Both impulses — to reach the culture and to keep from being swept along by it — have biblical warrant. What will determine the appropriateness of choices made in each movement will be whether leadership will be able to resist choices based on merely on cultural currents or cultural reactions, and instead make decisions based on biblical authority. Expository preaching, that instructs the congregation according to the authority of the Word of God, is necessary in each setting to chart a biblical course. Many strong expositors serve faithfully amidst these counter currents and these preachers have increasing obligations to lead by the Word.

D. Seeking Faith in Community

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One of the ways that we see expository preaching being led by cultural forces while simultaneously challenging them relates to the social content of the message coming from our pulpits. Expository sermons have historically been predominant in churches that were suspicious of too much intermingling of any social agenda with gospel priorities. The Evangelical church was late to the Civil Rights movement, a secondary voice to Roman Catholicism in sanctity of life efforts, and largely identified with a laissez faire Republicanism in American politics.

Something is happening in the area of expository preaching that fits none of these previous stereotypes. Preachers are seeing in the text a certain correction to the North American brand of Evangelicalism that has made a "personal relationship with Jesus" not so much a vital union with the living God, as just another self-enrichment plan for those in a me-first culture. Even in this generation of seminary students the notion that ministry is about sacrifice, mission and leadership for the sake of the body of Christ is a difficult concept for those nurtured on the idea that faith is all about "Jesus and me." Countering the self-indulgent individualism of modern Evangelicalism are several new emphases and cultural currents:

• Word and deed ministry in the local church for evangelistic outreach, community renewal, and congregational credibility and retention (especially among the young);
• the New Perspective on Paul that — in my view — overcorrects Evangelical individualism by seeming to make personal obligations to a faith community the primary message of the New Testament;
• new emphases in the worship wars about the importance of the sacraments as covenantal identification with the Christian community;
• counter-cultural movements to stem cultural erosion and moral corruption through family cohesion maintained in tight-knit church, school and political communities;
• advances in technology, travel, housing, workplace and sports making it ever more plain that antipathies based on race, ethnicity and nation are clearly counter to the New Testament emphasis on the oneness of the Christian community in Christ;
• greater influence of Asian and African Christianity on North America Evangelicalism helping blinders regarding our individualized faith as a consequence of their cultural emphases on the primacy of the good of the community.

The key word in each of these characterizations is "community." I cannot evaluate each emphasis in this forum, but rather point out that, as a collection, these influences are causing Evangelicals to see in Scripture an emphasis on community that is both challenging and enriching our traditional messages about individual commitment to Christ. A generation ago Francis Schaeffer warned that the Evangelical church was contributing to the American mis-definition of fulfillment: merely finding "personal peace and affluence." Expository preaching that deals with the text in its community context is helping the Evangelical church to think biblically about such matters and recommitting a generation to the biblical necessity of being salt and light in society in addition to being personally secure.