A Shared Pulpit: Creating a Hospitable Homiletic Culture for Congregational Formation in a Metamodern Age
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. American Cultural Philosophies of the Past and Homiletics
2.1. Modernism and Homiletics
2.2. Postmodernism and Homiletics
Increasingly, the central question is becoming who will have access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made. Access to data is, and will continue to be, the prerogative of experts of all stripes. The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers.(p. 10)
3. Metamodernism
Some of this generation are daring to imagine transcendence again. There is a revival of the mythic; sublimity, narrative, depth, meaning, and reorientation are once again being sought out and can be seen within metamodern artforms. And yet, precisely because one knows this transcendence cannot be unequivocally asserted (indeed, quite the contrary), its entertainment as an idea is of an essentially different sort than (pre)modern naiveté. It is indeed a sense of transcendence arising out of and ultimately held in check by the acknowledged immanent frame.
3.1. Metamodernism and Homiletics
3.2. Alternate Homiletical Responses to Metamodernism
3.3. Metamodernism, Trust, and Truth
It is more than consensus. Trust depends on self-abnegation, self-emptying, something akin to kenosis. It requires dispassion, empathy, attention to others and to the created world, to something not in ourselves. But ultimately, trust demands self-dispossession. That is why truth and trust must remain spiritual qualities—not simply psychological, not merely political, but, above all, spiritual values.(p. 7)
4. A Shared Pulpit Culture in Response to a Metamodern Age
4.1. Shared Pulpit Methodology
4.1.1. Preaching Training Session 1: Engaging the Text
4.1.2. Preaching Training Session 2: Composing the Sermon
The voice is a full-bodied instrument.
Many women struggle to speak.
Many women struggle to speak because they are disconnected from their bodies.(p. xx)
To body forth is to hold nothing back. It is the most hospitable act I can imagine for the preacher to offer her whole self in offering the word to her hearers. … When the preacher bodies forth the Word in sermon, she does not merely say, “This is a good idea; you should think about it”. Rather, she is saying, “This Word has a hold on my life, on my whole self, and it has a hold on your life as well”. … When we allow the Word to come alive in us and are open and vulnerable and willing to allow our whole body to be involved, we invite the Word to come alive in our hearers.(p. 85)
4.1.3. Shared Pulpit Wagers and Counter-Wagers
A metamodern homiletic is an approach to preaching that recognizes doubt and questioning as building blocks for growth; reframes its relationship with metanarratives and “truth”, such that those who are questioning find themselves not stymied, but stimulated; positions the preacher as principal doubter, as a midwife for the birth of knowledge and understanding rather than the arbiter of all biblical wisdom; listens to and echoes polyphony; finds a way to exist in the tensions of uncertainties; expands the social imaginary and opens up group space for inclusivity of diversity; and preaches not “the” truth, but rather orients listeners toward the pursuit of truth that exists in possibility regardless of our ability to access it.(p. 25)
5. How a Shared Pulpit Culture Forms the Church
5.1. The Formation of the Vocational Preacher
In preaching we articulate wagers, go public with our interpretations, frame our meanings, as one possibility in the zigzag, erratic journey of God’s people. My story or yours is neither more nor less important than the story of every other believer, congregational groupie, or hanger-on who hopes against hope to trade second-hand beliefs for first-hand discipleship. In fact, in this topsy turvy world, at times it is the preacher, particularly when we are in need of a season of silence, who becomes the groupie, the hanger-on, and it is a church member who speaks the life-restoring word.(p. 30)
5.2. The Formation of the Lay Preacher
[Metamodernism] oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity. Indeed, by oscillating to and fro or back and forth, the metamodern negotiates between the modern and the postmodern.
5.3. The Formation of the Church
If we had asked metamodernism to supply us with a way to understand religious belief and practice, we could hardly have asked for more than this. The person who sincerely believes in the creation story presented in the book of Genesis also knows for a fact that the dinosaurs were killed off by a giant comet 75 million years ago. The person who knows perfectly well that the wafer of bread was created in a bakery down the road out of flour, yeast and water also knows that it is the body of Christ. To the modernist mindset (and the profoundly modernist biblical literalist), this is a contradiction that must be resolved by choosing one side or another. To the postmodernist it is an ironic situation ripe for deconstruction. To the metamodernist, however, the fact that there is a paradox does not mean that one is wrong and the other right, or that one has to be relegated to a mere ‘subjective truth. … Paradox, in this context, is not limited to contradictory truth claims. It is an existential acknowledgement of differences, differences between you and I, and differences within my own experience’.(p. 3)
5.4. Limitations
6. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
1 | One could write a separate paper to address how a hospitable pulpit culture addresses the decline of Christianity in the U.S., but it would highlight different features and address different concerns. Though the rise of metamodernism and post-Christianity are connected, and the solutions are related, this paper is limited to the shared pulpit as a response to metamodernism. |
2 | A preacher cannot work on the assumption that there is one worldview in the pews. Modernism still largely influences the Western world. Especially prominent, for example, is the reliance upon individual reason to interpret the scriptures in the evangelical church. One philosophy does not so much replace another as they act as currents in the same ocean. That said, metamodernism is pervasive and expanding, and a shared pulpit is a response to this reality without intending to ignore the needs of others in the congregation. |
3 | Jesus mentions other purposes for the incarnation as well, of course, like glorification that leads to revelation (John 12:27) and “to bear witness to the truth” (John 18). Overarchingly, the purpose of the incarnation was to make the Father known through the Son, thus reconciling the world to God through Christ. One means of making the Father known that Jesus prioritized is the spoken word. |
4 | |
5 | I preach only a couple of times a month because of my church’s open-pulpit culture. In addition, I eliminated some sermons that were heavily occasional or about Bible characters; otherwise, it would appear as if Jonah were a part of my working gospel, when I never mentioned Jonah outside of that three-week sermon series. |
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Mangan Dahlman, T. A Shared Pulpit: Creating a Hospitable Homiletic Culture for Congregational Formation in a Metamodern Age. Religions 2024, 15, 1040. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091040
Mangan Dahlman T. A Shared Pulpit: Creating a Hospitable Homiletic Culture for Congregational Formation in a Metamodern Age. Religions. 2024; 15(9):1040. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091040
Chicago/Turabian StyleMangan Dahlman, Tiffany. 2024. "A Shared Pulpit: Creating a Hospitable Homiletic Culture for Congregational Formation in a Metamodern Age" Religions 15, no. 9: 1040. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091040