Right at the outset it needs to be said that this subject is too vast to be handled in one paper.  There has been and still is so much being said and written on the subject, so many approaches, strategies, systems and programs have been proposed that it would be presumptuous to think we can come to any definitive methods in this paper.  The very nature of Post Modernism defies any definitive definition because at its very core it is subjective and individualistic.  It could be said that there are as many varieties of post modernism as what there are post modern thinkers.  Each person’s views and opinions must, by post-modern definition, carry as much weight as the next.  Therefore to propose any specific method is impossible.  The methods will vary from place to place, church to church and even from individual to individual.  That does not mean however, that there aren’t biblical principles to be applied, to establish certain parameters within which to work.

Before highlighting the principles, we do need to say certain things about postmodernism itself in order to understand the challenges facing us in seeking to reach out with the gospel to our communities.

In essence, post modernism is just a fancy new name for pluralism, which in its turn is a natural secular humanistic product of plurality.  We are in a post-modern world because of the fact of plurality.  Plurality is a given fact in any cosmopolitan society.  By this we mean that because of the various cultural and ethnic backgrounds out of which people come, there is a natural plurality of philosophies, ideologies, values, ethics, morals, world views, religions and just about anything else you can think of all co-existing with one another.  Pluralism, on the other hand is the philosophical and ideological promotion of plurality.  In other words, it not only accepts plurality as a fact, but embraces it, promotes it, thrives upon it and espouses it as a highly sought after value in itself.  In cosmopolitan societies these various personal contexts collide and clash.  Each one has his or her own particular view of what is right, wrong, good, bad, acceptable or unacceptable behaviour and who then is to be the judge of who or what is right and wrong?  The result is that the individual looks to him or her self as the authoritative, measure and standard for themselves.  “What is right for me, is right for me and what is right for you is right for you” – there are no universal absolutes, or objective truths.  What transpires is a very individualistic and self centred society where the individual is supreme.  I, me, my and mine is all that matters.  It is like the time of the Judges when everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

The reason for pointing this out is to show that although we may call this “post modernism”, it isn’t really all that “modern”, as in being something new, let alone “post modern”.  As Solomon says “there is nothing new under the sun”  Ecc. 1:9 & 10 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.  Is there anything of which one can say,  ‘Look! This is something new?’  It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Cosmopolitan societies are nothing new.  While they might not have been as widespread as they are today, they certainly did exist in biblical times.  Certain areas such as Corinth and Crete were particularly cosmopolitan due to their strategic locations on travel routes.  Of particular note was first century Crete situated in the middle of the Mediterranean.  A self centred society influenced by all the cultures of the many foreigners who visited and stayed as well as the cultures of the foreign lands in which their own citizens had served as mercenaries or had carried out trade.  (For a fuller treatment of this – refer to John Benton’s commentary on Titus in the Welwyn series “Straightening out the self centred Church”).

The effects of individualistic pluralism (or post modernism as it is now called) on the church is an increased consumer approach to the church, a devaluation of loyalties to the local church, denominations, denominational structures, doctrine and truth.  There is a proliferation of independent churches and “house churches” and an increase in various forms of syncretism.

The Emerging Church’s response to this is to cater to the individual, offering a smorgasbord of ministry options to suit all tastes.  The focus is on YOUR purpose, YOUR potential, YOUR sense of significance, YOUR likes, YOUR dislikes, YOUR style of worship and so on. .  Even in some “Reformed” churches the tendency is toward an a-la Carte approach and a kind of “Reformed” syncretism.  By way of example we have paedobaptist churches willing to baptise believers by full immersion on profession of faith, if that is what they want and what they believe!  Certainly there are valid arguments to be made in favour of the practice, just there are for Baptists to opt for “open membership”, but let us beware that we are not simply pandering to the sovereignty of individualism.

In the post modern world view, faith has become “a personal subjective religious preference irrespective or independent of truth” (D.A. Carson – Grace Ministers Conference 2007).  This impacts on our evangelistic approach in the following ways:

  • It is more complex – we are doing multi foreign missions on our own doorsteps
  • Philosophical pluralism will vehemently opposed to our right to evangelise
  • Our claims to declare truth are ridiculed
  • When we do get a hearing it is from an increasingly Biblical illiterate ear – people who know nothing of the Bible
  • The perception of the world is that the church, the gospel and Christianity are irrelevant.  No longer are people not going to church because it is “boring, sings old fashioned songs and speaks in old fashioned language” as Bill Hybels discovered in his famous survey c.1971.  Now they cannot think of any reason why any one would think they should go to church.  It is just totally irrelevant to them.

