Biblical improvisation offers a compelling framework for preaching in today's complex cultural landscape. In this thought-provoking episode of the Pivot Podcast, Dr. Mark Glanville, Director of the Center for Missional Leadership and professional jazz pianist, shares how preachers can be like jazz musicians—deeply rooted in tradition while creating something fresh and contextual with each sermon.

Drawing from his new book "Preaching in a New Key," Mark explores how the post-Christian shift impacts biblical proclamation and offers practical strategies for preachers navigating this transition. Discover how to move from positional authority to invitational posture, cultivate genuine curiosity with scripture, and form communities that reflect Christ's love in their neighborhoods.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the Church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile and I'm joined by Terri Elton.

What does it mean to preach in an increasingly post-Christian society? Today, we're thrilled to welcome Dr. Mark Glanville, the Director of the Center for Missional Leadership at the University of British Columbia's St. Andrews Hall to explore this question. As both an Old Testament scholar and a jazz pianist, Mark brings an improvisational lens to preaching, showing how biblical texts provide the melody for creative contextual response.

Mark's new book, Preaching in a New Key, integrates creativity, cultural discernment, pastoral health, justice, and missiology to make faith plausible to those disconnected from the church. What's particularly striking is his emphasis on the preacher's inner life, recognizing that spiritual and emotional health directly affect preaching vitality and that preaching is part of a rich tapestry of

pastoral practices that form communities displaying God's tenderness in their neighborhoods. Welcome, Mark.

Thanks so much, so good to be with you Terri and Dwight.

Well, so your new book is called, Preaching in a New Key. You're sitting there by a piano for those of ⁓ our listeners who are just listening to the audio of this. There you go. So what inspired you to explore the musical metaphor in relation to preaching? And how does your background as a jazz musician inform your approach to biblical proclamation?

Huh.

think I'm really struck by the commonality of both jazz music and preaching, teaching and living out the scriptures in that, that both are immersed in a tradition, deep roots in a tradition, and both traditions demand improvisation. that and that so as jazz musicians, I'm a professional jazz pianist and my brother Luke in Australia is a professional jazz drummer. And we spend thousands and thousands of hours in the jazz tradition, kind of

learning to tap the rhythms and to sing the melodies and to create the harmonies and just these hours and and hours of learning from the masters. And yet what's fascinating about jazz is that every time we come to play, it has to be different. can't, we can never just replay a solo that we heard from our favorite album. We'd be laughed off the bandstand, you know. So there's something about the nature of jazz music that, you know, if I learned something, you know,

It demands improvisation. It demands a new melody. And it's the same with the Bible. As Christians, as preachers, as we're talking about today, we become, we immerse ourselves in the tradition in a similar way. We learn the stories, we learn the story, we learn the characters, we wrestle with scripture, we delight in scripture, we maybe even rage with scripture and we come to some resolution with scripture perhaps.

And then and so this is our tradition. This is our teaching. We're immersed in this teaching like a jazz musician. And yet the nature of scripture itself is it demands improvisation. We're playing fresh melodies on the biblical tradition. Acts chapter one shows us that that, you know, Christ, the resurrection, Christ appears to his disciples and he says, you receive power? My Holy Spirit comes upon you. Be my witnesses. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. And that witness is an invitation for Jesus disciples in Acts chapter one to play.

fresh melodies on the biblical story to display in fresh, beautiful, newly contextualized ways the tenderness of Jesus up close and personal in their own, our own particular times and places. It's a nature of scripture and it's a nature of jazz that it's a tradition within which we rich, we deeply root. And each time we come to play, we play something or preach something that hasn't been preached before.

love that in so many different ways. was thinking of, for example, ⁓ I come from a tradition as a Lutheran where we often use electionary, where we repeat the text every three years, give or take. And yet you come to it differently because of the context, right? Or because of something that's going on at that time in a community. I think of your think thinking about that work as a

as a Bible scholar, as a musician, and as a missiologist, or as you engage missiology, thinking about our current context more broadly, what does it mean to ⁓ be preaching in this post-Christian time or to post-Christian communities? Or how would you characterize that as you think about that in this time, kind of picking up on what you were saying about that doing jazz?

