Navigating Changing Contexts in Preaching and Worship

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Exploring the evolving landscape of preaching and worship in the context of societal shifts, demographic changes, and generational diversity. The need for new approaches and strategies in ministering to a changing world is emphasized, highlighting the importance of understanding current trends and adapting to meet the needs of different generations and cultures.

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THE CHANGING CONTEXTS OF PREACHING AND WORSHIP 1 9/17/2024 1

Chaplain Gore, Do you have a moment to talk with me about preaching? That makes my heart hurt. 9/17/2024 2

WHY STUDY OUR CONTEXTS? Great philosophical and cultural differences permeate our society Great philosophical and cultural differences separate you from those to whom you minister Increasing diversity and generational realignment of society require new tools for reaching the next generation Strategies provide intentional direction and focus for our methods 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 3

ROADMAP Demographics Mega-Change Philosophical & Cultural Change Generational Change The Millennial Generation ( and Zs) Preaching and Worship in the NOW 9/17/2024 4

Why is This Important? DEMOGRAPHICS! 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 5

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS Currently, 75% of Americans are Caucasian By 2050, only 50% of Americans will be Caucasian The Hispanic population has overtaken African- Americans as the largest minority population In some areas of the country (e.g., parts of California), there is no longer a majority population Racial and Ethnic diversity- a fact of life. Millennials most diverse generation in history. 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 6

THE ARMY: 2010 Significant racial/gender diversity Army Endstrength: 561,979 Millennials- 291,502 (51%) Under 27 Busters- 256,767 (46%) Boomers- 13,710 (2.4%) Over 46 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 7

What is the New Normal? MEGA-CHANGE! 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 8

CHANGE IS HERE! 1 Chronicles 12:32 Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs, and all their kinsmen under their command (ESV). Understand Know Do 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 9

CHANGE IS HERE! At the start of the third millennium, we live in a time of vast changes changes so epochal that they will dwarf those experienced in earlier eras. Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future, 11 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 10

CHANGE IS HERE! Fifty years after the printing press was invented, we did not have old Europe plus the printing press. We had a different Europe. Neil Postman, Technopoly, 18 Fifty Years after . . . Radio? Television? Internet? 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 11

CHANGE IS HERE! We need some historical balance here: though we are always living in times of transition, some times are more transitional than others. We seem to be in one of those times. Some of the trends I ve listed above are, I think, symptoms of an epochal shift in world history, of the kinds that occurs only every few centuries. Peter J. Leithart, SATP, 13 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 12

CHANGE IS HERE! Christians are now the foreigners in a post-Christian culture, and we have got to wake up to this reality if we haven t. Dan Kimball,They Like Jesus But Not The Church, 30 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 13

My Reading List 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 14

What has given us the New Normal? PHILOSOPHICAL & CULTURAL CHANGE 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 15

WORLDVIEWS Premodern Plato Truth (Truth Objective) Modern Aristotle Descartes (Truth? Subjective) Postmodern Truth Truth Truths? 9/17/2024 16 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1

POST-MODERNISM: In Brief Chronologically a development beyond the rational worldview fostered by the Enlightenment Represents a dissolving of an orderly, structured view of reality Represents the abandonment of a metanarrative and the embracing, instead, of many (mini) stories (in community) 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 17

POST-MODERNISM: In Brief Is thoroughly anti-foundationalist and suspicious of the objectivity of knowledge Rejects the secularized notion of progress (a Christian heresy) and questions if knowledge is good Embraces ways of knowing, other than by reason: intuition, experience, feeling 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 18

POST-MODERNISM: Impact Ideas have legs! It is impossible to understand postmodernism without noting its impact on our culture What begins in the ethereal realm of the academy eventually show up in popular culture: The Arts, TV and Film, Architecture, Popular Worldview 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 19

POST-MODERNISM: the Arts Blue Man Group: Music and Performance Art Warhol, Cristo Karen Finley Robert Mapplethorpe Andres Serrano 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 20

POST-MODERNISM: Film and TV Field of Dreams (from the book, Shoeless Joe) Groundhog Day Pulp Fiction Reality TV Seinfeld, a show about nothing Jackass (MTV) 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 21

POST-MODERNISM: Architecture Disney Hall, Los Angeles, CA Shopping Malls Theme Parks 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 22

POST-MODERNISM: Architecture Modern Postmodern 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 23

THE POSTMODERN CONUNDRUM We in North America live in a Disneyworld culture, a Cool Whip society, in which we engage in autoerotic telephone sex in place of real intimacy, splash in simulated lakes and waterfalls at recreational waterparks rather than risk the pollution at the local lake or river, 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 24

THE POSTMODERN CONUNDRUM shop in climate-controlled malls that attempt to look like old-fashioned shopping neighborhoods and even watch the horrors of war carefully sanitized on television to give us a sense that we are really there, yet not leave us uncomfortable with what we have seen. Walsh and Middleton, Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be, 39 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 25

THE POSTMODERN CONUNDRUM As theologian Langdon Gilkey puts it, An autumnal chill is in the air; its similarity to the chill in other periods of cultural decline is undeniable. Walsh and Middleton, Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be, 25 9/17/2024 CHANGING CONTEXTS 1 26