The Future Shape of Christian Proclamation

What the Global South Can Teach Us About Preaching

Cleophus J. LaRue, Luiz C. Nascimento, Cleophus J. LaRue, Luiz C. Nascimento

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781725252486, 9781725252493
• eBook ISBN: 9781725252509
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Christianity is turning brown and moving south. The Christianity the West has known is in recession and has all but dwindled out of recognition in the opening years of the twenty-first century. Well over half of the world's Christians now live in the Global South--Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They are, according to Aberdeen missiologist Andrew Walls, the new Representative Christians. What they think about Christianity will matter more and more and what North America thinks about Christianity will matter less and less. This massive shift in geography and theological point of departure will have a major impact on Christian preaching now and into the future. The Future Shape of Christian Proclamation seeks to begin the conversation about how preaching in the Global South will inform the whole of Christian preaching in the coming years.

Singapore: Preaching in the Power of the Pneuma

Johnson Lim

God’s Word to the Church today is the restoration of the Spirit to his rightful place in the church, and in your life, is, by all means, the most important that could possibly take place. . . . The truth is, God never thought of his church apart from the Holy Spirit. We were born of the Spirit. We were baptized into the body of Christ by the Spirit. We are anointed with the Spirit. We are led of the Spirit. We are taught of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the medium, the divine solution, in which God holds the Church.

—A. W. Tozer229

The Bible summons all Christians to accept the Spirit’s empowerment for the various tasks he has assigned us and for evangelizing the world. Woe to us if in a world like today’s we try to do his work without him.

—Craig S. Keener230

Without the anointing of the Spirit there can be no authority in living or preaching the Word.

—Stephen F. Olford231

All preaching must be done in the power of the Holy Spirit. No one can effectively proclaim the Lord Jesus in his own strength. The saving power is in the message and not the messenger.

—Steven J. Lawson232

When it comes to preaching, we have myriads of resources to help us become excellent preachers. We have a plethora of books on preaching mechanics. Preaching conferences and seminars are regularly conducted locally, regionally, and internationally. We even have Google to access illustrations and websites dedicated to helping us preach better. Moreover, there are communication theories to help us impact the congregation, powerful computer software to help us exegete and prepare good sermons, and PowerPoint to make our presentations visually stunning and stimulating. In other words, we have at our disposal the tools, technologies, and techniques we need as preachers.

Notwithstanding all these good things, why does preaching appear to have little or no effect on the congregation? Information is conveyed each Sunday, but why is the resulting transformation lagging behind?233 More pointedly, why is there a visible absence of power in contemporary preaching? Is the Holy Spirit MIA (missing in action)?

From a homiletical standpoint, there are four contributing reasons. First is the marginalization of the Holy Spirit in preaching. A kaleidoscope of homileticians, scholars, theologians, historians, and practitioners have argued cogently that corroborative textual evidence from Scripture and concrete examples from Church history have unequivocally shown that it has everything to do with the marginalization and misplacement of the Transformer, God, the Holy Spirit, in our preaching. Is the neglect and marginalization of the Third Person of the Trinity the result of a biblically, theologically, and historically inadequate and flawed understanding of Pneumatology?234

Second is unbalanced priority. Much emphasis has been placed on tools, techniques, and technologies235 instead of the Transformer. Granted, we are living in a digital world where technology plays an important part in our lives. However, preaching becomes ineffective when we attend exclusively to its mechanics and sparingly on its dynamics.

Third is the failure to take the Holy Spirit seriously. The need to be Spirit-filled is a clear teaching in the New Testament—it is a command, not a suggestion! It is to be daily and continuous rather than once and for all or a one-time experience according to its grammatical construction in the Greek language. Harold Hoehner observes correctly:

The present imperative indicates that this is not an automatic bestowment at the time of salvation but an injunction for every believer to follow continually. The filling by the Spirit is more than the Spirit’s indwelling—it is his activities realized in and through us. . . . With the indwelling, each Christian has all of the Spirit, but the command to be filled by the Spirit enables the Spirit to have all of the believer.236

To be Spirit-filled also means ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Voltear la tortilla
• The Passion of the Christ? or The Passion of Mel Gibson?68
• Preaching in Brazil and the Formation of Brazility
• How Are They to Hear without a Preacher?
• The Hermeneutics of African Caribbean Homiletics
• Trinidad & Tobago Preaching
• Singapore: Preaching in the Power of the Pneuma
• Preaching to the Javanese People of Indonesia
• Embracing an Ocean Homiletic
• India
• Existential Realities and the Preaching Dynamics of Some Nigerian Pentecostal Preachers
• “To Each Its Own Meaning”