Preaching after Christendom Peter Davis Wesley Institute Preaching

Preaching after Christendom Peter Davis Wesley Institute

Preaching after Christendom “Everything around us has been shifted. Nothing seems to be what it was or what it seemed to be. ” John Killinger

Transitions • • From the centre to the margins From the majority to a minority From settlers to sojourners From privilege to plurality From control to witness From maintenance to mission From an institution to a movement Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, 2004, p 20.

Preaching after Christendom Preaching endeavours to state in the boldest, most extreme ways the contrast between how people in our society generally think and what it would mean to think life or to act life through the gospel, and therefore to make as few as possible accommodations, but to keep articulating a really radical, sharp contrast that invites a decision. Walter Brueggemann

Preaching after Christendom The most evangelistic thing the church can do today is to be the church – to be formed imaginatively by the Holy Spirit through core practices such as worship, forgiveness, hospitality and economic sharing into a distinctive people in the world, a new social option, the body of Christ … The missio dei is the creation of a people who in every culture are both ‘pulpit and paradigm’ of a new humanity. Bryan Stone, Evangelism after Christendom, 2007, p 15

Preaching after Christendom "The prime evangelistic moment is the gap between us and God. . After twenty years of thinking of preaching as my attempt to close the gap, I now conceive of faithful preaching as opening up the gap. For it is in the gaps that we can be reborn. “ William Willimon. The Intrusive Word, 1994

Preaching after Christendom “Jewish reading honours texts which are disjointed, irrational, contradictory, paradoxical, ironic and scandalous. ” Walter Brueggemann