Preaching: Those young preachers are going to have some very different cultural challenges in the next few years.

Robinson: Sometimes when I'm thinking about preaching I think I've gotten hold of the hem of the garment but I can't always sustain the grasp. That's because audiences change. What was effective 20 years ago is just not effective today. Preaching to an older audience, the builders -- they grew up learning to listen. You can have a sustained argument with them. The younger audiences, they don't follow it. It's not their way of getting information.

We do less and less reading. Often when you ask a pastor, "What do you have to do to develop as a Christian," one of the first things he'll say is "Well, you have to study the Bible." But the Bible is a tough read. The generation that I grew up in really valued reading, and I think the past is valued. But I think that today a person who wants to be an effective communicator has to have an awareness of visual media -- movies, what goes on in television, because that's the way people get their information. The average person spends about 200 hours a year reading the newspaper, about 200 hours a year looking at magazines, 1,300 hours a year watching TV. When people are asked what is their major source of news they say "television." 55 percent say it's their only source of news. So they're being shaped by a media that is visual, that tells stories, and yet for people at seminary, we get our information by reading.

That really is the world as it is. I think it would be helpful if we could take time in theological education to study how movies and television convey ideas that actually do shape us -- moral values, theological values. We watch television, watch soap operas, watch the evening drama. People get murdered, robbed, raped, they never pray. They never seek out a preacher, priest, or rabbi.

We live in a world in which God doesn't exist. And then folks come to church an hour, two hours a week, and you try to say to them, "God is central to your life." You're preaching within a context in which people very effectively are getting the idea that you don't call in God; fix it yourself. So it seems to me that a pastor has to have an awareness, not only of what's going on out there in terms of what the messages are, but how that message is shaped by media. I don't think we're that skilled in media, and I'm not talking about using clips of films, though that's fine. I'm really just talking about a whole awareness of how these people sitting out there are shaped and molded by a philosophy that is neutral to God or often very hostile.

It's tough to stay culturally aware, because you live -- as a preacher -- within a culture that's religious. And the people around you -- on your board, that you work with, near voices -- support what you are and what you're saying generally. It's hard to get to the distant voices and hear them. You can hear the distant voices and preach to them, but they're not my congregation on Sunday. So I have to make my people, who are committed to Christ, aware of what is going on out there.