Critique Of "Culture Shift"

A Critique of:

"Culture Shift"

Communicating God's Truth to Our Changing World

Author: David W. Henderson

By: Matthew S. Hoskins

Autumn Quarter 2004

Nazarene Ministry Development Center

The church has a problem. The eternally relevant message with which she has been entrusted no longer readily finds a willing ear. According to Henderson, the solution lies in first understanding how our world thinks and then, beginning where people are at, bring them to see "the functional relevance for their lives of the actual relevance of our message". In high school speech classes, we were taught to "know your audience." As a careless high schooler, I didn't really care what she meant, but it eventually made sense (once I actually decided to think about it). You wouldn't use sock puppets to explain math to accountants; you wouldn't use in-depth power-point presentations to explain math to first graders. With this in mind, why do many Americans still try to talk about Jesus using the methods used thirty years ago? Why do we use Christian "jargon" to explain Christianity to those outside the faith? Henderson contends that modern American Christians must change their approach to sharing the faith in order to fit modern America. The pattern of Henderson's book is straightforward: he examines a particular aspect/mindset/value of modern Americans; he then gives ideas about how a Christian might share Words of Eternal Life with such an American. Henderson's writing is both straightforward and enjoyable. He gets right to the heart of the American mindset, then illustrates it with descriptions from scenes from popular movies, personal anecdotes, jokes, etc. In all, Henderson does the modern Christian a great service in writing "Culture Shift." Jesus told Christians to tell others about him ("Go, therefore, and baptize all nations...") and Henderson can help us along the way through this book

Henderson identifies six "cultural shifts" in the way our Western culture thinks and the values it holds. These changes have become observable in the last twenty years. These include a shift to a consumer mentality that has penetrated nearly every aspect of our lives, a shift to communication primarily by means of images rather than words, an obsession with self and personal needs, the virtual exclusion of God from the public consciousness, the predominance of a self-serving, ends-justifying, and crowd-conforming morality, and the politically correct but self-contradictory tolerance of all viewpoints as equally valid but uniformly meaningless as objective standards of truth.

However, aside from the apparent lengthiness of such an analysis, the emphasis of this book is how to practically respond to the secular mindset in the marketplace. For each of these "shifts in thinking and values", Henderson says the solution to the problem is nothing less than a matter of biblical Christianity. After exposing many of the fallacies and pitfalls of a particular viewpoint, Henderson provides a series of practical suggestions, on how to go about effectively engaging someone who shares one of the previously mentioned mindsets and then lead him into a consideration of the truth. Henderson uses illustrations from his own life experiences. These are presented in a way that can be applicable to both the trained minister and the layperson . An appendix at the end gives us even more effective ways of communicating the content of the gospel than has been employed traditionally since the 1950's.

Cultural Shift is a very thorough and helpful discussion regarding the issue of effectively communicating God's truth with the current generation. While the historical and cultural analysis are both concise and readable, the strength of this book is the way in which Henderson offers suggestions and illustrations to practically engage the modern mindset in a variety of ministry contexts. In addition, each discussion of a particular cultural shift concludes with a list of important terms and their definitions which provides further clarification of each point and directs the reader to other resources for further investigation.

Though Henderson has obviously been well educated, his true heart for evangelism comes through in his writing. He is clearly not only a student of theology and the Word but also an excellent student of his world and culture. Some of his suggestions on how to be such a student ourselves, such as going to the movies (remember Nazarene doctrine!), or hanging out at the beer halls, might not sit well with some readers. Even so, this is a book from which the entire Church can benefit.

Henderson provides two clarifications that are especially helpful to the current debate on relevance in ministry. One is the distinction between making the Bible relevant