Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to Reaching Twenty-first Century Listeners [Paperback]

Graham Johnston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2001

Named Preaching magazine's "Book of the Year 2001"! With this book, you'll learn how to change your style of preaching without compromising the substance while investigating fresh means of communicating truth to postmodern listeners.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

To communicate God's Word effectively in the twenty-first century, you need to know how to connect with and confront an audience of postmodern listeners. With this book, you'll learn how to change your style of preaching without compromising the substance, take advantage of new opportunities provided by the cultural shift, and show an inattentive society the relevance of God's truth.

"The world has gone through a major shift in thinking and communication into a postmodern mode, yet much preaching is still 'pre-modern' and very out of touch. Graham Johnston has made a significant contribution in his book, showing how preaching can be thoroughly biblical, opening up the text of the Bible but also concerned with the openings in the minds of contemporary people."
Leighton Ford, president, Leighton Ford Ministries

"Communicating God's Word is more than just speaking the truth; it's being heard and understood as well. This book is designed to help Christian leaders better understand their listeners, so they can communicate biblical truths with effectiveness and clarity."
Josh McDowell, author of Evidence That Demands a Verdict

"Graham Johnston describes the water in which we exist. . . . Better still, he provides some workable leads on how to communicate the life-giving Word to men and women swimming in the currents of the twenty-first century."
Haddon W. Robinson, author of Biblical Preaching

"Johnston not only brings a shrewd analysis of the present changes in our culture, he also contributes from the perspective of a skilled practitioner. Such a combination is both rare and valuable."
Martin Robinson, director of mission and theology, British and Foreign Bible Society

"For anyone desiring a ministry of impact in today's postmodern society, Graham Johnston has provided an understandable and useful focus."
Howard G. Hendricks, chairman, Center for Christian Leadership, Dallas Theological Seminary

About the Author

Graham MacPherson Johnston is senior pastor of Subiaco Church of Christ in Western Australia and an adjunct lecturer in homiletics at Perth Bible College. He holds degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Baker Books (July 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801063671
• ISBN-13: 978-0801063671
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Graham Johnston has put together a wonderful book..., August 7, 2002

By 

David Phillips "pastor" (Smyrna, DE USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to Reaching Twenty-first Century Listeners (Paperback)

Graham Johnston has put together a wonderful book on preaching to postmoderns. Dr. Johnston first gives a brief overview of postmodern culture. While it's not exhaustive life Carson's The Gagging of God or Dockery's The Challenge of Postmodernism or Grenz's Postmodern Primer, that does not mean it doesn't do the job. He boils a lot of it down and gives the neccesary basics to understanding our current culture.

He then describes some ways to engage the listeners, ways that preachers should truly understand. He encourages the preacher to move from descriptive preaching (expository preaching using multiple points) to narrative preaching (expository preaching that uses the plot of the Biblical text).

The author discusses barriers to communication with postmoderns and then how to make a connection and make inroads to the listeners and finally different sermon style and delivery options.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On the mark, September 27, 2002

By 

R. Ciervo (Long Branch, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to Reaching Twenty-first Century Listeners (Paperback)

Johnston's review of postmodernism is accurate and concise. Announcing that modernism has collapsed is one flaw. We live in a mixture of the two - dare I say - philosophies. The other complaint I have about the book is the reliance on secondary sources. Besides these two problems, this is an excellent book.

Postmodernism has come of age in the new century. It's been growing steadily since the sixties. Anyone who was around for the hippie movement can recognize all the signs. However, postmodernism has become mainstream and even adopted by some in the church. (Whatever happened to being renewed in the spirit of the mind?) Johnston not only shows how the world has infiltrated the church but how to reach those with the gospel without accommodating to this age. His understanding that popular postmodernism is a parasite feeding off of modernism is incisive. In essence, postmodernism is a reaction to modernism as feminism reacts against a male dominated society. Christians ought not imbibe either as a philosphy. We do better with pre-modern philosophy and its attention to reality.

