There is a need to understand what is happening in the broad emerging church scene in the West, especially in the area of the weekly practice of public proclamation. There is much that can be learned from a postmodern awareness and reaction to modernism that may lead western churches towards a more authentic practice of faith expression. What will be the place of biblical proclamation in that authentic practice? Is there a postmodern style of preaching that is authentically Christian, which authentically preaches the formative logos of God in the contemporary ethos of western culture? If so, what will authentic Christian preaching look like in the postmodern context? Is there a biblical model of the ministry of preaching? How are emerging church leaders responding to the challenge of engaging a contemporary culture that disdains preaching?
In the book Mastering Contemporary Preaching, Bill Hybels, Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson have attempted to investigate the issue of preaching in this postmodern context. But they fail to penetrate beyond a discussion of mere preaching styles and miss the opportunity to discuss what the essential nature and purpose of preaching ought to be in this and every age, the proclamation of God’s formative Word. This can also be said of David Henderson’s book Culture Shift. Though the book provides excellent ways to address important, contemporary topics, it does not answer the underlying questions of why preach at all, or what role preaching plays in Spiritual formation.
Likewise, Richard Esling’s book, A New Hearing, alleges to be a serious investigation into five “effective” contemporary preachers. However, Esling does not give any kind of theological or theoretical criteria for comparing these five preachers, or for answering the question of why these five preachers should be considered “effective” at all. The reader is left wondering what the essence of preaching (the proverbial “baby”) fundamentally is, how one can objectively evaluate what is “good” preaching as opposed to what is “bad”, or what authentic preaching ought to look like in this new postmodern western context, as opposed to what it should not be (the proverbial “bathwater”).
Writers have articulated the reality of the monumental shift in our western church context from a modernist worldview to a new postmodern one. The western Church has been so associated with the modernist paradigm of culture and belief that it is no longer seen as relevant. History shows that this is a struggle the Church has faced during each epochal change in its social context. Walter Truett Anderson writes,
This situation continues to lead the Church further away from her missional purpose. Alan Roxburgh writes, “Unless…leaders recognize and understand the extent to which they and their congregations have been marginalized in modernity, they will not meaningfully shape the direction of congregational life for missionary engagement.”
