People get knowledge by getting educated, by the authorities. So Jesus says it is not just by getting educated by sitting in classrooms or by sitting at the feet of Rabbis and listening to them. There is a heart attitude toward this thing, too. There is an experiential attitude. You are going to know my teaching, you are really going to understand it and know its validity when you try it and when you obey God's will.

In fact it's a very postmodern passage when you think about it. It is saying that knowledge isn't about just gaining abstract information. There is a moral dimension to the gaining of knowledge. I suppose it is the Biblical idea of being wise versus being a fool. You can be an educated fool. Jesus is saying "follow Me" to people who don't understand that -- knowing that the best way that they will understand it is by following Him.

What I am trying to do very much is to get people in that same framework; it's not that I am going to give them the full explanation of everything in a rational, abstract and intellectual way but I'm going to help them get this combination of understanding and experience and experimentation that's going to guide them into deeper understanding of the gospel.

Preaching: Not only in terms of the shaping of the message -- are there other changes in your own preaching that you have been making?

McClaren: In addition to being more narrative, when we get into this we become more conversational. I think modern preaching is analytical and I define analysis as taking a whole and breaking it down into its parts, or taking an effect and breaking it down into its causes -- tracing it back to its causes. My sermons in the past were very analytical: take a passage and break it down; take a word and break it down. Everything is about breaking it down. Outlining is analysis. It's breaking things down into its parts.

Conversations don't work that way. Conversations take interesting little dog legs -- the question gets raised, you go off on a little tangent, then you go off on the main point. I've found that the more my preaching mirrors the flow of a conversation, the more people connect with it. The more I try to do abstract analysis, the more it feels like something is being opposed on them. That might be just a reflection of me and this congregation. But if there is a generalization, I would say there is this conversational kind of flow. Maybe I make a statement. I have to say, "What are people thinking right now? What question would they be asking?"

Well, that is where I need to go. I need to let the question that I think is naturally arising in their mind be the direction for me -- not the analytical outline, the five P's or the six J's or whatever it is. That so much dominated modern thinking -- we like that because it gave us the feeling of being orderly. It's structure.

Preaching: Do you serve a fairly young congregation?

McClaren: It used to be fairly young! Then the older I got, the older they got. Ironically a lot of our younger people have brought their parents, so our diversity is really increased in the last few years.