much to say I think that one of the key shifts in the post-Christian turn is that people experience faith differently. It can be complex. People have complex relationships with scriptures sometimes in a way that they didn't when I was a child or a young adult. And people have complex experiences of faith, often faith mixed with doubt. I mean, even as we say that, I'll just acknowledge that, you know, in Australia and Canada, the turn from

what's essentially Christian culture back in the 70s and 80s when I was a child to being post-Christian culture, that turning Canada and Australia, the two countries where I straddle, that turn is rather complete. Whereas less so in the United States and it's very good in the United States like autumn leaves with different colors and fascinatingly in the United States especially and a little in Canada and Australia. There's a very, very strong, sharp pushback against

this cultural turn where people are fearful to lose Christian culture and so kind of grasp for it or fight for it. I mean the cultural turn is inevitable in the end that Western culture is essentially becoming a post-Christian culture and by post-Christian I just mean, well by Christian culture I mean that the values and symbols of the church, know, I mean leaving aside how biblical they are, that the values and symbols of the church more or less are mirrored.

in the values and symbols of the culture, surrounding culture. And in Australia and Canada, Christianity has just taken its place, ⁓ alongside many other religions. ⁓ And of course, you know, many New York cities, rather a city like New York or San Fernando or Seattle, you know, perhaps in the twilight of Christian culture, ⁓ where it's fading quickly, but it's not completely gone. So with this change, all of a sudden, ⁓ the structures, the scaffolding of Christian culture that used to hold faith,

no longer there. In other words, that faith used to be very plausible according to the way that we make meaning for our lives in Christian culture, to say Jesus Christ as Lord made a whole lot of sense because everything about culture affirmed it in the West. And in post-Christian culture that scuff-holding has taken away and faith is left to stand by itself. And I think that's a good thing because it means that by the inspiration of the Spirit we need to encounter Jesus as he really is, not perhaps as he may be distorted if you're like

Christian culture or embodied or wrongly embodied by Christian culture. So there is something very beautiful, I think, the cultural moment that we have in more post-Christian areas because we encounter Christ in scripture as he is. And as preachers, when we hold out the word of life, there's a sense in which there is not, perhaps, hopefully, the same distortion as this word travels through Christian culture.

I remember for example, and I tell this story in the book Preaching in a New Key, having coffee with an artist, Parishna, an artist friend of mine, Kate. And Kate was a dear friend, we'd had many pastoral conversations and as the months and years went by, she would share with me her doubts. And her doubts kind of, a big part of her doubt was fueled by perhaps, I mean she was a justice seeking person, she was an urban farmer, she was an artist.

And she didn't see some of these values of compassion and creation care in the church. mean, Kate and I both knew that our church, you know, really sought justice and sought to live in solidarity with marginalized people. But the fact she didn't see it in the broader church really troubled Kate and troubled her faith. And then there was this kind of crisis just at the level of plausibility, like I've described once that scaffolding of Christian culture comes down, you know, Kate started to just kind of recognize.

I don't need this to make a meaningful life. I don't need this faith I grew up with to make a meaningful life. And what's significant as I kind of narrate Kate's experience is crisis of values, this crisis of plausibility is that what's it's just we have to name it caused Kate a lot of grief and it causes our friends, especially if they grew up in the church, a lot of grief. They they honestly want to believe they don't want to have these doubts about scripture, about Jesus. They don't want to find these difficult texts in scripture.

And sometimes they come to church quite worried that the preacher might say something that disrupts their faith even more. And they can sit in the pew quite worried, you know, what if the pastor says something about this, you know, and they can be worried that their faith might be disrupted even more. However, having said all that, through these pastoral one-on-one coffees, through journeying with people in their journey with Jesus as preachers, I think we can learn to preach in a way that's responsive.

to these more complex experience of faith. And that can be really joyful and it's both, it requires flexibility on our part and new creativity.

