Don’t Sacrifice Genre for Directness

The heavens declare the glory of God, and
the sky proclaims the work of his hands.
Psalm 19:1

How do the heavens declare God’s glory? 

With literal words? What explicit reference to Jesus? He, of course, is the radiance of God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). 

No.

Their proclamation is one of functionality. 

They declared by fulfilling their purpose. 

Skies exist to provide shelter from the sun. They soak up water, then nourish the earth again. Perhaps this caused the Psalmist to marvel. Their very existence indicated they were created by their Maker. 

They need no preacher to declare that they are clouds. They simply need to do that which God designed them for.

So it is with genres. Brian Schrag defines genre as, “A community’s category of communication characterized by a unique set of formal characteristics, performance practices, and social meanings.”

Church leaders can pressure new believers to evangelize, and rightly so. But often the heroes who are portrayed as “faithful” evangelists are those who are merely direct about Jesus in all their interactions.

The result: this preaches to our imaginations that directness = faithfulness. The more one knows how to mic drop the non-believer, the more admirable.

The downside is that the everyday genres we use in interactions get dumbed down for the sake of “faithful” heralding. 

We sacrifice genre for directness.