Since the middle of the 20th century the objectivity of language
has been challenged. Image is favored over words, feelings over concepts,
intuition is prized more highly than knowledge. With the development of the
virtual world the barrier between public certainty, and private conjecture has
been demolished. It was born out of
disillusionment and as a reaction against the prevalent modernist attitudes of
the time. People listening to the gospel
will struggle to hear the Christian story promote itself as the single answer
to the human condition. Secondly, reason is less favored to intuition, the postmodernists want answers to
questions outside of the bounds of the five senses. Issues of spirituality,
experience, which transcends the material world, is highly sought after. A
third area is the decline of long lasting commitments due to the diversity of
choice and the desire to change. The loss of the meta-narrative, means a
diversity of choice in life and so a reduction in meaningful commitment to
anything. Life is about traveling not
about arriving in the postmodern mindset the challenge is clear that effective
evangelistic communication must be aware of the in built suspicion and
hesitancy to respond to invitation, or commit to Christ. Allowing people to
journey, and explore is key. The advent of postmodernism among other factors have robbed preaching of its once high
status.
temptation to replace the God of Christianity with a user-friendly, cuddly
version of God must be resisted at all cost. God, throughout the Bible, always
insists on being the only genuine, true God. He has no equal. We must recall
that the inducement to make God more palatable is not new. It was there from
the very beginning. And, from the very beginning, God insisted that he had no
equal among the gods of the nations. Postmodernism is helpful in that it
awakens us to the need to rediscover the God of the Bible. It can hardly be
denied that our natural tendency is to create God in our own image. In our
pulpits we preached God the policeman, God the judge, God the lover, God the
healer and God the hater. At each step we succumbed to the temptation of
emphasizing our culturally preferred side of God. Postmodernism forces us to
embrace God in all his greatness. Instead of trying to fit God into a neat
little preference niche, we must declare him in all his glory and insist that
he cannot be contained in our neatly labeled boxes. If we want for our
preaching to remain faithful to its essence, we must revisit God in all his
splendor.
A defined purpose for a
message which clearly states the intended outcome of a particular message
integrates the truth of Scripture into the lives of believers. The
purpose of a message is not a bridge from text to audience; rather it the
driving force of a message, for if no transformation occurs, then the listeners
have not heard a message from God through the preacher. The purpose does
not seek to “make” Scripture relevant; rather the purpose communicates a
problem, issue or challenge to the listeners in such a way that the listener
connects, both cognitively and emotionally, and wants to know how to
respond. Although this act of obedience is the responsibility of
the listener, it is first the task of the preacher to articulate how to obey
through a measurable standard which the listener can apply to his/her own
life. Finally, a result-oriented purpose in preaching connects listeners
with truth in a way that reflects the mindset of a postmodern North American
church while upholding the integrity of Scripture.