Well, so I'm curious what that shift means for the authority of the preacher. Where does the preacher's authority come from or how is that understood? And then also for the authority of scripture, how do you engage that?

I love it. think I mean, when Terri Dwight, myself, when we grew up, you know, we were learning from from preaching textbooks that certainly emphasize the authority of the preacher. Let's start there. Even Tim Keller's book, which wasn't published so long ago, speaks about the authority of the preacher, which is very interesting. And of course, you know, 2020, a lot changed, especially in more compassionate circles. Twenty twenty, the Me Too movement and and the following years.

there became, we certainly saw it in Canada, a bit of a crisis of confidence among some people in the pews. In these past few years, there's been a change statistically where less women are coming to church and more men are coming to church. That is to say the number of women coming to church is declining faster than the number of men. That's very, very significant. And it is to do with this crisis of confidence in pastoral ministry. What do we do with that as preachers? Well, again, I think that it means that

Scripture itself, we need to learn to be able to preach Scripture itself in a way that displays the beauty of Jesus in Scripture. And even as we display the beauty of Jesus in Scripture, we're winning people not just to Jesus, but even re-knitting people back to Scripture itself. So in terms of the authority of the pastor, which is part of your question Dwight, when we come to the pulpit, I think if we're going to nourish faith in people like Kate, we need to have a slightly different posture instead of that kind of

big ⁓ bold male voice that we grew up hearing. We need to simply offer the sermon, offer the sermon as the person that we are and trust that the Bible is winsome because it does. Christ does come to us close in scripture to trust the beauty of this text and to trust that the spirit will enter into this conversation. So I think it's that question of posture. So for myself, when I started to preach in East Vancouver,

which is kind of an artsy, justicy kind of hub of Vancouver. East Van's, it's where I live and where I was pastoring. I came, Dwight, from a Christian Reformed Church, which is a Dutch Reformed Church, which is much more traditional and Reformed. And I'm a six foot three white preacher. And in the Dutch Reformed Church, I could just be six foot three and white and loud. And my big, deep voice is exactly what people wanted to hear. So the way that I was trained to preach worked rather well. Then I got to East Vancouver, which was a very different culture.

this more kind of justice seeking artsy, many people like Kate there and all of a sudden people actually might react, sometimes often in fact reacted to that more authoritative posture. And it was painful actually because all of a sudden I was getting some negative feedback around my preaching and my wife who's Canadian and has a PhD in liberal Canadian university cultural studies, she could narrate the cultural context for me and she said, Mark.

you're a big boisterous Australian. You said you walk into a room and you take up a lot of space and I'm sitting there at the dinner table going, Aaron, you're right. But you know, it's hard, you And so after this, this kind of real crisis in my pastoral ministry in East Van, I literally, mean, keeping my height, I started to sit on a stool in our church and I preach from a stool and instead of using a big kind of more kind of exorbitory voice, I just kind of offered the homily.

I made a bit less eye contact, interestingly, and gesticulated, kind of used my body a little less and just kind of offered the homily and tried to give people the space to open up scriptures themselves and to consider it and became more dialogical. It was interesting. Every preacher has to make a different transition for sure. Some people have to find their voice. Some people have to find their body. I want to really say that I'm just kind of writing my own experience. So that's the authority of the preacher.

It's a question of posture, not authority, I think, if we're going to connect with our kates. But then the authority of scripture is very important as well, because as we come to preach, we're preaching even more than we may realize to people who have complex relationships with scripture, even more than they usually say to their pastor. People are troubled by the misogynistic text, the misogynistic culture they encounter in scripture.

by the violent texts, and there are violent texts in scripture. Of course there are. Scripture is about life. Scripture is about culture and nations. If there wasn't violence, wouldn't be about life and about culture and about nations. so, what do we, know, again, when I was growing up, the authority of scripture was very much assumed, not just by the preacher, but by the people in the room. So people would walk to church literally with the Bible under their arm.

