Theocentric Preaching

From an interview with Kevin Vanhoozer:

The problem in too many evangelical churches is that we know what we’re supposed to believe, but we’re not sure what practical difference it makes and so we’re unable to bring it to bear on everyday life. To be sure, biblical and theological illiteracy remains a problem too. But that doesn’t really explain why even in churches where the Bible is faithfully preached the congregation doesn’t look that different from everyone else.

My own hunch is that we need to recover the imagination in order to set the cultural captives free. I believe that many people in today’s society, and church, suffer from an impoverished imagination. By imagination I mean the cognitive power of seeing things together, as wholes; clearly a worldview is an affair of the imagination, at least in part. In any case, I believe that our imaginations are captive to secular stories/worldviews that do not nourish our souls. Eugene Peterson says something similar about the function of the 10 plagues of Egypt: they were intended to free the imagination of the Israelites from thinking that the power of Egypt was sovereign. The plagues systematically deconstruct Pharaoh’s power. It takes imagination to see that what God is doing with a small tribe of slaves is greater than the might of Egypt or the grandeur that was Rome. Similarly, it takes imagination to see that North Americans are not in bondage to similar powers and principalities: consumerism and therapism, to name but two. I wonder whether in our haste to preserve doctrinal truth, we have not done our evangelical churches a disservice in surrendering our imaginations to stories (and advertisements) that serve the interest of some worldly empire (or multinational corporation) rather than the kingdom of God.

Pastors need to make it a priority to teach their congregations how read Scripture theologically, and this requires the imagination, the ability to make sense of thing by fitting the little bits into larger patterns - the big canonical picture. It takes imagination to see the Bible as a unified whole, and then it takes even more imagination to fit one’s own time and place into this biblical drama of redemption.

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In his excellent book The Drama of Doctrine, Kevin Vanhoozer argues that doctrine serves the church, which he calls “the theater of the gospel,” by directing individuals and congregations to participate in the drama of what God is doing to renew all things in Jesus Christ. In other words, doctrine allows us to participate in the theo-drama in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the principal players, but in which the audience is called to participate.

The Bible functions “not as a book filled with propositional information,” he writes, but “as a script that calls for faithful yet creative performance.”

This is one of the best treatments of theocentric doctrine and preaching I’ve found. Vanhoozer is clear that the theo-drama is primarily about God, but that doctrine enables us to find our place in the drama of what God is doing. Theocentric preaching allows us to understand our place in the script.  Theologians help us live among the texts in our contemporary context, giving us practical wisdom so that we can “turn the gold of the gospel into the workaday stuff of ordinary life.” The task of every Christian is to perform the Scriptures “that attest to the covenant and its climax, the person and work of Jesus Christ.” Our goal is “not simply to play a role but to project the main idea of the play.”

Vanhoozer reminds us of the importance of preaching:

What the pastor/director really needs to do is to take the congregation’s imagination captive to the Scriptures so the theo-drama becomes the governing framework of the community’s speech and action (2 Cor. 10:5). The pastor/director needs to instill confidence in a congregation that playing this script is the way to truth and abundant life. Such direction is largely through preaching, an obedient “listening to the text on behalf of the church.” Herman Melville’s image of the pulpit as a ship’s prow that leads the way through uncharted waters is strikingly apt:

“[T]he pulpit leads the world.”

For preachers who do this, the rewards are great:

The sermon, not some leadership philosophy or management scheme, remains the prime means of pastoral direction and hence the pastor’s paramount responsibility. The good sermon contains both script analysis and situation analysis. It is in the sermon that the pastor weaves together theo-dramatic truth and local knowledge. The sermon is the best frontal assault on imaginations held captive by secular stories that promise other ways to the good life. Most important, the sermon envisions ways for the local congregation to become a parable of the kingdom of God. It is the pastor’s/director’s vocation to help congregations hear (understand) and do (perform) God’s word in and for the present.

Only theocentric preaching can do what Vanhoozer describes. Preaching helps us understand our part in the theo-drama, and places our lives in the context of what God is doing. When done well, it’s much more relevant than anthropocentric preaching. Preaching like this enables faithful performances of the gospel within particular settings. Not a bad way to preach at all.

People long for preaching that is practical, as they should. Sometimes, though, preachers move away from theocentric preaching in an effort to be practical.

A.W. Tozer (quoted in Dallas Willard’s book Renovation of the Heart), argues that right thinking about God is intensely practical. In face, we can trace many failures in living back to wrong thoughts about God. Tozer says:

A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

Willard writes:

Failure to know what God is really like and what his law requires destroys the soul, ruins society, and leaves people to eternal ruin. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6 NRSV),  and “A people without understanding comes to ruin” (4:14, NRSV). This is the tragic condition of Western culture today, which has put away the information about God that God himself has made available.

Accordingly, the first task of Jesus in his earthly ministry was to proclaim God: to inform those around him of the availability of eternal life from God through himself…This is basic information for human life. It was then and is now.

Theocentric preaching is not impractical preaching.  Tozer, Willard, Packer and others establish that knowing God is one of the most important issues for practical living at any time.

John Piper comments on the need for Godward preaching:

Revival is God’s working radical Godwardness in lots of people at the same time. This comes by preaching as much as by prayer…We need reformation of preaching as much or more than gatherings for prayer.

From A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God:

It is true that order in nature depends upon right relationships; to achieve harmony each thing must be in its proper position relative to each other thing. In human life it is not otherwise.

I have hinted before in these chapters that the cause of all our human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation to God and to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it was certainly a sharp change in man’s relation to his Creator…

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by “shooting” at the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when, and only when, we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.

Christopher J.H. Wright writes in the January 2007 issue of Christianity Today:

God is on a mission, and we, in that wonderful phrase of Paul, are “co-workers with God.”

This God-centered refocusing of mission turns inside-out our obsession with mission plans, agendas, goals, strategies, and grand schemes.

We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is, “Where does my little life fit into the great story of God’s mission?”

We want to be driven by a purpose tailored for our individual lives, when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.

We wrestle to “make the Gospel relevant to the world.” But God is about the mission of transforming the world to fit the shape of the Gospel.

We argue about what can legitimately be included in the mission God expects from the church, when we should ask what kind of church God expects for his mission in all its comprehensive fullness.

I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission.

(Christopher J.H. Wright, “An Upside-Down World,” Christianity Today, January 2007, 45-46)