So what are we to do?  How are we to reach our post-modern societies with the gospel?  The answer must surely be “Biblically”.  Without being too simplistic, if this is nothing new, then surely we don’t need to go looking for some new and extra biblical methods.  Everything we need, every answer for the hope within us is there.  As stated above, to propose any specific method is impossible and the methods will have to vary from place to place, church to church and even from individual to individual.  However, I would like to suggest four basic, indispensable Biblical principles within which to work; none of them new or novel.  None of them unknown to you, but just as a reminder and a confirmation.


1. Prayer

“Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain” (Psalm 127:1).  Nothing has changed, there is nothing new under the sun.  What was true of Solomon’s day was true in Paul’s day.  Paul says that he planted and Apollos watered but that it was God who gave the growth (1 Cor. 3:6).  We can strategize, hone our techniques, study our generations, understand our communities, and be as inventive and as ingenious as we like, but unless the Lord does the work, nothing will happen.  Prayer is essential because the gospel can only be understood and responded to spiritually (1Cor. 2).  The spiritually dead cannot hear, understand or respond.

Unless God by His grace does a work in the hearts of those to whom we reach out, nothing can be achieved.  We need to pray that He will give them ears to hear, minds to understand and hearts of flesh to apply His word.  Firstly and fore mostly we must pray the Lord of the harvest.  All of our efforts, plans, strategies, and techniques are worth nothing unless He does the work.  He must save and He alone.

Certainly we are responsible to preach the Word but as in Acts 6 the ministry of the word is not independent of the ministry of prayer.  The apostles proposed the appointment of deacons in the church so that they could dedicate themselves to the ministry of prayer and the Word.  The ministry of prayer is mentioned first because the ministry of the word was dependent upon the ministry of prayer.

We are to pray.  The first step in reaching our communities is to pray for our communities.  The first step in reaching any individual is to pray for that individual.

We need to be praying for the preachers of the word just as Paul repeatedly requested that the churches pray for him.  “[P]ray for us, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains (Col 4:3), “pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains” (2Thess. 3:1).


2. Preaching

Paul tells Titus as he writes to him on the Island of Crete, that pluralistic society so similar to our so called Post modern societies, that God, “at his appointed season brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Saviour” (1:3).  We have no other instruction, no other command, no other method given to us.  Many today challenge that and say that preaching is ineffective in our day and age.  Our technological, multimedia societies are too sophisticated, they say, to just sit and listen to preaching.  To paraphrase, they are saying “this is not preaching season, preaching had its season but that is long gone”.  Paul says to Timothy “preach the word in season and out of season.”

The reason why preaching is still a valid method is because the subject of our preaching is always in season.  We are to preach, not just anything, but THE WORD.  The Word of God is never irrelevant or out of season because it is the truth.  The very subject of the Word is the one who is Himself the living Word, the truth “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me”.  There is nothing more relevant than the truth to a society that claims there is no such thing as absolute truth.  They may not acknowledge or think that it is relevant to them but it is the one thing they need most of all.

Paul says to Titus that it is the “knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness” (Titus 1:1).  Post modern men and women may not perceive that they need God or godliness, but they do.  There are many ways to reach them with what they think they need, that’s easy, but there is only one way to reach them with the truth which is what they really need, and that way is by the proclamation, the heralding of the truth.  For this reason Elders must “hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (1:9) and must “teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.  Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance” (2:1&2).  The older women are to teach the younger women “what is good … so that no one will malign the word of God” (2:3&5).

In a time when faith has become “a personal, subjective, religious preference” when truth is irrelevant or, at best subjective, as it had in first century Crete, we need to be holding forth the truth, sound doctrine and preaching it authoritatively as Paul counsels Titus to do.

