Preaching to Postmoderns: New Perspectives for Proclaiming the Message

by Robert Kysar, Joseph M. Webb

How does one preach to a congregation immersed in a postmodern culture outside the church, but often finding itself in another culture within its walls? Do the postmodern criticisms offer any opportunities to the preacher for addressing the great truths of Scripture in new and fresh ways? Robert Kysar and Joseph M. Webb, both scholar-preachers, believe that they do. Preaching to New Perspectives for Proclaiming the Message seeks to inform and encourage pastors who want to expand their horizons. Webb and Kysar have addressed the need for pastors to understand the staggering numbers of new approaches to biblical interpretation and the bewildering choices for sermon preparation that they represent. In this book they offer introductions to each of the major types of interpretive methods and point out the implications for each in preparing a sermon. They successfully move the theories of biblical interpretation out of the ivory tower and into the pastor’s study. To exemplify how each of the major methods impact the preaching task, they offer a sample sermon for each method. This is a book that will bring pastors up-to-date in biblical interpretation while demonstrating what difference it makes for preachers as they seek to use the various methods.

239 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2006

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pretty dense, academic overview of the history of biblical criticisms. The authors suggest that any and all preachers need to aware of and able to interact with the various currents in biblical studies...which is true! But I found the book ultimately unhelpful because the presuppositions of the authors regarding what Scripture is, what meaning(s) in can have, and what we are looking for when we come to it differ substantially from my own (at least the way I understood them). I am also a little confused by the title - since they definitely included schools of biblical criticism that grew out of and helped propagate postmodernity, but that was in no way the overarching focus of the book. They spent just as much time in the historical-criticisms that grew out of and reinforced the modern era. Maybe they thought the title would attract attention....?