Warriors, Pacifists, and Diplomats: Preachers and Culture

A handful of choices define every preacher. From where will the message come? Will it offer answers gleaned from the social sciences, public opinion polls, celebrity talk show hosts, or political dogma? Or will it flow from the acts and words of God discovered and experienced in the Scriptures? What will the preacher’s sermons do? Will they instruct, leading to better informed hearers? Should they offer perspective, encouragement and comfort, leading to better adjusted hearers? Will they admonish and exhort, leading to better behaved hearers? Or will they seek transformation, leading to simply better, reborn, hearers?

These and other key issues fill the pages of every good Homiletics textbook. One question, however, which can, in subtle but powerful ways, define and drive a preaching ministry, is often overlooked: What is the preacher’s, and the sermon’s, relationship to culture? The answer to this question will make all the difference in the direction a preacher’s ministry will take.

The Cultural Warrior

Some preachers see themselves as cultural warriors. Like the prophets of old, they measure the values of the society around them against the standards of God’s Word, and find them wanting. Their sermons are filled with indictment and judgment. They sometimes lead their congregations on crusades for cultural and social holiness. They engage the enemy on the battlefields of picket lines, political campaigns and protest marches. A desperate battle between good and evil consumes their preaching ministries and becomes the defining characteristic of their congregations.

The Cultural Pacifist

At the other end of the spectrum is the cultural pacifist. Turned off by the activism of the “warrior,” this preacher prefers simply to “go deep into the Word,” without tangling with cultural issues. “Making disciples” within the confines of the four walls of the church is their focus. They give their attention to the personal holiness of believers, rather than the corporate holiness (or lack thereof) of society. Sermons rarely mention, much less address, issues from surrounding culture. Only biblical knowledge, theological correctness and personal piety merit the pulpit’s attention.

This preacher assumes that hearers will either manage to live in isolation from the culture at large, or they will draw on their biblical depth, theological understanding, and spiritual maturity to figure out how to respond to the culture’s challenges when they come.

The Cultural Diplomat

Somewhere between these two poles, preachers as cultural diplomats engage culture in peace talks. Their strategy is to identify that which is good, or neutral, in surrounding culture, as a starting point for a constructive dialogue. Points at which the prevailing world view shows some affinity with Christianity become bridges across which a biblical witness may pass.

The cultural diplomat could take several shapes. The preacher as “cultural guru,” for example, offers insight on current cultural products and artifacts, giving up-to-the-moment Christian commentary on the prevailing messages of society. Another variation is the “cultural insider,” who adopts the look and the lingo of a particular culture or subculture to gain a hearing with its members. Then the Christian message can be wrapped in a package that is attractive to them. Yet another diplomatic strategy is the preacher as “cultural answer person.” In this case, the preaching ministry is built around offering biblical answers to the questions of the day.

The strength of diplomatic approaches is that they engage the culture in positive ways. Their weakness is that they may often allow culture to set the agenda for the conversation. If we engage culture only on its own terms, we are always in the position of responding to its interests. This leaves us with a sense of being adrift and at the mercy of cultural currents. In the process, we may miss the fact that the biblical world view has an agenda of its own. The ultimate danger, historically, is cultural captivity of the church.

Why the Cultural Concern?

The issue of preaching’s relationship to culture is critical. At stake is the very nature of the community that is to gather around the proclaimed word. Neither an isolationist community nor a merely activist community seem to fit the ideal of the church that Jesus builds. Nor are we satisfied with a church that is culturally relevant but captive. We want to gather a people that is both engaged and intentional in its relationship to culture. We want our sermons to nurture a missional community. If this is to be, we must think seriously about the cultural strategy of our preaching.

These categories are, of course, simplified in the extreme, and most of us would not identify exclusively with any of them. We seek balance in our preaching ministries, so we are sometimes warriors, sometimes pacifists, and sometimes diplomats — and there are times when each of these postures is appropriate. The fact that we are looking for balance, however, points to the need for a coherent cultural rationale for our preaching. To offer such a rationale is the goal of this series of posts.

An Alternative: The Preacher as Cultural Architect

I believe our starting place is to change our metaphor. We need to stop using the language of war, peace and diplomacy, and start using the language of architecture. Our preaching focus should be not on confronting the culture, escaping the culture, or even engaging the culture. In stead, we should seek to build a culture that lives with purpose and mission among the cultures of the world. We should see ourselves as cultural architects, carefully attending our community’s manner of being in the world.

In this series of posts, we will walk this path with the benefit of light shed from the fields of Christian ethics, contemporary missiology, and biblical studies. Eventually, we will explore some practical proposals for how preachers might approach their calling to cultural architecture.

As a first step, we need to consider the history of the conversation about “Christ and Culture,” and how this conversation might need to be redefined.