We need to be showing that the validity of faith depends on the validity of its object.  The statement “all you need to do is believe” is a nonsensical statement.  Believe WHAT?  Faith must have an object, a content, a something or some one to believe.  For faith to be faith there must be an object, a conviction about that object and action resulting from said convictions.  John Murray says, “faith is knowledge, conviction and trust” (Redemption Accomplished and Applied).  Put another way, faith is the sum of Knowing certain facts + believing those facts + doing something based on that belief.  The point may be illustrated in this way, let us say that you know you have a motor vehicle in your driveway which you are able to use to get you to church, that’s the knowledge component.  Let us say you are quite confident in the reliability of said vehicle to get you there without breaking down, that is the belief component.  We could therefore say you have faith in that vehicle to do the job required.  However, such a faith would be dead as James points out “faith without works is dead”, in other words your faith would be lacking.  It would be lacking life, lacking action, lacking efficacy because the mere knowledge together with the belief will not have got you to work.  You would need to get into the vehicle and drive it to church, that’s the action or trust component.  Now just as James has said and as we have demonstrated “faith without works (action) is dead”, so too if the knowledge component was faulty, the faith would be useless.  If the vehicle had no wheels or engine, no matter how much you believed in its ability, it would be useless and all attempts at driving it to church would be futile.  So the validity of faith depends essentially on the validity, the worth of its object.  Even post modern men and women cannot deny such truth.

We are to preach the truth.  The one who is the truth, the one who alone is the way to God, the answer to man’s deepest and most crucial need.  We are to preach Him and His word.  We must preach it relevantly, because it is relevant.  We must preach it purposefully in obedience to the great commission (to make disciples).  We must preach it dependently, depending on Him who, as He issued the great commission, promised to be with us even to the end of the age.  Surely that promise given within that context has much to do with His enabling of us.  We must preach it evangelistically.  We must plead with them to see that, contrary to the pluralistic idea that faith is simply a personal, subjective, religious choice, “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved”.  We must preach it apologetically, being prepared to give a reason for the hope within to all who ask (1 Peter 3:15).  Apologetics is becoming more and more useful in evangelism in this climate.  We must preach it expositorally, teaching line upon line and precept upon precept, teaching the whole counsel of God to those who nothing or very little of it and equipping the saints for works of ministry.

As we preach the truth, the truth will vindicate itself.  God will vindicate His truth.  We need make no apologies for the truth, it has a ring to it that is unmistakable and undeniable.  One of the reasons atheists and agnostics attack Christianity so much more that any other religion is because it has that unmistakable ring of truth.


3. Probity

That is, good behaviour and godliness.  Our lives must reflect what we say we believe and what we preach.
Paul writing to Titus on pluralistic Crete places much emphasis on this.  It is the “knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness”.  The older women are to be taught to “be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.”  (2:3), so that they in turn can  “train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God” (2:4&5).  No matter how much the world may deny the truth of God’s word, despite the clear ring of truth that it has about it, they will not be able to deny the good lives that it produces.  Even in a fallen world, a pluralistic world, there is still sufficient of the image of God in mankind for them to know deep down inside, what is good and bad, right and wrong. They recognize good behaviour when they see it.

Therefore Titus is to encourage the young men to be self-controlled, to set them an example in everything by doing what is good.   He is to show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech in his teaching that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose him may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about the saints (2:6-8).  Slaves are to be taught “to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive”(2:9&10).  The grace of God “teaches us to say"No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” (2:12) and as a result we are to be model citizens and neighbours (3:1&2) and Paul’s final words to Titus are “Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives” (3:14).

Paul tells the Philippian church that “whatever happens” they are to live lives worthy of the gospel (1:27).  The word worthy, is the Greek word "axios” from which we get our English words axis and axiomatic, amongst others.  What Paul is telling them is that their lives are to be axiomatic with the gospel.  An axiom is a self-evident truth.  We are to live lives that are self evidently transformed by the gospel.  The Greek word axios comes from the axis pin on a scale.  Now, if you have a 1kg weight on one side of the scale and a pile of salt on the other with the scale in equilibrium, it is then a self evident truth that you have 1kg of salt.  The salt would be “worthy” of the 1kg weight.  In other words if we are proclaiming a gospel of forgiveness we should be forgiving, if we proclaim a gospel of grace we should be gracious, a gospel of love, we should be loving.

Peter encourages his readers to exercise the ministry of good behaviour in 1 Peter 2:11&12 “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.  Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us”. Peter then elaborates and applies that to various situations such as in relation to the authorities (13-17), in the work situation (18-21) and in the home (3:1-7).

In all these ways we make the teaching about God our Savior attractive (Titus 2:10).  Although we live in a world that says morals and ethics and good and bad are all relative and subjective, a society that all too often calls good bad and bad good, good behaviour is unmistakable and undeniable.  “Though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds”.


