I posted a link to this article over on my facebook page and got a couple of good comments, but I couldn’t privde links in my response, so I brought it over here. Dan wrote:
I would tend to agree with the entertainment portion but I am not really sure that using what is done in the past must be done that way in the now and in the future. We are in an electronic age and the Gospel must and is in most cases relevant in that age. We reach the lost in all ways. Martin Luther used popular songs to create hymns. That was his day. What do you think?
I think you are right that we can use many methods to reach out to the lost (that is the mission of DJEM, after all) , but in regards to actually evangelizing them, preaching is a non-negotiable. I think this has partly to do with the fact that, in preaching, the Spirit of God is present and working in the participants. The preacher actually makes God known, not just in a propositional way, but in a personal, powerful, real way. In good preaching, God isn’t just talked about, God is there. This doesn’t happen in the same way through other means (or bad preaching, for that matter). I breifly discuss Paul’s view of this in a short paper I wrote for a Pauline Soteriology class, which is here if you want to check it out.