The "evangelical uniform" versus real piety from PreachingNow

In the second part of his article on "The Future of Expository Preaching," Bryan Chapell says, "How we will apply Scripture to our present situation in order to be salt and light remains a hot topic in adult Sunday Schools but a great void in the homiletics literature. Once application was easy. Everyone knew the uniform that Evangelicals were supposed to wear: do not smoke or drink or chew; don't see bad movies; and don't cuss when the preacher's around. Virtually any biblical text could be exegeted to add threads to this uniform of Evangelical/Fundamentalist identification.

"Of course, for reasons both good and bad, that uniform is now largely considered out of fashion. Survey after survey tells us that the life patterns of Evangelicals on matters as varied as marriage, entertainment, alcohol and drug use, abortion and charitable giving vary little from the secular culture. The individualism that we were inadvertently promoting by emphasizing faith as a path to personal fulfillment has come home to roost as mere paganism among our people.

"We know how to preach salvation by faith, but we have not yet determined how to replace false legalisms with true piety. Young and old are more schooled in popular culture than biblical thought — that is evident in not only in our congregants' lifestyles but in their shocking lack of Biblical knowledge. Yet, before we blame others for not applying the scriptures well, we must confess that even among conservative church leaders there is little consensus regarding such culture forming issues as economics, government, education, poverty and war. The cold wash of this culture's realities are making it startlingly evident that it was far easier to talk about the uniform than it is to fight the spiritual war of the soul in today's society.

"We are beginning to think afresh about how exposition and application relate to these cultural battles for the soul. There is a healthy trickle of recent articles and books on how to do exegetically sound application. Still, much work remains to be done in order for expository preaching to move from merely creating weekly to-do lists based on our own traditions and really identifying how biblical truth applies to life's struggles."