Overview

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.

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9781532650635

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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. --David Schnasa Jacobsen, Boston University School of Theology Sarah Travis envisions what preaching must become as the institutional church declines. Her provocative ideas are timely starters for a much-needed discussion. She calls for a confident and joyful exit from the empire of Christendom as a flawed form of Christianity. Preaching can lead the way by offering narratives of vulnerability, rooted in God's promises, and centered in the gospel. Such preaching, with the Spirit's help, will transform current fear and despair into faithful witness for a new age. Paul Scott Wilson is Professor of Homiletics at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto

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. --David Schnasa Jacobsen, Boston University School of Theology Sarah Travis envisions what preaching must become as the institutional church declines. Her provocative ideas are timely starters for a much-needed discussion. She calls for a confident and joyful exit from the empire of Christendom as a flawed form of Christianity. Preaching can lead the way by offering narratives of vulnerability, rooted in God's promises, and centered in the gospel. Such preaching, with the Spirit's help, will transform current fear and despair into faithful witness for a new age. Paul Scott Wilson is Professor of Homiletics at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto

Author Information

Sarah Travis is Minister of the Chapel at Knox College, Toronto School of Theology. She is the author of Decolonizing Preaching: The Pulpit as Postcolonial Space (2014).

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