“Big Story” Preaching: Making Disciples in a Post-Christian World
How Do We Make Disciples in a Post-Christian World?
According to a recent Barna study, the percentage of the U.S. population that could be described as “post-Christian” has risen dramatically in the past two years (2013-2015), from 37% to 44%. Two questions come to mind: “How did we get here?” and “What do we do now?” I believe that both questions share a common answer: It is first and foremost about story.
First, “How did we get here?” How could Christians, after decades of all-out culture wars, still be “losing our culture?” I would suggest that we’ve been fighting the wrong battles. We thought we were in a political struggle, a judicial struggle, a moral struggle, a struggle with the entertainment industry or the educational system, or a struggle for “family values.” All the while, the battle that really mattered was for the underlying story of our society. We were busy and distracted by all the other battles, but we failed to show up for the battle in which the war would be won or lost.
Then, “What do we do now?” More specifically, “How do we make disciples in a post-Christian world?” I am convinced that the answer must begin with the story we tell. I’m not talking about merely “telling stories,” that people like to hear. We must tell the story — the grand narrative of the Scriptures that shapes our view of the world, of ourselves, and of history. Why? Because the single most important factor for forming identity, character, and purpose is how we answer the question, “In what story am I living?”
Metanarrative: Everybody Has One
Let me first define I mean by the “grand narrative of the Scriptures.” This big story, or “metanarrative,” consists of the overall storyline of the Bible, from creation to new creation. It begins with a setting (creation), a state of equilibrium in which the key players are introduced, and everything is good. As in any good story, however, this equilibrium is upset by an inciting incident — humanity’s fall into sin. This fall launches a quest, the story of Israel, through which God begins to unfold his plan to restore creation. There is a long series of ups and downs, twists and turns, gaps and reversals, all of which explore the tension of the inciting incident (sin), develop and reveal the true nature of the central characters (God and his people), and build anticipation for the resolution that is to come. The climax of the story (the life, death and resurrection of Jesus) not only resolves the tension that has been building, but it reveals the fundamental message of the entire narrative. The story resolves in the formation of a new people (the church), gathered into an eternal new creation.
Although this story is the quintessential narrative, with all the ingredients of a good page-turner, we don’t read it as we would read a best-selling novel. We don't read to escape the stresses of daily life, or even to find some insight for living in the “real world.” As Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen affirm, the Bible is the “real world”:
"This story, among all stories, claims to tell the whole truth about the way our own world really is. Here, inside this story, we are meant to find meaning in our lives. Here we must find a place in which our own experience was meant to fit. Here we are offered insight into the ultimate significance of human life itself.” (Living at the Crossroads, 4)
Not everyone, of course, sees life through this story. In fact, most people in our culture would say that there is no grand narrative that holds all the answers to our deepest questions. The “no story” perspective shows up in a couple of different forms.
First is the the claim that “story,” as a way of viewing the world, is obsolete. Since we now have the discoveries of pure reason and scientific examination to answer all our questions, modernists say, we can set ourselves free from the subjective and irrational influence of social and religious narratives. Ironically, even as they make these assertions, proponents of this viewpoint are telling their own story of a humanity that has outgrown prescientific ways of seeing the world. Even in their rejection of story, they stand on a story of their own, buried deep in their own presuppositions.
If modernism seeks to deny all stories, postmodernism seeks to embrace all stories — with the exception of any story that claims to be the Story. There is no big, universal story, the postmodern objection goes, only small, local ones. All metanarratives are oppressive impositions of one culture’s worldview upon all others. This perspective appeals to contemporary people because it puts them in control — they can create their own stories by picking and choosing from a buffet of stories in the world, or even make one up. But postmoderns fall into the same trap that snared the moderns. When they deny that there is a big story, they are in fact telling their own big story in which “freedom” is the total lack of restraint and “tolerance” is the supreme value. Their resistance toward metanarratives reveals that the buffet itself is a metanarrative that claims supremacy over all others.
The difficulty that these contemporary metanarratives pose for Christian discipleship is not that they are credible, but that they are invisible — unseen and unacknowledged. As the prevailing stories of our times, they exert enormous influence on Christians and non-Christians alike, without ever being critically examined. This is why faithful attenders who have sat in our churches week after week for years on end, when pressed to give an opinion on key hot-button topics of our day, or on the nature of truth, or on the uniqueness of Christianity among all other religions, may reveal a perspective that is shockingly identical to that of people who have never darkened the door.
Because of all this, any serious approach to discipleship in a post-Christian environment must include Big Story preaching. We must be prepared to expose the underlying narratives of our times, and present the grand narrative of the gospel as the alternative.
Have We Neglected the Big Story?
Most of us would agree that the grand narrative is essential, but in practice we may leave it in the shadows of underlying assumptions, rarely given headline status. We should be alert to the ways we might, while intending to be thoroughly biblical in our preaching, neglect the big story. Here are three:
When we preach on small “bits” of Scripture, failing to tie them to their broadest context, we may neglect the big story. We know that the context for every text is ultimately the whole Bible. However, when pressed for time, we often choose “deep” over “broad” when it comes to explaining the text. Focusing consistently and intensely on very small portions of the Scriptures, without showing how they fit into the bigger story, may result in a deep knowledge about individual verses but a shallow foundation for a worldview.
When we preach on biblical characters as examples to emulate or to avoid, without explaining their place in God’s grand narrative, we may neglect the big story. There are plenty of reasons to be careful about moralizing on biblical characters, but the most important may be that these characters are not the story. They each play a part in a larger story — and that is the first story we need to know. If we lead our hearers only to see them as moral examples, and not as players in the grand drama of God’s story, we put the focus on their behaviour above God’s activity.
When we base our application on principles extracted from the text, rather than on the story of the text itself, we may neglect the big story. One of the most common paths to sermon application is to extract a principle from the biblical story, and then apply the principle to daily life. Not only does this sap power from the story (the form in which God gave us his message), but it also creates a greater distance between the hearer and the biblical story. The best application begins when we understand that we are a part of the story. Rather than trying to bring the biblical story through a principle to our contemporary hearers, we can lay a better foundation for discipleship by helping our hearers to see themselves in the biblical story.
So, how do we preach in such a way that the Big Story of the Scriptures always comes through? I’ll address this question in the next two posts in this series. First, we’ll see how the big story shapes disciples. Then, we’ll look at some practical steps for weaving this big story into our preaching.
