Review: Why Johnny Can’t Preach: the Media Have Shaped the Messengers

I bought T. David Gordon’s book, Why Johnny Can’t Preach: the Media Have Shaped the Messengers, based on the recommendation of a couple of the modern theologians I respect. Unfortunately, the title would never have grabbed me. Even with the recommendations, I worried that this slim volume would not be worth the time and price. Thankfully, it was.

Gordon is a retired seminary media ecology professor. Thankfully, Gordon doesn’t assume that anyone would know what in the world that is. He explains that Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death, etc.) “coined the term media ecology to describe how changes in dominant media alter the human and social environment. Media ecology, as a discipline, is comparatively less concerned with the content of a given medium and more concerned about how the mere presence of that medium itself alters individual consciousness, social structures, or cultural habits and sensibilities. In this book, I am asking the media-ecological question: How has the movement from a language-based media to image-based and electronic media altered our sensibilities, and how, in turn, has this change in sensibility shaped today’s preachers?” (16, emphasis his).

In the first chapter, Gordon argues that most seminary graduates can’t preach – at best, they present their opinions. He turns to Dabney’s “The Seven Cardinal Requisites of Preaching” and argues that they are absent from most modern preaching. They are: Textual fidelity, unity, evangelical tone (that is, desiring the salvation of his hearers and the glory of God), instructiveness, movement (that is, a coherent structure), point, and order (24-27). Gordon caps this explanation by saying that the length of the sermon is irrelevant – when something is well done, one will not complain about its length (28). (I have mentioned before that I was taught, at both seminaries I went to, that a sermon should be ten to fifteen minutes long because we no longer have the ability to concentrate for longer than that amount of time – this was explained to us in three-hour long classes.) He ends the chapter arguing that the lack of an annual review of the pastor is a sign that the preaching has gone awry – without this, the pastor cannot improve I areas of weakness, etc.

The second chapter deals with the fact that “Johnny Can’t Read (Texts).” Gordon argues that we are taught to read for information, not to read for “the pleasure obtained by reading an author whose command of the language is exceptional” (44). This affects preaching in that pastors look for information by don’t take account of how a passage is constructed (46). When one actual reads texts, one learns how to distinguish between the significant and the insignificant (51).

Chapter three: “Johnny Can’t Write.” Preachers, Gordon argues, need practice in reading the physical reactions of their hearers (64). Also, preachers need to practice writing – with the advent of the telephone, Internet, and other wonders of communication, we rush off meaningless and inaccurate and insignificant pieces, whereas, in the days of letter writing, one would take time to compose something meaningful/significant. (I.e., there are volumes of collected letters. It is unlikely that one will publish a collected e-mails.)

Chapter four deals with content. Gordon argues that the content of preaching is neither mere moralism, nor navel-gazing, but “the person and work of Christ includ[ing] the character of Christ” (71).

The final chapter is his prescription, which is largely the opposite of the problem he has diagnosed. One stunning quote: “Television-watching prohibits such discernment. One simply cannot regard the significant as more important than the insignificant, and then plop himself in front of a television for two or three hours an evening. The only way the conscience can survive such a colossal waste of a human life is for the individual to refuse to entertain the question of the difference between the significant and the insignificant” (97, emphasis his).

Gordon’s book is profound and provocative. I pray it gets a large reading and, even more so, that pastors would desire to preach and to preach well, no matter what the culture is pushing.