Metamorphosis
Preaching after Christendom
- Preaching & Worship
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2019
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Publisher's Description
Post-Christendom, Christian leaders and preachers in North America struggle to respond to anxiety and despair about the future of the church. Declining participation, fewer resources, decreased influence, and confusion about pastoral and ecclesial identity lead to fear for the survival of the institutional church. Preaching must speak to the despair and confusion faced by congregations today, as well as cast a hopeful vision for an uncertain future. This book argues that preachers can change the narrative of the church post-Christendom, by urging an exit from Christendom ecclesiology and promoting the construction of an identity that embraces vulnerability and incarnation instead of power and permanence. Counterintuitively, failure, decrease, and marginalization constitute good news for the church. Through wide-ranging conversation partners including postcolonial theory and theology, social science, systematic theology, and homiletic literature, this book engages preachers and scholars who seek to reimagine both gospel and ecclesial identity in order to bring new life to communities in despair. Preachers participate in a process of metamorphosis, in which the church's self-understanding is transformed into a vulnerable, incarnate community that leaves behind the character of Christendom.
Endorsements (1)
“This is one of the best new books in preaching I've read in a while. Travis offers what she calls a homiletic ecclesiology, but even that description does not really do her book full justice. She is envisioning a gospel-up transformation of the mainline Protestant church in North America and a new, more porous identity for its life after Christendom. I will be using her book in my courses and in my own preaching, too.”
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