I I did in my earnest days, you know, even as a child walk to church with the Bible under my arm. But these days, it's different. People walk to church with questions on their mind, with griefs in their heart, maybe with aware of their anxiety and depression and maybe able to articulate it. Maybe with some grief over the malaise they see in the church. Maybe they walk to church with some big dreams that they long to see embodied in their church and their community, good dreams.

you know, that God delights in. And so they walk to church and our goal is to once again, as I said, to show how Christ in Scripture meets them in their griefs and how Christ in Scripture invites us to be the beloved community as a church and how does in a sense, even their best imaginings and how Christ in Scripture meets some of their longings. And even as we see the beauty of Jesus in Scripture, we're knit back together.

a little bit with scripture itself. And what this is then, it's what I call reversing the flow. Instead of kind of having this, this kind of gen, this generally presumed authority of scripture that we can say quite explicitly up the front. Instead of that, the scripture almost kind of catches up to us and takes us by surprise as Christ encounters us in scripture once again. I call it the ironic authority of wisdom. The wisdom of scripture.

We're not defending scripture's authority with rational arguments. Rather, is kind of affirming itself to us as it shows us that it has the capacity to respond to our lives. And as we encounter the beauty of Christ there in scripture, we're encountering something really good. God breathed, inspirated, as we say. So that ironic authority of wisdom, ironically, when we

when we're not making an argument for the authority of Scripture, as we kind of have that pastoral sensitivity for people's a variety of journeys, that Scripture's authority kind of takes us by surprise. It becomes authority by its capacity to respond to our lives and to shape us as the beloved community.

Yeah, I love that. And I feel like there's a sense of listening for that spirit's movement and jumping on that train or going with that flow as opposed to assuming it's already in the room, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I can I play on the piano to illustrate it, Terri? Thanks. I I'm trying to, like, I feel like it has to be illustrated musically, but I'm kind of reaching for it. I feel like, you know, there was something about that cultural scaffolding of Christian culture. We walked to the church with a Bible under our arms. There's so much good there, of course.

Yes, I would love that.

And that scaffolding kind of holding a faith. And you know, even if a sermon was a rotten sermon, we'd all know we'd be back next Sunday to hear the next one with a Bible in their arm once more. You know.

Yeah, and so I tried to, I'm kind of feeling, I'm reaching for something with my heart and with our music, I'm trying to express something that's good and beautiful and deep, ⁓ but something that I grew up with, this kind of, no matter how bad the sermon is, we're gonna be back next week kind of thing. There's a beauty there and there's a scaffolding there. And these days, people come to church in a different way. They come to church with these, aware of their desires, aware of their grief, aware of their ache.

maybe in their heart for the church or for their own lives. And can we show how Jesus in scripture is meeting these, is meeting them in their imagination? So there's a certain lyricism, I think.

I love it. So let's play with the, the jazz improv. you said some of this at the top of our podcast here where a good jazz musician has to know all has, ⁓ not just a vague, but a deep understanding of the musical structures, right? Keys and, and timing and all those kinds of things. But there's also this,

element of freedom to create or to, go off the page or to, to mix it up a bit. And I think many people that I talked to in the, as we, as they think of a post-Christian time, get worried that we're going to leave all the tradition behind or the scaffolding. As you say, that's falling apart is losing a depth and breadth.

that came with that. And the ironic thing with jazz is that's not actually what happens, right? So how can we learn from jazz for those of us trying to make that turn, I think is specifically for people, like you said, preachers that were taught in a different era to speak a truth. And now there are people showing up. And really the main thing is, I don't know if I'm coming next week, but I have a, I have a

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

huh.

question. And for some reason, my feet brought me here, you know, and I'm sitting here. So how, how can we use kind of the understanding of jazz to think about this turn?

Yeah, yeah, I like that, yeah, yeah.

Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've got a tradition and we're in a tradition that invites but actually demands creativity. So with jazz, ⁓ so I was just kind of playing in a minor key just now. And for those musicians here, I'm playing what's called a Dorian mode. So if you think of where in C, think of all the white notes in C.

and think of an E flat, so it's minor, and also think of a B flat, so it's a minor seventh. Can you picture that? C to C with an E flat and a B flat in the middle, and that's kind of in modal jazz. That's the C Dorian scale. So that's the theory, but.

what's the point of just theory? You know, it's gotta land in this room, it's gotta land in this moment. And so I have to use my heart and use my ear.

you

and what I play, it will be responsive to what's going on in the moment in my heart, what's been going on in the day. For me, what the other musicians are playing, it's responsive. And the point is, I'm never leaving the tradition because it's still jazz music and rooted in that I couldn't be playing without it. And yet it's creative. In the same way the biblical tradition, it demands creativity. And I think that evangelicals who are committed to the authority of scripture and

man, I shouldn't have even used that word. The word evangelical in Canada, you know, means the authority of scripture and it can be very compassionate and just as seeking. that's, you know, like once we're committed to scripture, we can lose sight of the creativity of the biblical authors themselves. So I'm an Old Testament scholar. Think of, if anyone knows anything about Old Testament theology, they will have heard of a covenant, God's covenant. What people often don't know is that the covenant is taken from, it's actually a term from

international relations, the covenants or the treaties between the kings. And so if it was a highly militarized metaphor, so the great king, say of Neo Assyria or Neo Babylon or the Hittite Empire or the Egyptian kings, they would conquer and subjugate by military force and force into a covenant a less powerful king. So it was, I mean, it was a traumatizing, militarized, barbaric actual treaty that

subordinated kings, subordinated nations were forced into this covenant, hegemonic, you know, to do with death and destruction. The scribes who wrote the Old Testament by the inspiration of the spirit had the bravery, audacity, strange creativity to adopt this militarized metaphor of a covenant to disclose, to reveal something about a god of grace who was setting about redeeming slaves.

And there at Sinai giving the law that was shaping this community to be a place where every person could flourish and making a covenant with Israel, but that this covenant now was a covenant of grace. The first time I think the master scribe in Jerusalem suggested the idea of adopting the idea of a metaphor of a covenant. I think the other scribes must have thought he was a bit batty, but this is a creativity. Of course, the spirit is there inspiring the innovation, but this is a creativity that biblical authors.

We'll come to the New Testament, think of the Peace of Christ, which is a very primary New Testament motif, the Peace of Christ. And of course we know that that's an appropriation, ⁓ very thorough reappropriation of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. And a bit like the covenant, the Peace of Rome was empire propaganda. I mean, some peace, right? Peace for who? You know, peace for Caesar in his castle. You know, again, it was militarized, was brutal, it was traumatizing.

And yet the New Testament writers had that creativity to speak about the peace of Christ in contradistinction, turning upside down the peace of the empire. That's that kind of creativity that the biblical authors have. And we can lose that as people, once we become committed to the authority of scripture, that scripture is authoritative, available, reliable, sufficient and inspired. And I believe it is. We can forget that it's actually very creative. And the point is that you can have a tradition.

but you can improvise on a tradition and some traditions demand improvisation. That's their nature. And so it is with scripture. So it is with jazz music. And so as preachers, we have to, you know, answering your question very directly, Terri, how do we have who've been preaching for a while get into this headspace? I think one way to do it is to make sure we're spending enough time in our preparation so that we have time for creativity. And I think that really practically we have to

find ways in our physical body to get beyond rationality. ⁓ know, neuroscience teaches us that when we're in our body, we start to integrate our thoughts and we start to get creative. That left and right brain kind of theory, the right brain is the integrative part and it's related to our body. That's why when we have a shower or go for a walk and we're not even trying to think about our sermon, the best ideas come. So we've got to have that time, those walks, those showers, whatever it is, where we're not trying to think about the sermon, where we can actually get creative.

