He was witnessed to on the streets in New Jersey by what was termed then as a  "Jesus freak"--a hippy type in the late 1970's who told him he was going to hell and would perish in a lake of fire if he didn't repent. He had never heard that before. His mother did drop him off at a Dutch reformed church, the same one George Washington attended, but never really paid much attention.       However, this man had his attention. He knelt with him on the sidewalk and prayed with him to receive Christ. He didn't attend church until he graduated from college and started attending a small church in London, England while playing in a 80's rock-a-billy punk band. Under the influence of the Bible, his life began to change.

FreshMinistry: I have the feeling that when I attend your services this Sunday night, I'm not going to see a preacher with a beet red face, with perspiration coming off his brow and pointing his finger at me. Am I right?

Dan Kimball: No, . . .no but in two weeks we are preaching about hell. We're going to see what the Bible says about hell. It won't be "YOU'RE GOING TO HELL," but it will be "God does not want anybody to go to hell. . . please listen to the truth."

FM: The difference is whether you have a smirk on your face or a tear in your eye, isn't it?

DK: Yeah, you bet. Or how lightly you treat it.

FM: I'm finding that most postmodern preachers are not backing away from the truths of the Scripture. Where, maybe some of the Boomer pastors were rightly criticized for that. You know, where they start a church saying, "We're not going to talk about giving, etc." But you guys are saying forget about that, we're going to preach the whole Bible.

DK: Yeah. I like calling what we do "Theo-topical" preaching. It is trying to theologically shape a world view in people that were born and raised without any knowledge of a Christian world view. I don't just preach topical messages like, "relationships" or "sex" without first knowing we are really teaching on the doctrine of man underneath it.  Each message is topical, but it addresses a theological truth.

FM: That's something you ask yourself in the study. "Is this message covering a theological truth?"

DK: Right

FM: But in the pulpit you don't say, "Today, we are studying the doctrine of man."

DK: Right, but I also want it balanced. For instance, we just did a 4 week study on the end times, and wanted to make sure their was a balance on the "full council of God." Aas we haven't talked about that since we started Graceland.  I also passed out information on the other credible positions from the one I took, so people are aware of the various positions there are in this.  This is what I mean by "Theo-topical."

FM: Do you begin with an issue and then move to the scripture, or do you begin with the Scripture and move to the issue?

DK: It all depends-it varies, but generally its begin with the issue and then move to the Scripture.

FM: How far down into the sermon are you until you read a Scripture?

DK: Pretty quick.

DK: I think there is a real hunger, out there for solid truth among postmoderns, which may be contrary to other viewpoints I have heard on this. I believe in a world where there is an absence of having something or someone to solidly believe in is causing a strong desire to seek something they can cling on to and hold on to. However, how it is taught and how we present things makes all the difference. We don't say we know about have God is all packaged and neat, and we can say there are still great mysteries out there and still be comfortable and secure in that.  Also, using narrative preaching can still have points of learning.  I want people to remember that Jesus would give a parable, but then say, "here's the meaning." I don't go to an extreme where it is all narrative and can't have any propositional teaching.

FM: If you look at those two things (Narrative vs. Propositional) as structures instead of content-For instance, I recently heard a sermon where the preacher said, "I want to convince you that evangelism should produce worshipers, not just believers." That was the introduction. When I heard that, I thought, he is going to convince me-he must know something I don't, he's smarter than me.

DK: Right

FM: He's assuming that I don't know that. In fact, I already believe that "evangelism should produce worshipers, not just believers," so I really don't have a reason to listen. So I tuned out. Now that was a classical propositional sermon where he said, in a very hostile way, "I'm going to teach you something." Contrast that with a narrative structure, where the person does have a point to make or a truth to convey, but it will probably come later in the message. And before you know it, the listener has discovered the truth on their own, guided by the communicator. Even a narrative sermon would have a propositional truth. Where to do you see yourself?

DK: My primary concern as I prepare a message is what are the truths God has revealed to us that are coming from the scriptures that can change our lives.  That’s how I start. We give out detailed outlines with references as message notes.

FM: The difference between what you are doing and classical propositional preaching is you are trying to change their lives, a propositional sermon is trying to change their mind.

DK: Yeah, I’m definitely thinking life first, but I also know that behavior and life change actually starts in the mind and from how we think

FM: Right.

DK: And really, it's the heart-the way the message is done. Like this series we're in right now is an apologetics thing. What we did was ask Gracelanders to survey the people they work with or have relationships with and ask them why they don't attend church. Or, some of the questions you have about the Christian faith or something that you don't agree with. We got back 150 responses.

