James Emery White is the founding pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, N.C., one of the nation’s fastest-growing congregations. Author of several books and former president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Jim is also one of the newest members of the Preaching
Board of Contributing Editors. He recently visited with executive editor Michael Duduit.
Preaching: Jim, you write a newsletter called “Serious Times,” and that was also the title of one of your earliest books. Are we in serious times?White: I think that we are in the sense that the church across the global landscape is in retreat, in isolation or is being persecuted. I also think that just contending for the gospel—contending for Christian truth right now in our culture—is finding hard going, and it’s going to take more innovation, more creativity. It’s going to take more boldness. It’s going to take an awful lot for us to be a voice that’s heard, not marginalized.
So I think these are very, very serious times. The most fundamental dynamics of the Christian message are bumping up against so many things at war against it in the culture that will seek to isolate it, persecute it, marginalize it or just trivialize it.
Preaching: Faith and culture is a topic you do a lot of thinking and writing about. How do you view the relationship of preaching and culture?White: First I think it helps to define
culture. The simplest definition I know of is: “Culture is the world into which you were born and the world that was born in you.” It is our matrix. It is the air we breathe. It is television, music, drama, what’s on AOL—everything that’s swimming around us; and it is largely self-created. It is that which we have made.
Now when you consider that culture is essentially our context, then you realize that preaching should always be addressing
culture. So I don’t think it’s a unique sermon series. I don’t think there should ever be a talk—there can’t be a talk that’s effective—that’s going to ignore the context of the listener, the world of that listener. So you can start isolating certain aspects of culture—a popular song, a book Oprah produces or highlights, a hot film, a Supreme Court, a newly elected candidate—you can talk about aspects and focus in on them. But in many ways, that could force you to miss the larger currents that are present in the lives of the people you’re talking to, regardless of your topic.
So I think there are two dynamics here for a communicator. One, you need to be in tune with the large currents of our culture that are present in everybody’s life and thinking. There are certain things that I know are present in the people I talk to. They don’t believe in truth. They’re pretty dubious about the Scripture. Tolerance is the ultimate virtue. Science reigns supreme for factual truth. And everything I just said is true of Christians, too. This first set of things I have to be mindful of no matter what I’m talking about. It’s just our playing field.
