Postmodernism’s Impact on the Style of EC Preaching
Postmodernism’s low view of Scripture is a driving force in Doug Pagitt’s Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith. Speaching is what Pagitt derisively calls historic preaching by the pastor. Pagitt admits candidly: “Preaching doesn’t work—at least not in the ways we hope… preaching, as we know it, is a tragically broken endeavor… great preaching isn’t sufficient.”[1]
The first style change for Pagitt is a shift from one pastor teaching God’s Word with authorial intent to members sharing multiple interpretations. Speaching, according to Pagitt, is modernistic because it is characterized by absolute truth and authorial intent i.e., one interpretation. The effect of deconstruction is heard in Pagitt’s alternative view to preaching which he calls progressional dialogue: “Progressional dialogue (hereafter PD), on the other hand, involves the intentional interplay of multiple viewpoints that leads to unexpected and unforeseen ideas.”[2]
Pagitt’s alternative, PD, is interactive with the community of God. The alternative is a direct result of Pagitt’s inferior view of Scripture. PD is interaction with the community who possesses just as much of the Word as does the Bible we hold in our hand. [3] Pagitt writes that “progressional dialogue creates a relationship in which the Bible becomes a living member of the community…. When this happens, the Bible becomes part of our conversation, not a dead book from which I extract truth.”[4] So if Pagitt preaches in the traditional way, the Bible is a dead book, but if the community dialogues then the Bible is a living Book. The writer of Hebrews would adamantly disagree (Heb 4:12).
The result of these communal sermons is multiple views of Scripture. The Bible is only one member of the community contributing to the dialogue in Pagitt’s view. One man proclaiming God’s Word is arrogant and too authoritative.[5] Driscoll, who disagrees with Pagitt, offers this refutation: “This makes about as much sense as shooting your doctor and gathering with the other patients in his lobby to speculate about what is wrong with one another and randomly write out prescriptions for one another in the name of equality.”[6] This is directly opposed to Paul, who commanded as one of the required 16 qualifications to be a pastor in 1st Timothy 3:1-7 was to be “apt to teach.” See Michael Duduit’s interview with Pagitt.
The second style change for Pagitt is a move from the text being central in the sermon to experiences and stories being central. Not only are multiple views of Scripture proclaimed in a service by multiple members but by Pagitt’s admission another element of these dialogues is not the text as with historic preaching but the experiences of the community. “So our sermons are not lessons that precisely define belief so much as they are stories that welcome our hopes and ideas and participation.”[7] The center piece of preaching, according to the imperative in 2 Tim 4:2, is “the Word” not the experiences of people: “Preach the Word…reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” Paul follows hard the command with the reason for this burning concentration of preaching on God’s Word: “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” That prophesy is being fulfilled today in some groups of the EC.
Why does Pagitt reject the style of historic preaching? In part because of his postmodern deconstruction of the history of preaching. Another anti-preaching argument by Pagitt is that speaching or historic preaching is just another adverse result of the EC’s boogeyman, the Enlightenment. Pagitt, the revisionist, rewrites the history of preaching: “In reality speaching is quite new, a creation of Enlightenment Christianity in which faith formation was understood as something best handled by the ‘expert’ (aka the pastor).”[8] John Calvin is just one glaring refutation to Pagitt’s undocumented arguments. Calvin was committed to verse by verse expository preaching through books of the Bible as documented by Steven J. Lawson in The Expository Genius of John Calvin, Orlando, Reformation Trust, 2007, 16 (See review in Unashamed Workmen).
Because the church and state were not separate, and Calvin had elders who were also city council members, who could overrule the decisions of the church, Calvin faced unique battles as a pastor.
The Libertines, boasted in sinful licentiousness. Sexual immorality was permissible, they claimed, arguing that the ‘communion of the saint’ meant that their bodies should be joined to the wives of others. The Libertines openly practiced adultery and yet desired to come to the Lord’s Table.
But Calvin would have none of it. In an epic encounter, Philibert Berthelier, a prominent Libertine, was excommunicated because of his known sexual promiscuity. Consequently, he was forbidden from partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Through the underhanded influence of the Libertines, the City Council overrode the church’s decision, and Berthelier and his associates came to church to take the Lord’s Supper with swords drawn, ready to fight. With bold audacity, Calvin descended from the pulpit, stood in front of the Communion table, and said, ‘These hands you may crush, these arms you may lop off, my life you may take, my blood is yours, you may shed it; but you shall never force me to give holy things to the profaned and dishonor the table of my God.’ Berthelier and the Libertines withdrew, no match for such unflinching convictions.
Eventually, Calvin was banished from Geneva for three years (1538-1541) because of his refusal to allow the spiritually unqualified to partake of the Lord’s Table. Finally, the struggling city of Geneva invited Calvin to return. On September 13, 1541, Calvin returned after his three year banishment. He entered his old pulpit and began, “I will begin my exposition by reading our text for the morning…” and he announced the verses following the exact place he had left off three years before. Calvin started preaching on the next verse.
Preaching God’s Word is a priority of the church (2 Tim. 4:1-6). Preaching God’s Word is the ministry of God-called men whom God equips to be “apt to teach.” This is not a qualification of every member of the church, not even the deacons. But “apt to teach” which is synonymous with preaching the Word in the context of 1 Tim 3:1-7 is one of the primary responsibilities of the pastor.
[1] Doug Pagitt. Preaching Re-Imagined (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 18-19.
[2] Ibid., 52.
[3] Pagitt once again reminds us of Barth’s view, but this time in regard to preaching. Barth quotes approvingly of Luther’s view that when the preacher preaches, he is speaking God’s Word. In other words, the preacher is not simply preaching God’s infallible Word, with which we would agree, but that what the preacher says is God’s infallible Word: “Therefore, we do well to call the pastor’s and preacher’s word which he preacheth, God’s Word. For the office is not the pastor’s or preacher’s, but God’s; and the Word which he preacheth is likewise not the pastor’s or preacher’s, but God’s” Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics. 107. Again what is true with the individual, this time the preacher, in Neo-orthodoxy, is true with the community in the Emerging church.
[4] Pagitt, 218.
[5] Ibid., 123.
[6] Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformation, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 173.
[7] Doug Pagitt. Church Re- Imagined: The Spiritual Formation of People in Communities of Fatih. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) 166.
[8] Pagitt, Preaching Re-Imaged. 28,60,113.