FM: Wow!

DK: We compiled the top 10 questions, and we're doing a series on the top 4 of these questions. That's how we shaped the series, and it leans toward the propositional. "Here's why you can trust the Bible." This week is "Here's why we can believe in creation."  But again, it is how it is presented which makes all the difference. Not just as facts and data- but as a means to know and further fall in love with God. There is a huge difference between the two

FM: I know our time is getting away, so there is just a couple more questions I want to ask. One is, "What are the elements of worship I"ll see during your teaching time," and the other one is, "If you can give just one or two hints for how the average pastor can better address a postmodern audience, what would they be?"

DK: When I think of a service, I don't see the message as the main thing of the service. I see the whole thing as a single component. In most services, the music builds up to prepare for the message, but what we do is put the message in the center-we do more worship after the message than before.

FM: So you don't finish preaching, sing one more song and go home?

DK: Right. The visuals are throughout the service. I look at the experience as from when we walk in the door. We use candles, less now than we used to. When we first was asking people why they don't like church, something we heard was “We didn’t like the guy speaking from a stage to me.” It caused a sense of separation between pastor and community, so we built a lower stage, to project more of a community feel.
It’s a pain to move in and out each week, but we change the setup from the weekend.  We’ve moved everything down to a community feel as much as we can.

DK: From the time you walk in the visuals are on the screen. The beginning is pretty standard, 3 or 4 songs, announcements, then maybe drama. For this series, we built a big wall symbolizing the barriers to belief. By the end of the series, we will bring most of the wall down. Hopefully the audience will think, "This could be true, there is validity to this."

FM: It sounds like you are building a narrative service instead of a narrative sermon.

DK: Well, we try to. And it all depends on the topic. When we were talking about the end times it was easy to do. We put a tree on one side of the stage, then we had an apple on a stand, and we had a map of Israel, then we had a cross. We laid it out like a time line-we told it as a story. Instead of just focusing on the end times, we took them back to the beginning to show them how the end times fit in with the whole story. We ended it by picking up the tree and moving it to the end, because in the end of Revelation the tree of life is there again.

So we do that. The beginning is pretty normal, then announcements-nothing unusual. Then a little drama, an interview or video clip. One time we had a non believer come up and share why he doesn't believe. (He ended up becoming a believer and now he is on the tech team.)

FM: Incredible!

DK: We try to use a lot of females up front as well. Scripture readings, testimonies, not just as background singers for the band. A female doctor is going to give a talk this week about the human body as an evidence
of intelligent design.  Then we do some more worship and then have a time of prayer.  Josh will read a psalm or other scripture, and sometimes we have corporate readings of scripture together in community.  It's nothing fancy.

FM: So you're not a whiz-bang-techo-preacher.

DK: No. I'm not trying to be something I'm not, I just try to be myself.

FM: OK, give my readers a tip. What can they do to touch this generation?

DK: The first thing is don't assume they know the Biblical story or what Christians believe. You can't just say "gospel." What does gospel mean? Anything you say needs to be redefined for a postmodern audience, as
many may even know the term but have a non-biblical understanding of it. The language, the characters, the terminology.  Don’t assume they have your background or understand the things you do.

FM: Anything else?

DK: Yes, there is an extreme hunger and desperation to cling onto truth and to have something to believe in. That is the great thing about these postmodern times- with a vacuum for truth. Last week we gave out Bibles and some of them got a Bible for the first time. It is really exciting to witness this.  Talk about hell, talk about Satan and the hard issues of the faith.  You want to be seeker sensitive, but not just by what is going to
get them through the doors or only talking about “how-tos.”  There is a hunger for fully exposing things.  Don’t be afraid to talk about sin.  It's how you do it that is important.  We need to be once again talking about the doctrines of the faith. We need to be at the same time open and honest about the mysteries of
the faith. Theology is a grappling with the mysteries of God, not solving a mathematical puzzle.    We shouldn't be afraid to talk about money. 

Last year, I preached on money.  We didn’t call it “Keys to Financial Happiness.”  We just called it “Money, Money.”  The first night, I said, “I’ ve never talked about this before, but the Bible talked about it a lot.  God must want us to know about it.”  Its being really up front that I believe gains respect and credibility, and not being so seeker-sensitive that it comes across as a bait and switch thing.  But how you are up front is the
main thing.

There is a tremendous hunger for truth out there today and that is incredibly exciting.   But truth is not merely knowledge - truth is a Person. Knowing truth is knowing Jesus. And that is the big difference of approach between modern and postmodern apologetics and preaching.

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