How to Engage Postmodern Cynics with the Gospel

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How to Engage Postmodern Cynics with the Gospel

I just finished a book that I took an unusual amount of time to read because it has so much to offer: David Henderson’s Culture Shift: Communicating God’s Truth to Our Changing World. This is probably the most helpful book I have seen in many years for helping Christians to understand our culture and how to communicate the gospel to it.

He not only gives a brief history of philosophy in understandable terms, but also lots of concrete examples from his own experience in leading post modern cynics to faith in Christ. Just following how he talks to people makes the book worth the price and time to read it.

He divides the main part of the book into two broad topics:
I. Who we are, and II. How we think.

Each of these is divided into three subtopics, and each of those has two chapters: the first on understanding our culture and how it got to be that way, the second on how we as Christians address it with the gospel.

I. Who we are: Consumers, Spectators, Self-Absorbed Individuals

II. How we think: Beyond God, Beyond Right & Wrong, Beyond Meaning & Purpose

This is not just an intellectual text, but a punch-to-the-gut-make-you-feel-the-despair of lost people in today’s world. For example his quotes from today’s thinkers such as Woody Allen: “Civilization stands at the crossroads. Down one road is despondency and despair, and down the other road is total annihilation. Let us pray that we choose the right road.”

Or the T-shirt that says, “A man’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another beer.”

While there are a few things I disagree with him on, the approach is very God-centered and faithful to the truth of the gospel. It is a bit like Francis Schaefer for the 21st century. This is not just a book to read, but to do. It encouraged me to engage unbelievers because God is at work in our culture of people unglued from Reality, and dying of spiritual thirst.

I just checked; the book is available from Amazon.com: 24 new from .99 and 40 used from .49.

Allen Harris