The church is nothing if it is not centered on the Word. The Word of God is both the origin of the church and its telos, the goal toward which the church strives. The church’s great work is proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. In a new book, Lutheran pastors Harold Senkbeil and Lucas Woodford make this precious truth of the Word’s power and primacy abundantly clear.

From the prologue, the authors contend that the culture of the world should not shape the church. The church already has a culture of its own—the culture of the Word—and the church must hold fast to it even amid cultural upheaval. “The culture of the word is the fullness of life enacted by the living and creative word of the triune God” (42). The words that close each chapter are the most succinct summary of the book: “As the word is sown, the culture is grown.” In a world that often talks of church growth, the idea that Word growth comes before church growth is simple, yet profound.

The book’s opening chapter surveys the religious landscape of the West. “The tide of cultural disintegration rolls relentlessly on, sweeping up everything and everyone in its path. Besides, the myriad political, social, and philosophical influences that gave rise to this situation over the centuries defy accurate analysis and remedy” (4). In other words, we are in a bad spot. This present world is passing away, as the apostle Paul said. And yet God’s Word abides forever. Therefore, it is indispensable in the church’s ministry in every age.

One of the book’s strengths, from the first chapter, is how the authors use New Testament texts (especially the book of Acts) to show that the Word, by the blessing of God’s Spirit, is not incidental but essential to the church’s growth. (I would estimate that approximately one-sixth of the book is comprised of direct quotations from the New Testament). The church and its resulting culture will only grow and flourish to the degree that they are tethered to the Word.  Will there be opposition? Yes. But as the authors show throughout, the church’s growth ultimately cannot be hindered by opposition from the cultures of the world because the church’s culture depends on the inerrant and infallible Word of God, not the fallen cultures of man.

A favorite line from the first chapter is, “A culture of the word instills in us the confidence to maintain a nonanxious presence as we navigate the challenges of our day. To develop a culture of the word in the church requires that the word be regularly sown in her midst” (21). The answer to the anxiety that runs rampant on social media and in many local churches is not “Get out the vote,” or “We need to pack up and move and isolate ourselves into Christian enclaves,” but to double down on the Word, the sure foundation of our faith.

I appreciated how in chapter 2 the authors demystified the evangelical buzzword—contextualization. I must admit my own weariness with the word. It has long felt like a ten-dollar word used to illustrate a one-dollar concept. And, to my delight, the writers seem to agree! “Common sense contextualization is needed and relies on using basic communication skills. … If you’re talking to rural folks, you use different terminology than among corporate executives. Community outreach in the great urban centers of our nation incorporates the diverse customs and dialects of various subcultures and ethnicities. Cultural context is crucial when communicating the gospel, but context never overshadows the text of holy Scripture” (30–31, emphasis added). I love that line! Senkbiel and Woodford do well to say that we would be foolish not to care about how we communicate, but they rightly prioritize the primacy of text over context. Their analysis was straightforward and did not get bogged down with the typical jargon that shrouds the Word.

Chapter 3 features an extended explanation of the gospel that the church was made to preach. This chapter’s strength is its explanation of the gospel in a way that clearly remedies the prevailing sicknesses gripping so many in our day. The authors highlight the intense suffering to which many are subject, spiritually and physically, and argue that it is not enough to love merely in word but also in deed (see the section titled “Holistic Soul Care” beginning on page 66). They say not only what the gospel is, but how the church is to steward it and hold out its hope to a world in desperate need of a remedy (67–68).

Chapter 4, “The Church’s Worship Transcends Cultural Context,” was, for me, the most heavily underlined chapter. Already, Senkbiel and Woodford established well that the Word gives the church’s culture a transcendent quality, but here they show how the church’s worship further accents the church’s uniqueness as a culture. One line that made my heart sing is on page 77: “In worship, form follows function. Although our worship happens in this world, it’s an otherworldly experience. Its content establishes its context; heaven comes down to earth.” Worship is transcendent not just because we worship the Christ of heaven but because heaven comes down as we worship according to the Word. Another gem in this chapter is the image of worship practices acting like either a wall or a window. “Does it [worship practice] draw attention to itself, the worship leaders, and the worshipping assembly? Or, in contrast, is it a window into the unseen realm where God pours out his gifts by means of his word and Spirit?” (79). This chapter more than proves its contention that worship should be otherworldly, even while being cultural (intelligible) and transcultural (universally appealing).

The fifth chapter, “The Church Lives in the World, Not of the World,” highlights the spiritual quality of the church and its Word-centered culture and critiques pragmatic, political means of effecting change in the world. The writers demonstrate their familiarity with the voices, both contemporary and historical, who look to statecraft as the silver bullet to reversing the cultural decline that we see around us and how these voices do not sound altogether different from the Jews in Jesus’s day who sought to have the kingdom restored to them (Acts 1). As one would expect, Senkbiel and Woodford point to the two kingdoms approach as the more biblically faithful paradigm for the church’s mission and means of effecting cultural change. From the little I know of the Lutheran tradition’s two kingdoms doctrine, I think most Reformed and Presbyterian Christians would be satisfied with their basic paradigm, even if they differ on finer points of application.

One weakness I noted in reading the book was its organization, or structure. It tended to read “loose” to me. For example, the chapter titles (and to some degree, the content of the chapters) seemed to overlap. It isn’t clear to me how chapter 1, “The Church Is Created by the Word of God” differs enough from chapter 6, “The Church Grows from the Culture of the Word,” to justify two distinct chapters, nor how chapter 2, “The Church Lives in One Transcendent Culture,” doesn’t overlap considerably with chapter 5, “The Church Lives in the World, Not of the World.” To be sure, because the book is narrowly focused on the centrality of the Word, I would expect there to be overlap. But, since the authors dealt well with the need for “commonsense contextualization” amid cultural change in chapter 2 (beginning on page 39), I didn’t feel that commonsense contextualization needed to be explored again in the final chapter. Maybe I’m too “Occamistic” (if that is a word), but to my ears “holy discernment” and “adaptive capacity” (140, 142) sound like synonyms for commonsense contextualization; separate explorations alongside commonsense contextualization were not required. Be that as it may, I found the set of questions posed by the authors at the end of chapter 6 very useful for church leaders to assess the health of their churches and their readiness to engage the world around them and not to retreat.

In all, I am thankful for the faithful labors of Senkbiel and Woodford in writing this book. The person I envision benefiting from this book is, ideally, the young man prayerfully considering a call to pastoral ministry. In a world where contextualization is not all common sense, and the mission of the church has become blurred by political interests and anxious isolation, this book would prove a settling, illuminating, and fortifying resource in the hands of one called to the ministry of the Word. We need not be experts in urbanization or political science, but we must be lovers, doers, and sowers of the Word of God.

©Stephen Spinnenweber. All Rights Reserved.

Harold Senkbeil and Lucas Woodford, The Culture of God’s Word: Faithful Ministry in a Post-Christian Society (Lexham Press, 2026).

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Post authored by:

• Stephen Spinnenweber

  

  Stephen has been the pastor of Westminster PCA in Jacksonville, FL  since 2019. Stephen earned his Masters of Divinity from Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and is a General Council member of the Gospel Reformation Network. Together with friends he hosts several podcasts on the Westminster Standards (The Shorter and Larger for Life podcasts) and is also the author of a forthcoming book from Christian Focus Publications on the three uses of the Moral Law, set to be released in 2025. Stephen and his wife, Sarah, are high school sweethearts and have been married since 2013. They are proud parents to four covenant children.

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