And then I think we have to get creative with our imagination, I think, as preachers. What creativity is there in the text? What creativity is the spirit birthing in us for our community up close and personal in our particular neighborhood? When I think about the church in a neighborhood, a local church, I often think about my favorite kind of image for the church is a bunch of a group of blues musicians sitting on a local park bench singing the blues.

their favorite little park, little corner park in a neighborhood. Just a scrubby old park bench and they're singing the blues. The blues music always grieves what Christ grieves and it always celebrates what Christ celebrates. There's always grief in the blues, attentive to the things that are broken. And there's also artistic celebration, know, the resurrection shout. The moan of the cross, the resurrection shout. They're both there in the blues. After all.

we're playing together, so we're alive. So I think, you know, that kind of creative imagination.

⁓ you

So I think we have to take that time to have that creative imagination for how is the Spirit wanting to shape us, not as individuals, but as a community, up close and personal in our particular neighborhood. What does Christ grieve in our neighborhood? What does Christ grieve in our neighborhood? What does Christ celebrate? And how can we express that with a lyrical bounce?

So in your book, you talk about three strategies for preaching effectively in post-Christian contexts. One of those is preaching to nourish communities of hope. Another is expressing curiosity and finding new and thoughtful vocabulary for biblical concepts. So kind of a work of translation, contextualization, but you also talk about the importance of having a big heart. Tell us a little bit about those.

elements, those ingredients if you will, and how they work in practice.

Yeah, I think curiosity is an interesting one. think I think good preaching, you know, is really works hard with the text and opens up the text within the congregation. But I think a good preacher is relentlessly curious. And when I'm at my best as a preacher, I'm not always at my best. I'm curious in a fresh way with the text each time I preach, you know. I mean, I will just say that before I get to curiosity, I think in this like

we've spoken about Kate. I think that Kate wants the teachings of scripture. I think that the complexity of faith, I really notice that even my friends, even in their deep doubts, they want me to preach scripture. If they're gonna make a decision, whether or not, how they're gonna kind of orient in regards to the Christian faith, they wanna orient in relation to scripture itself.

So they want me to preach scripture. I think that's really important. Sometimes we think, the post-Christian term, we need to get thematic. Sure, we'll get thematic, but expository preaching, preaching that emerges directly and demonstrably from scripture has never been more important, perhaps ironically, I think. People want to know the tradition, no matter where they are on that complex faith journey. Having said that, to get curious as we explore scripture is so important. So for example,

My wife Erin is lead pastor here in Vancouver and PhD in cultural studies, very creative person, but also knows how to get curious with the text. She was preaching on a hemorrhaging woman not too long ago. And she literally went to University of British Columbia library and found a book on medical practice in the first century relating to women. So here's a hemorrhaging woman, right? Suffered under the hands of many physicians, quote unquote. And so,

My wife, Erin, she reads a monograph, an academic monograph on medical practice toward women in the first century. And she discovers, as you can imagine, that what the hemorrhaging woman ⁓ experienced at the hands of many physicians was not uncommon. And then she speaks about this lady's marginalization and the dishonor that she experienced. And then she speaks a little bit about inequitable medical practices today in terms of gender.

And at this point in the sermon, literally, I looked around the room and there were 10 men weeping. There were 10 men weeping. And I was pretty close to tears myself. And then she says in this moment in the sermon, just at the right moment, she shows the attention that Jesus gives to this woman, how he stops. She certainly draws attention to the agency of the woman. But in this moment, she speaks about the dignity and the honor that Jesus shared with this woman. And then she says,

Who wouldn't want to trust a man like that? And at this point, you know, in all our doubts, in all our uncertainties, in all the complexities of our journeys of faith, she showed us the beauty of Jesus once again. And that's curiosity, you know, like it's curiosity that got Erin there. know, curiosity to go to UBC and borrow a book on first century medical practices. That's curiosity. So yeah, that's a quick answer, Dwight. Dwight, my apologies.

