Electronic Thesis & Dissertation Collection J. Oliver Buswell Jr. Library 12330 Conway Road Saint Louis, MO 63141 www.covenantseminary.edu/library This document is distributed by Covenant Theological Seminary under agreement with the author, who retains the copyright. Permission to further reproduce or distribute this document is not provided, except as permitted under fair use or other statutory exception. The views presented in this document are solely the author’s. Covenant Theological Seminary Expositing the Scriptures in Preaching to Digitally Saturated Congregants A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Covenant Theological Seminary In Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Ministry By Joshua D. Schatzle Graduation Date: May 17, 2019 Abstract Expository preaching in the digitally saturated context of the twenty-first century presents challenges that have been and continue to be under-addressed. A massive media shift, comparable to the dawn of the printing press, has been changing cultures worldwide for over a decade. While resources regarding media ecology are increasingly available—as are resources dealing with expository preaching and culture—preachers lack resources for expositing the scriptures in a digital age, with its shifting epistemologies. The purpose of this study is to examine how preachers navigate the challenges of expositing the scriptures to digitally saturated congregants. Four research questions guided this qualitative study: 1. In what ways do pastors describe the effects of digital saturation on the lives of their congregants? 2. What challenges do pastors experience in intentionally preaching expositionally to engage their digitally saturated congregants? 3. What opportunities do pastors experience in intentionally preaching expositionally to engage their digitally saturated congregants? 4. What strategies do pastors employ in meeting the challenges posed by intentionally preaching expositionally to engage their digitally saturated congregants? The findings of the study show that the current media ecology has shifted in demonstrable ways from that of the print age, giving way to emerging epistemologies. This study also reveals valid concerns regarding the emerging digital ecology and the church’s vital need to better understand these epistemologies. Additionally, specific practices and approaches to reading and preaching scripture are presented for improving gospel communication in the current media context. iv To my wife Jessi, the best part of everything, mi vid-amor. Thank you for supporting me through yet another degree! I promise you, as far as it depends on me, that this is the last one. What more is to be said, other than that second only to Jesus Himself, you are my rock. To my children, Davis, & Jo, I return now from the state of absentee-fatherhood. You’re both beautiful to me beyond compare. I hope this work pays rich dividends, somehow, in your lives. To my father, Papa Sid, who would’ve been so proud to see this day, who loved me with love of the Father’s kind; thank you for your always-unconditional love and support. Missing you tremendously but comforted to know you are among the great cloud of witnesses cheering me from Heaven. To my Nana, who prayed for me literally every day of her life. To Brian Fuller, MFA, who taught me everything I know about media ecology, and whose friendship I cherish as much as I do his intellect and artistry. “Preaching is not exposition only, but communication; not just the exegesis of a text, but the conveying of a God-given message to a living people who need to hear it.” John Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 101 “As Walter Ong noted some years ago, different media accomplish rather different ends…Even though speech may be particularly suited to the Gospel message, all our speaking will be shaped by the ‘epistemological metaphor’ of the electronic media. So we will preach; but of course, we will preach very differently in an electronic age.” David Buttrick, “Preaching to the Faith of America,” p. 314 Communication & Change in American Religious History v Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………….viii Chapter 1 Introduction…………..…………………………………………………..1 Statement of the Challenge: Digital Ecology…………………………………..….…..4 Statement of the Problem…………………………………………………………….10 . Statement of the Purpose…………………………………………………..………....10 Primary Research Questions………………………………………………..………..10 Significance of the Study…………………………………….………………….……11 Definition of Terms………………………………….………………………….……12 Chapter 2 Literature Review………………………………………………….……15 The Expository Preaching Tradition of Jesus…………………………….……….… 15 Media, Epistemology, and the Digital Age……………………………………….….33 Homiletics and the Digital Age………………………………………………………51 Chapter 3 Methodology………………………………………………………….....65 . Design of Study……………………………………………………….……………...66 Participant Sample Selection…………………………………………………………67 Data Collection……………………………………………………………………….68 Data Analysis……………………………………………………………………..….69 Researcher Position……………………………………………………………..……71 Study Limitations………………..…………………………………………….……..72 Chapter 4 Findings……..………………………………………………………...…74 Description of Participants………………………………………………………..….76 Effects of Digital Saturation………..………………………………………………...78 vi Preaching Challenges in the Digital Milieu……………………………………..........85 Preaching Opportunities in the Digital Milieu………………………………………..92 Expository Strategies………………………………………………………………...98 Summary of Interview Results……………………………………………….……..107 Chapter 5 Discussion and Recommendations……………………………………109 Recommendations for Practice ……………..……………………………..………..113 Recommendations for Further Research…………………………..………………..125 Discussion of Topic……………………………………………………………..…..128 Bibliography...…..………………………………………………………………....138 vii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Covenant Theological Seminary Library team of staff for their speedy delivery and access to a host of requested materials. I would also like to thank my advisors; Dr.’s Zach Eswine, Dan Doriani, and Tasha Chapman, for their mentorship, excellent guidance, and expertise. I would also like to thank the Scribe’s footnote editors, who helped me work through what proved to be perhaps the most trying portion of the entire dissertation process! As well, a big thank you to Descript, whose transcription App was a true life-saver. Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. viii Chapter One Introduction At the turn of the twenty-first century, the world finds itself in the midst of what media ecologists call, “A Gutenberg Moment.” The term refers to a media change with worldwide cultural and sociological ramifications, similar to those of Johan Gutenberg’s printing press in the fifteenth century, and the shift to digital communications over the past decade is such a moment. Media ecologists realize in hindsight that innovations in media, such as those of Gutenberg’s press, don’t just change the way people do things; they change their fundamental makeup and identity, “affect[ing] the whole psychic and social complex.”1 They change not only how they think but what they think about, and ultimately not just what they think about, but even what they think about themselves and how they define reality itself. As McLuhan’s closest friend and colleague Father John Culkin, SJ once famously remarked, in summarizing his friend McLuhan’s hypothesis, “We shape our tools, and our tools shape us.”2 Whether preachers are acquainted with the aforementioned theory or not, they are certainly aware of its effects. The people who sit in church are fundamentally different from the people who sat there only a generation ago and hence are fundamentally different from the people who have sat there for the last half-millennium. 1 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), 19. 2Alex Kuskis, “We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us”, McLuhan Galaxy, April 1, 2013, https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/we-shape-our-tools-and-thereafter-our-tools-shape-us/ 1 The logical question that proceeds from this then is, “How then shall we preach?” As another famed media ecologist, Neil Postman, points out, there are tremendous differences between people of the print age versus those of the television era, as well as the nascent stages of the electronic culture. “The world of the printed word,…with its emphasis on logic,…sequence, history,…exposition, objectivity” differs greatly from the electronic (or digital) one, “with its emphasis on imagery, simultaneity, immediate gratification, and quick emotional response.”3 These technologies, and all technologies, he insists, condition people, waging a “psychic battle” in them, such that, in Postman’s assessment, the “casualties [of the electronic era]…are children who can’t learn to read or won’t,…who cannot organize their thought into logical structure,…and cannot attend to lecture or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time!”4 Postman calls the former era, which immediately precedes the digital, the Age of Exposition. “Exposition is,” Postman explains, “a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression…a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively, and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for…objectivity, and a tolerance for delayed response.”5 Such traits, Postman contends, are the direct products