensions is the individual quest for contentment and lasting satisfaction. The human heart yearns for significance in existence.
Communicating to the PCC culture provides exciting opportunities to show how the gospel—in all its richness and glory—addresses the deepest issues of value, satisfaction and personal fulfillment. Christ came so that people “may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Contextualizing the gospel in ways that highlight the fullness of life in Christ in contrast to the empty results that people pursue can position communicators to make meaningful inroads to PCC audiences at strategic times.
6. The mystical: In reaction to Modernity’s enlightenment-driven rationalism and postmodernity’s lingering indifference to spirituality (because of higher interests in consumerism, pluralism and relativism), PCC audiences are keenly more interested in issues and subjects that have a degree of spirituality, the transcendent and the “unexplainable.” The rise of the mystical explains the most recent popularity in television shows that have “ghost” or “mystery” in their plot, along with the ongoing fascination that people possess with the occult and the demonic. What used to be unpopular and uncomfortable in our parents’ and grandparents’ era (the presence of the unnatural that science could not explain) is now welcomed in many living rooms today.
Effective communication to PCC cultures utilizes the mystical as a cornerstone element in the discussion of the gospel. From the miracles, exorcisms and healings performed by Christ and his disciples to the awareness that we live and operate in a world of “principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12), the gospel is clothed with glorious mystery: “Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:6). Utilizing the mystical as a theme in the presentation of the gospel will intrigue PCC listeners who seek to understand truth in their life journey.
7. Performance: Today’s culture is infatuated with performance of many kinds: sports, music, theater, and financial markets, just to name a few areas. In many of these sectors, active persuasion transpires in the communication of their ideals and values. This explains why television ratings for sports (football, baseball, basketball, and wrestling) and for music talent are some of the most widely watched shows regardless of age in today’s PCC culture. Audiences want to experience a good performance, and in turn they make themselves open to persuasion if the performance strikes a personal chord within them. Because of this dynamic, it is little wonder that some of the biggest fan bases are found in the music and sports worlds.
What makes proclamation to the PCC so exciting is that the gospel reverberates with a dramatic performance: “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19). In the gospel, we see the drama of redemption dramatically prophesied, performed and secured on the stage of history in the person of God the Incarnate Son. Portraying the active work of the Trinity in the unfolding of redemption can powerfully engage PCC audiences to see and to feel the wonder of salvation and to appreciate God’s passion to offer it as a gift by grace through faith.
Communicative Implications for Proclamation to a Post-Christian Conditioned Culture
With these seven realities in place, I contend that a renewed and reinvigorated approach is needed in order to engage and to impact this culture that is noticeably post-Christian in its thought and behavior. What lessons can we learn and what principles can we implement to make proclamation more compelling, authentic, relevant and influential in these PCC days?
1. Recognize this cultural mental shift and use philosophy as a ministry tool. Do not feel ashamed to utilize the platforms (sports, music, movies, books, etc.) that people use daily as suitable entry points for discussion about human significance and, ultimately, the gospel. Attempting to connect with people and audiences in this manner is profoundly incarnational. You are going into their world—all its beauty and brokenness—in an attempt to help them see the truth of the divine drama.
2. Understand that many people want to engage, so pick a mutually agreed-upon platform. In some PCC circles, the search for meaning and value is so great and many people are so hungry for reality that finding points of brokenness and fragmentation can serve as starting blocks to springboard into a legitimate discussion with someone about the meaning of life, and how the gospel addresses it. Today’s plight and condition of life is currently causing greater degrees of personal openness with certain people and audiences, so take advantage of it for the cause of the gospel.
3. In an age demanding credibility, let the authenticity and actions of Christ and his gospel speak. In many PCC audiences, there is great respect for the life and example of Christ as a human being and a social reformer. Oftentimes where PCC people and audiences find disconnection is in understanding the significance of his work. This is where fresh approaches in contextualization can take the ageless message of the gospel and relate it so that people can identify with it in their daily life. In the gospel, Jesus addresses not only the life to come, but also life right now, so let biblical propositions address people where they are—with all their questions—in as many ways as possible.
4. There are social and communal benefits in the gospel, so appeal to them in the communicative proclamation. Scripture abounds with references showing the community-benefits that come from redemption’s accomplishment. We were not simply saved to ourselves, but redeemed to be a part of a living community, “a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (1 Peter 2:9). The power of the gospel lies not simply in its individual significance, but most especially in its community appeal. Use this as a key component in proclamation with PCC audiences and see where this takes you.
5. Use the imagery of Scripture to intrigue PCC audiences towards the spiritual world of mystery and wonder. The Bible contains many examples where the presence of spiritual realities uncovers the trail of the divine. Use biblical examples to connect with PCC audiences who have experienced firsthand the presence of mystery and the naturally “unexplained” in their lives. In this approach, you appeal to their common experiences and show how the gospel itself is the greatest and most glorious mystery of all.
6. In many PCC cultures where diversity and pluralism are valued, appeal to the gospel’s rich diversity and redemptive result: to bring many peoples, social classes, ethnic diversities and cultural dimensions into a brilliant and heart-functional unity in “the new self; which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:10-11). In an age torn by war, race sensitivities, gender debates and economic inequalities, the redemptive and social implications of the gospel find positive and practical traction.
7. Because influence is a part of everyday life, use rhetorical principles practically and responsibly. From the commercials we watch to the ads that appear on YouTube and social media, our PCC culture is accustomed to persuasion. People expect some kind of “influential pitch” in a performance, so use rhetoric to draw appropriate attention to the gospel message so that a legitimate response can occur. Proclamation is not just about information and instruction, but most especially about influence. Let the gospel’s appeal and the Holy Spirit’s power, working through you as a communicative agent, make an impact in a PCC audience or individual.
Although the gospel has not changed, the reality is that people have changed in the way they think and process information. Our culture is decidedly post-Christian; yet, I believe homiletics in general has not compensated for this shift. It will take courage, commitment and compassion to change communicative strategies and to make them more appealing to audiences that no longer think with theological presuppositions. While the communicative road ahead is paved with potential potholes and challenges, it also offers exciting opportunities to those who choose to renew and to reinvigorate their methodologies so that more people can be reached and impacted for the Kingdom of God.
There has never been a better time for communicators to reassess their communicative beliefs and strategies than now. Over the last fifty years, our culture has birthed a new condition that calls us to new faithfulness and fruitfulness. Potential greater impact awaits those who are willing to see the new landscape and to adjust to it.