4. Persuasion

Having said, by and large, that we are to continue doing what I trust we have always been doing, that does not mean that we are not to wise, winsome and relevant in our approach.  We are not to obstinately just carry on regardless of the effectiveness or lack thereof of our approach and methods.  We are to be like the men of Issachar who “understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron. 12:32).  We need to understand the people of our communities as Paul did (see Titus 1:10-13 & 15-16) and therefore how best to reach them.

Paul was flexible in his approach as he states in 1Cor 9:19-23.  We observe something of these different methods in the Acts of the Apostles.  As he preaches to the Jews in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:13-43) he refers directly to and expounds the scriptures as authoritative.  By way of comparison, as he speaks to the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill (Acts 17:16-34), he begins by establishing common ground, by throwing out a hook to reach them “where they are at”.  As he preaches, everything he says is scriptural and sound, but he does not quote or refer to scripture in the same expository or authoritative way.  He is in no wise compromising the truth, not even in the way he packages it, but he simply avoids it’s truth being rejected because of the package.  Peter deals differently with the Jews and the gentiles, even our Lord dealt differently with the Pharisees and the Samaritan women at the well.  The Emerging Church and the Seeker Sensitive movement are not altogether wrong.  We do need to meet people “where they are at”.  Conrad Mbewe used an illustration at the Grace conference many years ago saying that his father (or grandfather) found that he had great successful at fishing where he took his bath.  He used to bath in the river and his favourite spot for bathing was also a good fishing spot.  Today, we who bath in tubs in bathrooms would, I trust, have very little success fishing in our bath tubs.

We need to be flexible in terms of our approach and our methods depending on our particular situations, flexible, that is with our approach and methods, not with the word nor with the truth.  Not only so, but also our methods themselves must not compromise the word or the truth.

We need to be tolerant, not of sin or unbiblical doctrine and practices, but of things such as cultures and fashions, provided they do not clash with scripture.  We will need to examining our prejudices to see whether they are Biblical or not.  Have our prejudices been informed by our understanding of scripture or has our understanding of scripture been informed by our prejudices?  Many of our prejudices have been culturally developed and have very little or no scriptural foundation and are therefore expendable for the sake of the gospel.

We will need to meet many in our biblically illiterate societies at the most basic of levels, addressing issues of atheism and agnosticism.  Beginning where Solomon and John begin with issues relating to the very existence and nature of God.  Solomon, in Ecclesiastes addresses the folly of a secular worldview, whereas John builds on the philosophical and scientific worldview that saw that everything in this world and universe adhered to a pattern, an organizing principle, a logic, which they called the “logos” (the reason, the word).  Therefore John begins with “the logos” “in the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God” and moves on to show who that one was and is and what He has done and why.

We need to be in the world.  Not of the world, but in it.  Jesus prayed in John 17 not that we be taken out of the world but that we be protected from the evil one while IN the world.  The very reason that we are in the world is because Christ prayed that we would be, so that we may get on with the work of the great commission.  We need to mix with the world even as Christ did.  D.A. Carson said, “many Christians, not least Christian preachers, simply do not know any out and out pagans.  It is time they did!  They should rearrange their priorities and befriend some of them”.  We need to beware of an incipient form of “reformed monasticism” where we are removing ourselves from everyone else, from the wider Church and from our communities.  We are to be “salt and light”.  Salt does no good if it remains in the packet or the cellar and light shines brightest in the darkness.  How can we ever reach our communities with the gospel if we constantly withdraw from them into our “Reformed Laagers.”

We need to use all of the resources God has gifted us with.  One man, the pastor, doing it all, using in his limited mix of gifts, ministering according to the limited methods his gifts enable him to use, is just not good enough.  The whole church must be equipped for works of service and ministry as described in Ephesians 4 and Titus 2.  We need to be creative, persuasive but all the while, biblical.

In conclusion, neither I nor anyone else can tell you what you need to do in your particular situation.  The plurality of our societies completely negates any “packaged approach” except the package of the whole counsel of God.
Therefore we must begin by being prayerful because nothing will happen unless the Lord builds the house.  We continue by being obedient which means we must preach and we must live lives consistent with our preaching.  And then within biblical parameters we must seek to be as relevant and persuasive as possible.

Peter Sammons

Read at the Sola 5 Saturday Seminar, 26 May 2007
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Florida Park, South Africa