To paint the portrait of many of these characters of scripture I spend a lot of time in the Old Testament because they are great stories. I also spend time in the New Testament. As I speak at places I will ask, “How many of you have taught through Romans?” and almost everybody will raise their hands. When I ask, “How many have taught though Ecclesiastes in your life time?” I get a handful of responses. I think some of that is changing, and must as people’s way of thinking changes. We think and operate — as most generations do — much more like the nonlinear format we see in Ecclesiastes. If you try to outline it you are just going to get a headache. It is very circular in its reasoning. That’s part of what makes it good. You just have to engage it.

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Preaching: With The Matrix book and your earlier book on The Sopranos, obviously you’re plugging into popular culture at some strategic points. What suggestions would you offer to other pastors as they try to use those cultural points of contact effectively in communicating Christian truth?

Seay: I think the primary skill we need is to have eyes to see the story of God. What I try to do — and it’s a simple exercise — is to really try to see things in three different categories. There is what I see in a film or art or music as explicitly Christian truth — it’s almost like it came out of the Bible. There is another area of truth that is not redeemed — there is something there that is in need of redemption — but there is a nugget of truth there that is really worthwhile. Then there is this other that is just garbage, pornography, there is nothing good about it. But as we begin to engage culture and art and film and really read the newspaper, we have to think: where does that fall and on what line?

I hear from pastors that say, “How in the world do you write a book about The Sopranos? It’s godless.” No, it’s not. The whole thing is about this mob boss who wants to be God, just like all the rest of us. He thinks he is and he is miserable because of it. He is searching for forgiveness, his family is searching for forgiveness. The issues of faith and God come up all the time in this show.

The story of God is everywhere we look. We just don’t have the eyes to see it quite often. So the thing that I hope and pray for pastors is that they just begin to see what is already going on in the world. Six Feet Under is another one of these television shows on HBO that has a great deal of spiritual themes. You find it in Everybody Loves Raymond. Wherever you are looking you will see the story of redemption, and we begin to then focus on it and interject the truth of Christ into it. That’s what I would most like to see.

Preaching: What are things churches can do to connect with that young adult culture that often seems to be passing by the church without really engaging it?

Seay: There is a lot. I think we begin to reexamine the ways we articulate faith and to really focus on the story. We did that with kids in Sunday school. The reality is that we have been given a beautiful and wonderful story. If we’ll tell it well, people will respond to it. So we get back to that — we become narrative preachers. Using translations like The Message makes a lot of difference. It makes the Bible much more understandable, much more poetic.

It begins with a move toward authenticity. I think we are still a people who are not really honest with one another about who we are and how we struggle and the way we live. And for an emerging generation, that is what they respond to. Their detectors for our lies run pretty high. They are pretty quick on being able to pick up where we are not genuine and authentic.

If we will move into honest confession and a real and honest life and tell the story of God, I think we’ll increasingly see people embracing Christianity — people who had rejected Christianity largely because it is seen as an institutional Western religion.