This book is more than helpful. It ought to be read by all those who minister today.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Primer, But Ignore the Conclusions, March 29, 2005

By 

Servus Christi (Granite Falls, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to Reaching Twenty-first Century Listeners (Paperback)

Graham Johnston's "Preaching to a Postmodern World" is an outstanding work for anybody who needs a primer on the postmodern mindset. An excellent overview of the history of the Enlightenment, modernism, and the emergence of postmodernism serves as one of the best introductions of any I have read. Johnston's summary of the postmodern mindset and its ramifications is perhaps the most succinct and useful guide I have yet encountered. He seems to have a firm grasp on how secularism emerged and led to postmodern thinking. The numerous examples of Hollywood movies and popular songs demonstrate Johnston's prowess as a cultural watcher and critic. His observations about these and other elements of pop culture are insightful, and he does a very good job of "connecting the dots" of his observations with his commentary on postmodernism.

Johnston's conclusions are alternately refreshing and frustrating. His emphasis on the affective level of communication, to stimulate correct feelings about God, is refreshing. Some of his suggested means for accomplishing this are frustrating, e.g. preaching from a barstool, using clips from Hollywood films to illustrate points, avoiding black-and-white statements of doctrine. He does not seem to grasp the rise of populism within American evangelicalism that began in the early 19th century and that fueled much of what he laments in the church, like, "Western civilization wallows in fragments of Christian clichés and paraphernalia. . . . The danger . . . is not that people reject Christ but that they reject a caricature of Christ." (p. 19, 21)

He is surprisingly optimistic about the receptivity of postmodern listeners to an exclusive Christ. This optimism is at odds with much of what he says. Inconsistent thinking may fuel this optimism. For example, he quotes Diogenes Allen p. l7, "A culture that is increasingly free of the assumptions of the Enlightenment of science, religion, morality, and society is a culture that is increasingly free of assumptions that prevent one from coming to an appreciation of the intellectual strength of Christianity." This makes little sense given that the assumptions which have replaced the assumptions of the Enlightenment are in fact even greater barriers to appreciating the intellectual strength of an exclusive Christianity! As bad as the Enlightenment was, what has emerged from the Enlightenment is much worse. "Unfortunately, with the loss of truth, people will now seek faith without boundaries, categories, or definition. The old parameters of belief do not exist. As a result, people will be increasingly open to knowing God, but on their own terms." (p. 31) While I admire Johnston's enthusiasm, he fails to explain how being open to an inclusive faith leads to being open to an exclusive faith. Repeating the conclusion does not reinforce its validity.

What Johnston suggests (prior to the climax of the book) as a fresh new way to approach postmodern listeners is not really new at all. In fact, much of that to which he objects has always been objectionable! Many of his suggestions are poignant, biblical, and seemingly obvious (despite evidence to the contrary in the populist Fundamentalist and Evangelical movements over the last century). His objections to the grosser errors of modernist preaching are valid, and the same ones I and my friends shared as children in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, arguments are often presented using a straw man. An example of this is encapsulated in the conclusion on p. 114, "Biblical communicators must learn to speak about God in more than sound bites [sic] and superficial jargon." Nobody would disagree with this. To characterize the preaching of yesteryear as "sound bites and superficial jargon" is ironically doing just what he is decrying - communicating in a shallow way that not only fails to engage the reader but insults his intelligence.

While Johnston never elaborates on his idea of worship, it appears that it is man-centered. The climax of his book challenges the reader to engage the listener and woo the lost with the all-important "relevance" of the preacher, err, "communicator" (p. 149) who exudes a studied, casual demeanor as he sits on his stool (p. 151) and tells stories with practiced comedy (p. 169), showing his relaxed listeners clips from Hollywood films (no doubt to stretch their moral imagination) and encourages them to imagine God as a great Forrest Gump (p. 163). The notion of worship as a reverent, God-centered activity, utterly incomprehensible to the lost, seems not only foreign to Johnston but even repugnant. By making "worship" into a "relevant" activity that appeals to the lost, Johnston wins them with the very thing that he should be winning them to, but no longer exists - because he has hijacked it! Perhaps the initial response to this banal thing that has replaced worship is what fuels Johnston's optimism that postmodernism is not really that bad, after all. And so the populist movements of American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism race ever faster around the bend, plunging down their same old vortex in a constant headlong rush into oblivion.