On September 23, Sally Morgenthaler, the author of WORSHIP EVANGELISM, sat down with FreshMinistry's Online Editor, Jim Wilson to discuss postmodern preaching.  Here's an edited version of their discussion:

FreshMinistry: As a worship leader that regularly listens to sermons, what are the changes you've seen over the past twenty years in the things that preachers need to do to connect with their audiences?

Sally Morgenthaler: The main change I've noticed is the impact of the neo-story culture. We left the oral culture with Gutenberg's press in 1452, but we've rediscovered it through film, television, and the Internet. I think everyone gets email forward to them, and they are mainly stories. We are now sitting around the campfire of the Internet sharing our stories.

Funeral's have become another campfire we're sharing stories around. Instead of just eulogizing the one who died, we are sharing our significant memories in photography, poem, song, or favorite passages out of a favorite novel of the deceased.. We are telling their story through the arts. It is amazing how funerals are longer and longer today.

FM: Yes, there are even open mikes at a lot of funerals today.

SM: Exactly! So I would say, that more than anything, since we've moved to a story culture. How many editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul are there? I don't care what age you are, the story is how we access meaning. And if the story can be mixed with visuals and song it is better.

FM: Now are you talking about story to illustrate a traditional propositional sermon, or are you talking about changing the entire structure of the sermon?

SM: If you are trying to reach people under 35, I'd say change the entire structure. Over the age of 40 you can get by with a linear presentation, but it isn't ideal. At Pathways, we don't call the message a sermon, we call it a story. This week when Ron Johnson tells the story of the wedding feast at Cana, he will let that story become a part of him in the weeks before he tells the story. He will read part of it from scripture, but he will tell the story in his own words, and as he is telling that story, he will bring in stories from his and other people's life to give it meaning. Especially at the end. Instead of giving take away points, he will tell another story to apply it to the people's lives.

FM: As I've listened to you speak, I've noticed that you contrast the postmodern church with the contemporary church instead of the traditional church. There is almost an unwritten rule today that speakers can't criticize the contemporary church. Yet you do.  It seems that most people think the postmodern church is an extension of the contemporary church, but I don't see it that way. I believe the postmodern church is a clean break from the contemporary church.

SM: I would say yes, it is a clean break if by "contemporary church" you mean, presentation, apologetic and conceptual preaching and aesthetics that come at the audience instead of involving them more. If that is a definition of contemporary, I see that as hyper modernity, not post modernity.

FM: Right, and with contemporary preaching, there is always an application or a take away, but in postmodern preaching you often leave with a question and allow the people to tie it all together.

SM: Right, because in the postmodern world, we assume that somebody has an agenda, and it is so nice when we can take home the piece that is most significant to us instead of having someone hammering something into us, that might be foreign.

FM: And the contemporary preacher is assuming that we don't know what they're talking about.

SM: Exactly. I remember Ron preaching on, (I don't preach, so I have to use Ron as the example) Elisha receiving Elijah's robe. He could have said, "you need to take up your mantle and go."

FM: And here's three ways to do it.

SM: Right. Instead, he simply at the end had a time of prayer for all of us to consider how we feel called or don't feel called and let that rest there. He didn't give us guilt trips but he did help us connect with the whole idea of calling, maybe for the first time. 

Elisha had a hard choice to make at that time, because to choose the mantle, meant he was choosing to be alone. To choose to be rejected because of the prophetic voice that came with that mantle.

FM: And he knew that.

SM: He knew that . . .and that was also part of counting the costs. Ron let us do that without pressing us to do that. He let it sit with us. He left us with a state of disequalibrium. We are not left having it all tied up. That's the way Jesus left the Rich Young Ruler.

FM: That was one of the hallmarks of all of his teaching.

SM: Absolutely.

FM: He confused-He didn't make it clear.

SM: Yes, and you have to go back and wrestle with your own reality, journey and life.

FM: But to preach like that, you have to believe that your audience is intelligent and that the Holy Spirit is there to work.

SM: That's a big deal in this day and age. Because we are into control. I used to be a worship leader with a type "A" personality. I even had a stop light built for the pastor. It went yellow when he should be wrapping the sermon up and went red when he should be done. We're talking control here, were not talking, "What is God doing in this moment? Can we just be present with each other and let God work?" 
 

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