Philip Jenkins has written a book entitled The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. I can’t tell you what I think, because I haven’t had opportunity to read it yet. However, based on the comments that I heard when the book was recommended to me, it seems to be an important book. One comment stood out to me (and once I read the book I’ll know whether this is a fair comment in light of what Jenkins presents). My friend pointed out how preaching in some cultures seems to be almost exclusively based in the narratives of the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. Apparently the context of those stories just connects very easily to people feeling oppressed, “needing” miracles, facing persecution, etc.

I wonder if we have culturally default texts that we naturally tend to preach from? In some western churches the default seems to be epistles – propositional truth and argumentation, a natural fit for the mind trained under modernity. Or perhaps our default is New Testament, or Old Testament. Do you recognize a culturally default type of preaching text in your national, local and church culture? Which parts of the Bible do we shy away from and therefore miss out on? The prophets? The wisdom literature? The apocalyptic? The historical narratives?