Preaching Creates Culture
The Challenge of Preaching and Culture
We preachers sometimes have a complicated relationship with culture, but only when we assume that “culture” is something “out there” that we are to respond to in some way – either by going to war with it as an enemy, engaging it as a friend, or something in between.
I have previously posted an extended series on “Preaching and Culture,” which you can see here, but here’s a summary of what I said there for the sake of our conversation on “why preaching matters”:
Our default “posture” (Andy Crouch’s term) toward culture is not to be cultural warriors, cultural gurus, or cultural diplomats, but to be cultural architects. A preaching ministry builds the culture of a local community of believers, hopefully in a way that provides a life-giving alternative to the prevailing cultures around us. So, our most pressing question is not, “What am I going to say about the latest cultural artifacts, controversies, and trends?” The most important cultural question to ask is, “How do I cultivate a shared worldview and a shared life among these saints so that this community shines like a light in the darkness – a culture that is both distinct and winsome among the cultures of the world?”
The truth is, any preaching ministry creates a culture, whether the preacher is aware of it or not. The culture of the pulpit becomes the culture of the community that is gathered and shaped by the content and the tone of the message, and by the passion and personality of the messenger. Show me a church that is characterized by intellectual elitism, strident legalism, therapeutic self-help, or militant activism, and I’ll show you the roots of that culture in a corresponding weekly proclamation.
Preaching to Create a Gospel-Shaped Culture
Preaching matters because preaching creates culture. Just being aware of this fact should move us towards meaningful and regular reflection on the question, “what kind of culture is my preaching creating?” The cultures I mentioned in the last paragraph are the fruit of some common, seductive pitfalls that preachers all too often embrace. Preaching that focuses primarily on knowing more, doing more, living more successfully, feeling better about ourselves, or even changing the world will all tend to create a culture that is gathered around something other than the gospel.
If the goal is a gospel-shaped culture (and as far as I’m concerned, it should be!), then we need to be intentional about sowing and cultivating the seeds of that culture in our preaching. What does this look like? Anthropologists have discovered that a shared narrative shapes the foundation of any culture. Culture creation begins with the story we tell. It is the story of our past (where we come from), our present (where we are), and our future (where we are going). For gospel-driven preaching, this means telling the story of what God has done, what he is doing, and what he will do.
Delight in what God has done for us.
The contemporary homiletic tends to put a lot of stock in application, and rightly so. We want to be practical. We want people to see themselves in the sermon, to walk away with something to do. This is all well and good. But if in our rush to what we should do we forget to delight first in what God has done, our application will be void of gospel and absent of joy. More importantly, it will contribute to a culture that is more about us than it is about God.
Gospel-driven application begins with what God has done, and only then moves towards what we must do. Meaning precedes action. Joy leads to response. Blessing precedes command. Instead of saying, “Do these things and you will find your best life,” we need to say, “God has given you your best life, so live in it by doing these things.”
Delighting in who God is and what he has done in the sermon will require us to tell the story of God’s mighty deeds in the world, beginning with creation and moving towards new creation. This story in turn becomes our story, and our activity finds its grounding and motivation in God’s activity. This is the framework of gospel-driven application, and the narrative foundation of a gospel-shaped culture.
Take a hard look at your application in your recent preaching. Does it come across as a path towards joy, or as a result of joy? The good news is that God, through the life, death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus, is making all things new – beginning with us. When the sermon inspires joy in this great truth, we have laid an important foundation stone for a gospel-driven culture.
Become aware of what God is doing around us.
The story we tell is not just of great events in the past. God is making all things new. The story is ongoing, the story of our lives. A culture is created not merely by the stories we tell, but by the story we see ourselves living in. This means that the preacher who wants to practice a robust cultural architecture must also be prepared to help hearers become aware of what God is doing now, in our world, in our lives.
When we look around us, we tend to see what we are looking for. Preachers have a unique opportunity to train their hearers to look for, and to see, something more than what people in the prevailing cultures around us are seeing. We see not only the scars of the fall but also the signs of the kingdom.
Jesus began his public ministry by proclaiming a new and present reality: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!” In the opening lines of his kingdom manifesto (the Sermon on the Mount), he challenged his hearers to open their eyes to see their lives and their world in a radical new way. Poverty, hunger, thirst, and mourning were not to be seen as curses but as the essence of blessedness. The poor in spirit may seem to have nothing but they in fact possess everything. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are the ones who experience true satisfaction. And mourning is but an opportunity for comfort. The beatitudes call those who long for the kingdom to see that the kingdom is already present in their world.
This is another important piece of the culture-building task of Christian preaching. In a world filled with wars, strife, divisions, inequities, and want, God is at work. The blessedness of his kingdom is more real than all the signs of human brokenness we see around us. The ground may be parched and dry, but there are blades of green pushing through the hard, cracked earth. The kingdom of heaven is real, present, and powerful. Once we help our hearers to see this grand reality, they cannot un-see it. With opened eyes, they are prepared to seek, recognize, and live in the realm of what God is doing in the world.
Anticipate where God is leading us.
One of the most neglected biblical themes in 21st-Century North American church life (and pulpits) is the final redemption we enjoy after death and beyond history. Any worship leader trying to develop a song set around the theme of “heaven” discovers that there are precious few contemporary songs that even refer to the streets of gold or the pearly gates. This is not the case everywhere. Christians who live in the developing world, or who suffer persecution, or who live in war zones, refugee camps, or homeless shelters think about heaven every day. Nor was this indifference towards eternity always the norm in North America. Negro spirituals and gospel songs of past centuries were filled with longings for “home.” Only well-fed, well-educated, and well-situated Christians prefer to leave eternity out of sight and out of mind.
We don’t think a lot about heaven because we’re not in a hurry to get there. We’re having too much fun in this life to want to hear about the next. “So,” contemporary North American hearers say, “give us some pointers, insights, and encouragement for living more successful, more comfortable, more well-adjusted, even more faithful and spiritual lives in the present.” And preachers are often quite happy to accommodate.
The gospel does impact our present. It’s not just about a “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by.” But if we stop in the here and now without telling the end of the story, we cultivate an anemic and distorted culture that falls far short of the kingdom reality that Jesus proclaimed. He told stories about sowing seeds in the present for an eternal harvest in the future. The kingdom he inaugurated in his first coming he will culminate in his second coming. The culture God intends for his people today is one that exists “between the times.” We live in the present, but always with an eye towards the future.
How do we cultivate this mindset in our preaching? It will require more than an occasional sermon on heaven or even a series on eschatology. For one thing, we frame contemporary longings not merely as problems to solve or goals to reach, but as longings for “home.” Ironically, offering quick “solutions” for current stresses only generates more stress. But when we see them from the perspective of an eternity where God will wipe every tear from our eye, we can experience true relief.
Perhaps even more importantly, we help our hearers understand that the road they travel has a destination. The cultures they encounter in the world will often tell them that “life is more about the journey than the destination. We are all on pilgrimage together, but with no particular end in mind.” In contrast, the Christian message says that the journey is all about the destination. In fact, the destination defines the journey. Our ultimate rest gives purpose to the good times, nurtures perseverance in the hard times, and provides perspective in all times.
Preaching is a culturally creative act. So, let’s be sure to get it right. Much more could be said about the components of our cultural architecture, but this is where it begins: telling the story – the whole story – that lays the foundation for a shared worldview. When this story shapes the life of a congregation, the result will be a community life characterized by peace with the past, power in the present, and hope for the future.