Yeah. And that's a great example, I think of what we talked about before about deep study and improv, right? And creativity, right? That that wasn't just going to a Greek or Hebrew interpretation, right? Of a word, right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, that's right. It's a deeper learning. It's a more intelligent

learning than just trying to conjugate the next Greek verb.

Yeah. So you quote Henri Nouwen and saying, we are not called to imitate Jesus. We are called to form a community of people who through different ways reflect the great love of Jesus. I love that quote. I'm going to, I'm going to put it up on my wall. think that's, that's worthy of thinking about, but then think, tell us, think about this hermeneutic of witnessing community and how, if, that's our calling,

to shape this, to help form this community of people who reflect the great love of Jesus. That's a really different than help me answer my questions in an individualistic kind of way, right?

Right.

Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, I think that if there is a way that biblical preaching today in the West or in the last since the Enlightenment really has distorted the Bible itself, ironically, it's the hyper individualism with which we preach. ⁓ You know, think of the last sermon you've heard where in the conclusion, the preacher had that imagination for who we are in our shared life in our particular neighborhood. Of course, in the conclusion, if you.

if you kind of analyze the sermons that we hear and perhaps the sermons that we preach to have that individualistic frame. But what's fascinating is when it comes, when you look at the Bible itself, all of the biblical books in Old Testament and New Testament are written to shape the beloved community. mean, the Pentateuch was certainly had that communal reference first. Here is a nation of slaves in Egypt. Yahweh emancipated them.

brought them to Sinai and by the law was shaping them to be that beloved community in contradistinction to the oppression that they'd experienced in Egypt. To be sure, each individual was responsible to be by the Torah and yet the law itself and the penetruch itself is shaping God's ancient people as a community. Come to the New Testament, think of the Pauline epistles, to the churches in Thessalonica, to the saints in Galatia. It's shaping the New Testament, these,

house churches and the urban centers of the Roman Empire to be that beloved community. I mean, even those kind of seemingly individualistic texts like the fruits of the spirit are really saying this is how you're to live if you're to be a community that is a light on a hell, if you're to be a community that is that New Jerusalem. And so I think that the way that I teach people to kind of make this transition from individualistic preaching to understanding that we're shaping with our preaching the beloved community, if we're preaching scripture right,

is to actually start by just going back to their most recent sermon and looking at their conclusion and noticing, are we focused on a bunch of individuals first or are we focusing on our shared life in this neighborhood first? And probably, you know, when I do this, people go back to their sermon and they're a bit kind of embarrassed to see, of course, that they're preaching with an individualistic frame. And then I invite people to rewrite their conclusion and to reimagine their conclusion so that it's

as its first reference, shaping the beloved community and nourishing individuals in that frame. And then I invite people to ⁓ kind of go through their whole sermon in light of the conclusion and to have that kind of communal emphasis. And the point is that in our shared life, we're displaying in life, word and deed, the tenderness of Jesus. So it's very important. an individualistic preaching can be beautiful, too. So, you know, I could be I'm sitting at the piano.

you know, an individual kind of melody lines, lovely.

But you know how much more beautiful when there's a plurality when it's a community. ⁓

I love that. Well, I think that's a great place to end on. Mark, thank you so much for sharing your insights on preaching in post-Christian contexts and helping us see how we might pivot our approach as preachers to proclamation in ways that remain faithful to scripture while speaking meaningfully to today's listeners. So if you're interested in learning more, Mark's new book is Preaching in a New Key.

Crafting Expository Sermons in Post-Christian Communities, and that's out from IVP. And now, Mark, where can our listeners, our viewers engage more with you?

Thank you. Well, I'd love it if people would check out Blue Note Theology podcast, the only podcast in the world hosted from the grand piano, I say. It's not the only podcast in the world hosted from grand piano, I'm sure, but that's what I say. You've got to say something. And just if they want to subscribe to my website, I'd be grateful to stay in touch.

That's great. And so far, I think you're the only pivot podcast guests who's come with their piano. So at least on this podcast, works, right? That's right.

I can say that, yeah, yeah, with good conscience,

that's right.

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