A recent Gallup poll is sending shockwaves through the evangelical world. For the first time in Gallup’s polling history, church membership fell below 50% in 2020. It was 70% in 2000, but twenty years later it is now 47%.[1] The numbers are worse if you look at them generationally. Only 8% of white millennials identify as evangelical compared to 26% of seniors.[2] Our world is increasingly secular, and young people are increasingly turning away from the church.
Russell Moore points out an astonishing reality. People are turning away from the church not merely because they reject the doctrines of the church but because they think the church rejects the doctrines of the church. It is sad when people turn away from the church because they do not believe in the authority of the Bible. It is tragic when people turn away from the church because they do not believe that we believe in the authority of the Bible. Our preaching has become secular in our quest to attract the world to the church. Moore writes:
“We are losing a generation—not because they are secularists, but because they believe we are. What this demands is not a rebranding, but a repentance—meaning, as the Bible does, a turnaround. … We need to be the … people of a Word that stands above all earthly powers and, no thanks to them, abides.”[3]
INSIDER LANGUAGE
A community of faith requires a common language. Insider language is the language of community. The terms we use and the stories we tell give the church its distinctive identity in this world. A community defines what is important and unimportant, how people should behave, and what people should believe, through language.[4] The Bible is full of insider language that would not have been understandable to the average person in their world and is most certainly not understandable to our world. Jesus often spoke in peculiar language. For example, he talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood as the way to eternal life (John 6:53-58). No wonder the world thought Christians were cannibals! As one writer put it, “we talk funny.”[5]
Insider language fills Paul’s epistles, making preaching today more difficult. Just take the first chapter of Ephesians, for example. Paul talks about election (1:4), predestination (1:5), adoption as sons (1:5), redemption through His blood (1:7), administration of the fullness of times (1:10), the sealing of the Holy Spirit (1:13) who is the pledge of our inheritance (1:14), the hope of his calling (1:18), Christ seated at God’s right hand in the heavenlies (1:20), and the church as the body of Christ (1:22-23). And this is just one chapter written to a population that was 80-90% illiterate. The insider language emphasizes that we are different from the world. We talk funny!
THE LANGUAGE OF THE WORLD
There is a great emphasis today on talking the language of the world to reach the world.
We adopt the language of the world in two ways. 1) We turn worship services into evangelistic events. Worship services are designed, and sermons are prepared to avoid insider language or at the very least to translate it into the language of the secular world. The attractional model for church ministry focuses on talking about our faith in worldly terms so that the world will want to come to church.
2) We reject all “Christianized” language because it might offend the world we are trying to reach. Preachers must avoid all religious jargon in their sermons to make Christianity palatable to the people. We have adapted Christian language to the secular world and, in so doing, have lost the distinctiveness of the church. Many Christians do not even know how to talk about their faith anymore. We have lost the language of Christianity.
LANGUAGE OF IDENTITY
Now we need to teach Christians to become competent in the language of our faith all over again.[6] We need to rediscover what Eugene Peterson calls “language as participation” or “language as relationship.”[7] A community of faith finds its identity through the language of God’s story, the Bible. The master story of the birth of the Christian community gives the community its identity.[8] Our master story is the gospel explained in the Bible. It is the big gospel, not just the little gospel, the good news of all that Christ has done for us. This involves explaining the language of redemption and inheritance so that Christians can talk about who they are and what they believe. The words then evoke our feelings of relationship with one another and participation in what Christ is doing.
Expository preaching is counter-cultural. In exposition, we explain the doctrines of the Bible – God’s story, not our stories. Biblical exposition shapes the identity of the church as distinct from the world. We are not secular and should not sound secular. We are peculiar, to use a biblical term! We sometimes talk funny. Preachers must, of course, explain the theological terms today, perhaps as much for Christians as for non-Christians, but we should not avoid them. People need to understand that we are different, and that is OK.
Will we attract large crowds with expository preaching? Probably not. I often feel like a dinosaur when it comes to preaching today because of the popularity of topical, felt need sermons. Will we see a resurgence of faith among the people? Absolutely, yes! God promises to transform people through His word, not our words (Isaiah 55:11; Heb. 4:12). God’s word is powerful, and we need to be people of God’s word in this world.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx
[2] https://www.russellmoore.com/2021/04/15/losing-our-religion/
[3] Ibid., last paragraph
[4] Ronald J. Allen, “The Social Function of Language in Preaching,” in Preaching as a Social Act: Theology and Practice, edited by Arthur Van Seters, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988, material prepared for Religion Online by Paul Mobley, para. 5, 7. https://www.religion-online.org/book/preaching-as-a-social-act-theology-and-practice/
[5] Thompson, Preaching Like Paul, 99, fn. 27.
[6] Thompson, Preaching Like Paul, 99-100.
[7] Peterson, The Pastor, 123.
[8] Allen, “The Social Function of Language in Preaching,” para. 7-9.
