Page 178 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

Korean church, since “every renewal of Christianity has been accompanied by a renewal of

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preaching.”

This dissertation has attempted to suggest a methodological clue for contemporary

Korean preaching in light of selected aspects of the methodology of Jesus’ preaching. It sought

to provide answers to the following questions that would arise out of the analytical study of

contemporary Korean preaching: “What is a methodology of preaching that would spawn

renewal and revival in the contemporary Korean church? What kind of style and communicative

techniques need to be encouraged for the Korean preachers who should preach in a changed

context?”

Working under the assumption that the answer to the Korean crisis lies in Jesus, this

author investigated the methodology of Jesus’ preaching. There were two reasons for accepting

this assumption. The first reason is a contextual reason. Jesus, who was incarnated into a

concrete human cultural matrix, was able to communicate abstract truth that transcended the

thinking mode of that culture. He was an Oriental and preached in the Oriental context. This has

enormous significance to Korean preachers. Furthermore, within the current context of a

postmodern, pluralistic society, a society not significantly epistemologically different from the

first century, preachers need to focus on Jesus as the model of a preacher.

David Lose also gives emphasis to the need to focus on Jesus in a postmodern world. He

expresses the frustrations of desperate modern preachers caused by the dawning of

postmodernism: “With the annihilation of the historical-critical synthesis in biblical studies, for

instance, so also perished the two-step hermeneutical waltz danced by so many twentieth-century

3 Leander E. Keck, The Bible in Pulpit: The Renewal of Biblical Preaching. (Nashville,